developing too fast

Andrew O'Neill said:

And you've ruled out enlarger leak? I capped the lens on my enlarger and placed a mirror on the easel. I was shocked at the amount of light seeping through from the lens stage, and from light head.. Black cardboard masks and tape took care of it. No more fogged whites.

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I have found solution....
I reduced the exposure ( amount of light) with the build in ND filter of my Durst M605 enlarger...
This did it..
I'm happy

That's good to hear.

lieven2323 said:

I have found solution....
I reduced the exposure ( amount of light) with the build in ND filter of my Durst M605 enlarger...
This did it..
I'm happy

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Good news but really to reduce the light it would be more normal to stop down the lens to say f8 or f11. The lens is likely to be sharper at around f8/f11.

f/11 is the sharpest aperture on all my Nikkor Lenses. f/8 is sharpest on my Schneider. I always print at those apertures and then reduce light intensity from the head.

Andrew O'Neill said:

f/11 is the sharpest aperture on all my Nikkor Lenses. f/8 is sharpest on my Schneider. I always print at those apertures and then reduce light intensity from the head.

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Yes, they all have a sweet spot which is rarely the smallest aperture.

I have a lowly Durst M305 and I always stop down to f8 or f11 for exposing the paper. That said, sometimes 15 seconds is sufficient but never less than 10. It would be better to stop down the enlarging lens than to add an ND filter.

The OP seems happy that he has the solution to the cause of death so to speak, so the remaining post mortem examination by us may be of no interest to him but in his first post he seemed to suggest that his aperture was f11-22 but the statement was vague. If he needs a lot of ND then this does suggest that his times for test strips (20,40 and 60 secs) are completely out of kilter with the degree. of luminance on the paper such as might be the case if his aperture is wide open or nearly so. It might explain why he had to snatch his prints to prevent them going black.

On the other hand if he is happy then we can be happy that he is happy. I on the other hand remain frustrated that the complete puzzle hasn't been solved in my mind and he has not been set on the right path as the fire and brimstone preacher would say so, no, I am not happy.

I feel the same way as I would if I had been slowly trying to solve an Agatha Christie murder by the powers of deduction and someone looks over my shoulder and says: "It's OK, the butler did it"

Should I feel like this and is this selfish on my part? I don't know but I'll probably get over it.

Gosh I feel better already now that's off my chest. It is after all just another story, moving the wagon train West.

pentaxuser

pentaxuser said:

The OP seems happy that he has the solution to the cause of death so to speak, so the remaining post mortem examination by us may be of no interest to him but in his first post he seemed to suggest that his aperture was f11-22 but the statement was vague. If he needs a lot of ND then this does suggest that his times for test strips (20,40 and 60 secs) are completely out of kilter with the degree. of luminance on the paper such as might be the case if his aperture is wide open or nearly so. It might explain why he had to snatch his prints to prevent them going black.

On the other hand if he is happy then we can be happy that he is happy. I on the other hand remain frustrated that the complete puzzle hasn't been solved in my mind and he has not been set on the right path as the fire and brimstone preacher would say so, no, I am not happy.

I feel the same way as I would if I had been slowly trying to solve an Agatha Christie murder by the powers of deduction and someone looks over my shoulder and says: "It's OK, the butler did it"

Should I feel like this and is this selfish on my part? I don't know but I'll probably get over it.

Gosh I feel better already now that's off my chest. It is after all just another story, moving the wagon train West.

pentaxuser

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I know what you mean. These threads are always a bit frustrating. I'm sure any of us could have set him on the right path in 10 minutes in the darkroom. An hour's lesson and he'd be well on his way along that path. Nonetheless, it seems there has been success of some sort or other......

What i meant with my aperture being f11-f22 ,was that even at the max aperture of f22 i still had a too fast exposed print.
After cutting down the light,
1. aperture to f22
2. Make use of build in ND filters , (when the equal use of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow results in ND filter effect, thus cutting down the light.

I was able to obtain a correct exposure of 1 minute.
Thx...
It was not more complicated than that guys.
And it was no Aghata Christie novel

So at f22 your exposure was what? I think you said 8 secs and with a filtration of 60M? What was the developing time -60 secs? What happened to the print? Did this go completely black and was this why you reduced the time in the developer to 8 secs which is the same as your exposure time? I think 8 secs in the developer produced a print that was not completely black but it was nearly all grey?

You have solved your problem and now have a good print with a full range of tones from white to black with the same amount of C filtration so you have 60M as you had mentioned and now 60C as neutral density? What has that increased the exposure time to?

