Dichroic Calibration - Worth It?

Thanks again everyone. I finally got a print of the crowd that I'm happy with. I took Richard's suggestion and cranked up the magenta. (As an aside, I noticed there's a second set of numbers that comes with the Ilford insert that represents dichroic equivalents of the graded filters; it shows grade 5 as 199M. I need to read more about this.)

At first I noticed my blacks in this print weren't as black as in some of my other prints. Then I realized that when I bought new paper, I picked up Satin instead of Pearl. The Satin black isn't as deep as the Pearl black; it also seems to be warmer (more brown).

this is an extremely good article about the true behavior of mg papers.excellent. thanks

bvy said:

Thanks again everyone. I'm still not convinced. I won't argue that my negatives aren't thin and/or underexposed. But the print I got of the boy (#1) has much more contrast than the prints I'm producing today (from similarly thin/underexposed negatives).

I bought my Ilford multigrade developer (PQ) 13 months ago, but it has always been kept full in an airtight bottle. I wouldn't expect it to be bad, but I might pick up a fresh supply anyway.

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You may be surprized. Ilford PQ Universal and probably multigrade have a short shelf life when opened. Once the liquid changes several tones to a light yellow-brown, toss it. At a certain tone of light yellow-brown, it will produce a OK print but may not be full scale. In general, a print developed with oxidized developer lacks sparkle.