DA Enlarging meter measuring contrast

[dfoo]

I'm not so good with measuring the contrast with the DA Enlarging meter. Here is an example. I measured in the shadow under the bananas and on a highlight near the top of the banana. It read about a 3.2 difference which by the chart for Ilford MGIV RC. I printed the image grade 1/2 for 8s which was the exposure indicated on the measured highlight.


scan0011 by mjnewhook, on Flickr

The contrast is just not there. I reprinted it after a few tries grade 3.5 with a little more exposure (10s) and it looks much better.


scan0009 by mjnewhook, on Flickr

I wrote a bit more and put a few more images in a blog post on this at http://silverprint.posterous.com/46566693.

So ... what am I doing wrong with the measurements? Any advice?

 

[ic-racer]

Not sure which table you are looking at. The MGIV FB in d72 table shows that grade 1/2 renders about 7.5 stops, not 3.2

http://www.darkroomautomation.com/support/mgivfb.xls

 

[dfoo]

I'm using RC paper in this case, not FB so I looked at http://www.darkroomautomation.com/support/mgivrc.doc. Actually, perhaps with that measurement I should have looked in the highlight/black row in the table which would advise grade 3.