Please supply the information requested and correct any of my statements above which are not correct.

To avoid passing any judgement on what might still need to be investigated and I think there are things to be investigated to make printing easier and better for you which is what we are hoping we can do, I will wait until you reply.

Thanks

pentaxuser

Dilute the paper developer more than you have.

One of my enlarger lenses has a lever that will open the lens all the way without touching the aperture ring, so you can focus without loosing your settings. I would hope he doesnt have one of these on the enlarger with the lever thrown because like that you can change the aperture all you want and never reduce the light output.

Sorry i hope this is no police investigation.
I told you everything about the whole procedure i think.
Here's what i got from print.

My enlarger has three light settings Low, High, White. White removes the dichroic filters from the light path.

Also, when I have opened the aperture fully to focus the negative, I occasionally forget to close the lens down.

lieven2323 said:

Sorry i hope this is no police investigation.
I told you everything about the whole procedure i think.
Here's what i got from print.

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OK I think you think this is a form of police investigation so I will end my investigation by saying that if my statements on your aperture, filtration and additional C filtration are all correct then something is clearly not right. Yes you may have rescued the print but I thought that the best solution was to investigate why you have had to do what you have had to do to get a print and then give advice as to how darkroom printing can be made better and easier.

Good luck with your printing

pentaxuser

Great news, as you do more printing you will make some observations that will teach you little things; printing is a wonderful world, enjoy it.

Mick.

I have to agree with @pentaxuser.

I don’t think we have approached this problem systematically so we never discovered the root cause. Maybe it is a thin negative. Maybe it’s the wrong light bulb. Maybe the safelight isn’t safe because it is too close. Maybe it’s light leak from the the enlarger.

The OP has found a solution to the problem with printing that specific negative, but it would have been nice to know he has a solution for future prints.

Adding neutral density is just a quick fix. It doesn't tell us what was wrong.

The voltage regulator may be shot and the bulb will burn out faster.

Sirius Glass said:

The voltage regulator may be shot and the bulb will burn out faster.

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Just make it is complicated as possible

I think any new person to darkroom printing does not think that an exposure time of 10 seconds or even 15 seconds is enough time to do the various things they may need to do. Things just happen too quickly and these days they are generally doing things completely on their own, possibly with the help of text and/or pictures they are accessing via a mobile phone as they actually doing it.

Then there is the possibility of English as a second, third or even fourth language, nuances native English speakers don't even notice, can become issues for non native English speakers.

For simplicity, find any method you understand to get what you want; it would seem we have achieved this here. As his experience through practice gives him more knowledge, then this will hopefully work out well and give him a broader base to print different negatives in a manner that he is happy with.

Going from 5 seconds, which was too short a time for a new darkroom printer, to 60 seconds for a happy print time, is only 3.5 stops. I think this is an excellent result and I am reasonably sure it is pretty much in line with what I would possibly do if I had a negative that required manipulation.

When I was doing postcards for the postcard exchange, often my exposure time was in the vicinity of 2 seconds using normal aperture and filtration. This is too short a time, so I used neutral density and added 2 stops via the colour head with a final exposure time around 8 seconds. This was much better as the warm up time of the lamp was a bit dodgy at the short 2 second time. Consistency was perfect, more or less, with the longer exposure times.

Neutral density filters have been built into the heads of many enlargers, these are usually of a 2 stop range, or 60 units of neutral grey via a single lever or dial on one side of the head. Meopta have a few enlargers with these as standard and they are brilliant and very easy to use. Eventually you start to think of neutral density as nothing more than another tool to aid in printing and it will become a seemless part of your darkroom work.

Mick.

You may be right Mick but something seems seriously wrong with the OP's times vis a vis his aperture setting and filtration. He has found a fix and that is all he seems interested in but what the real problems are will remain undiscovered. We could have helped him a lot more if he had chosen to let us. It might be as simple as his lens not stopping down to f22 although he seems convinced it was. Eventually we could have examined all the angles and he could have learned a lot but if he doesn't want to then that's his choice

I fear he may come back with other problems that might have been cured in this thread and that's a waste of his time and ours.

pentaxuser

No , i will not come back on this thread. I've learned enough to do basic prints with succes. As Mick said , i'm not native English speaker . And i didn't understand half of what you tried to explain Pentaxuser.

lieven2323 said:

Thx for your message. I have more hitchcock images.. www.lievenvanmeulder.com , but all digital.

Will try to use the Magenta filter on my enlarger tonight to cut down even more the light...

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really like the images on your website !
good luck with your prints --
john

Thx a lott Jnanian