Follow up on contrast in printing

RobC said:

have you done a safelight test?
How close to printing easel is the safelight?
What colour is safelight shroud/cover?

And how long are you leaving print in dev for?

And which paper and which dev and its dilution.

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Never done a safelight test. It's the paterson safelight and its about 120cm away from the easel. The cover is red. I have another safelight hanging over my trays. It's 30-40cm away from the fixer tray, about 1meter from developer tray. But the second safeloght is only when I do 24x30 or bigger

Adox MCC with Moersch ECO 4812 1+14 @ 3 minutes

Jessestr said:

There you go The 6 teststrips are from the difficult neg. Started with 1 stop exposure, then 1/3, then printed it, I think I then increased contrast to grade 5, still not good, then I changed the exposure up a 1/3rd, still not good. Then I did 1/3rd more and looked "ok". After developing and selenium toning it turned out quite well.

The other print was done in almost no time, 1 test strip (I failed the one in the middle). Used one specific exposure, the 4th on the strip. And turned to grade 3 for personal taste.

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Thanks.

I'd suggest a slightly different approach.

First, pin down exposure of the highlights using grade 2 (or if you prefer, grade 3). Do as many test strips as you need to get the bright and detailed highlights you like.

Once you have that pinned down, do a contrast ring-around with the exposure you determined in the first step. You want to continue to work on the same highlight area. Remember that if you move up to grades 3,5, 4, 4.5 and 5, you may need to increase the exposure time (depending on the filters and paper).

When you have a combination of exposure time and contrast that results in a highlight area that looks the way you want, use that time and contrast to print the whole print.

Then evaluate the other areas of the print. It may be great, or it may require adjustments in those other areas. To make those adjustments, you will use burning and dodging to adjust the densities of the other parts of the print. If you are adding burn time to deepen shadows, you may want to use higher grade filters for the burn time.

you must do safelight test.

put strip of paper on easel and expose to enlarger light at smallest aperture for about 3 seconds. This is to fog the test strip so that exposure inertia is used up. i.e. next photon of light hitting it WILL be developed and show in print. Then after the fogging expsoure take 10 coins and place first on paper and leave for 1 minute. Mark with pen below it number 10. Then place second coin next to first without moving anything and leave for 1 minute. Mark below second coin number 9. Repeat adding a coin each minute and marking it counting down to 1 and all ten coins have been used. Then after 10th coin minute is up, quickly put strip into dev (without coins) for 3 minutes and then fix.

Then check what you can see on the paper. The first coin you can see on the paper is past the time which your safelights are safe. So if number 5 is the first that shows then you only have 4 minutes safe time.

some papers are particularly sensitive to red light. I don't know about the paper you are using but you'll soon find out when you do the test. If your safe time is very short you may be getting fogging which is why you are having to crank up contrast so much.

Then instructions for that dev say use it at 1+10 and you will get higher contrast. And use 3 minutes not 2. But first do safelight test first becasue sometimes actual safetime can be very short and paper gets fogged and gives weak looking prints. So leave all your safelights on as normal when you do the test.

Have you done a safelight test and what did you find?

RobC said:

Have you done a safelight test and what did you find?

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I have. Up to 10 minutes and still nothing.. Paper - light distance at 20cm. So they are safe.

I think it's mostly the negative , exposure / development. since I have no issues anymore. Depends on which neg and which exposure. Varies between grade 2-3-4

markbarendt said:

Yes, I do think you've misunderstood.



First, the width of a zone doesn't necessarily equal 1 f-stop when you spot meter a scene.

A window light portrait like your example probably doesn't cover anywhere near 10-stops of luminance, maybe 5 f-stops from black to white, but in Ansel's world there are still actually 11 zones (0 through X). So roughly 5/11th's of an f-stop wide. If you are outside 10 or 11 stops of luminance is very possible so outside 11/11 or 1:1 is very possible.

In Ansel's world a short scale scene (5-stops in this example) suggested expansion (extra film development) to fit the scene onto the paper and get a "perfect negative" for grade 2 paper.

An 11-stop scene in angel's world got less film development so that the longer scale scene would fit on the paper.

In the real world grade 5 paper isn't a sin, don't sweat the exact number if it works it's fine, but it does sound like that for 90% of your work your extra film development would make your life easier.

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Thank you for posting this. The zone system and compensating negative development finally clicked into place for me at least when I read this.

Jessestr,

Your portrait by window light is a different genre of photography than my dog in bright sunshine.

Portraiture can benefit from a totally different approach - so different that I am not afraid to recommend reading some of what William Mortensen wrote. It's different from the mainstream but to give his approach in a soundbyte: Underexpose and develop to gamma infinity.

markbarendt wrote that you may develop longer. I agree.

I like that slip. One of the two is an angel, the other... not so much.

But even though William Mortensen wrote advice completely contradictory to Ansel Adams, in your case... You might be better to look at some unconventional wisdom for what you are doing.

Nodda Duma said:

Thank you for posting this. The zone system and compensating negative development finally clicked into place for me at least when I read this.

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My work here is done.