Grading whites and hightlights, problem.

Thomas Bertilsson said:

When I split grade print, I work in reverse, where I lay the main highlights down with a low grade filter first, like a 0 or a 1.5 or the like, depending on the negative, and then I fill in with a 4, 4.5 or 5, again depending on the negative, to get the shadow densities along with some highlight pop.

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Thomas:
This is how I tend to work when I'm dealing with a normal or high contrast negative and using split grade techniques.
When I'm dealing with a low contrast negative, I reverse the order and start with the high contrast filter.
When you have a featureless sky, you are trying to add fine amounts of contrast where there isn't much.

MattKing said:

Thomas:
This is how I tend to work when I'm dealing with a normal or high contrast negative and using split grade techniques.
When I'm dealing with a low contrast negative, I reverse the order and start with the high contrast filter.
When you have a featureless sky, you are trying to add fine amounts of contrast where there isn't much.

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I'm probably not as smart as you are (I think I know that is true, actually).
So to me it gets confusing if I reverse the work flow, which is why I keep the flow constant.

once you do the five grade then do a test flashing in high grade on low and low grade on high, basically one can work split printing from both ends.

I use a method of using a Contrast ratio of the scene (NEG) and deciding how many high hits on a low filter and this over time becomes very natural, then by looking
at your negatives you can determine the Contrast ratio, and print shows by negative contrast.

low contrast negatives as Matt suggests you can start high filter and flash in low filter.

You might consider printing as per the first print with slightly more contrast for the buildings (at least on my monitor) and try lightly bleaching the highlight areas of the clouds to create more contrast in the sky.

http://www.jeffreyglasser.com/

pentaxuser said:

Isn't the problem that with burning in the sky with a higher filter, the buildings sticking into the sky can end up with a noticeable lighter halo around them unless the burning tool is very precisely contoured and used?...

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A method I use, that evolved primarily to deal with burning in areas of contact prints, is to make an RC print, then cut the burning tool from that print with an Xacto knife. Use a black marker to ensure the tool is opaque. Then I place it atop the printing frame's glass and, during the burn exposure, move it around ever so slightly. Extreme precision burns can be achieved this way.

For enlarging, it might be necessary to trace the cut out RC print's shape on a piece of rigid card stock, then cut that out and use it to burn. One would need to maintain at lease a slight separation between the tool and paper to prevent a hard edge from showing, since there's no contact printing glass thickness to diffuse the edge.

Sal Santamaura said:

For enlarging, it might be necessary to trace the cut out RC print's shape on a piece of rigid card stock, then cut that out and use it to burn. One would need to maintain at lease a slight separation between the tool and paper to prevent a hard edge from showing, since there's no contact printing glass thickness to diffuse the edge.

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Consider making a smaller print as a burning tool, and then holding it higher up above the easel.
You can soften the demarcation by moving the burning tool slightly and continuously. Up and down movement as well as circular movement.

Thomas Bertilsson said:

I was also thinking that sometimes we fool ourselves a little bit when we first scan negatives and then print them in the darkroom, because the negatives are interpreted by two different mediums that read the film curve differently. The scanner is essentially a linear tool, where all tones from black to white are on a straight line, compared to a paper that has a curve that was designed to match a negative of some average qualities, and the results are sometimes starkly different for that reason. So, I think of film scanning as a double edged sword, where it can help in terms of making sure the film is OK, that the content is good, that things are sharp where they need to, and so on, but at the same time we can get slightly fooled by the results when we go into the darkroom to make prints and our expectations can get skewed.

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Totally agree. Basing your vision of a print on a scan is super problematic, even simply the fact that you're looking at an image on a computer screen versus a physical print. The type of tonal separation you're looking for simply doesn't translate into a silver print. Your whites are going to be different. That's not to say that you can't arrive at something that you really like. It may simply be a matter of time working through the image and seeing how it responds to different printing methods and combinations of filtrations, of which there are countless approaches and permutations. Just keep working through it and you'll find the balance...

I would print the scan. An inkjet print is a far better comparison and will show you how the brightest highlights are retained by the print (my guess: not so well) and will give you a 'fairer' target to aim for.

Then I'd work on just the bit that's giving me trouble with test strips. Once I'd got that to the point it just needs a bit of dodging/burning to finish I'd work on how to integrate the whole print.

Once you know the times the tricky area needs you can work back from the rest of the print dodging/burning those parts as appropriate to blend with the rest of the print.

In this case it may be easier to burn in the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben rather than dodge the sky?

As others have said, you may need to cut out some masks to get just the results you want.

It might also benefit from a tiny bit of toning of the highlights to separate them even more?

In summary I would take on board all the advice above from those much more experienced than I and target it just to make sure I can get that one problem area just right. Once I know it's possible to get that bit perfect I'd work out the rest.

PS I love these kind of threads, they're APUG at its best

Thomas Bertilsson said:

I was also thinking that sometimes we fool ourselves a little bit when we first scan negatives and then print them in the darkroom, because the negatives are interpreted by two different mediums that read the film curve differently. The scanner is essentially a linear tool, where all tones from black to white are on a straight line, compared to a paper that has a curve that was designed to match a negative of some average qualities, and the results are sometimes starkly different for that reason. So, I think of film scanning as a double edged sword, where it can help in terms of making sure the film is OK, that the content is good, that things are sharp where they need to, and so on, but at the same time we can get slightly fooled by the results when we go into the darkroom to make prints and our expectations can get skewed.

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I agree completely.
I am not that seasoned in printing in general, but from my understanding, VC-paper tend to lie around contrast-grade 3? (if used with no filter?).

Personally I am very aware that any scanning will (at least on my part) give me endless possibilities regarding controlling the various tones. I think that adjusting a scan to my liking and then trying to get close to it while printing, gives me a great challenge and is also a learning-experience regarding negatives and the print, contrast-curves and the effect of contrast filters. (mind you, I am still learning and I am a "every-medium-shooter", so I tend to work on various platforms from traditional printing to pure *D*).

Not going into too much detail, but it's important to realize that completely white on the monitor, is about 1-1.5 stop brighter than the white base of a paper you print (depending on the paper). We rarely/never see the "white" in paper so bright that it is close to burning out for example.
Other times, you may be able to get details from highlights during printing, where there are none in a scan, simply because of the negative-density and so on....but (at least in my case), it's fun and interesting to see how these two things work.

The nice exercise/learning process on the particular shot in the original post, has given me new insight, not only into contrast-filters and their effects, but also how denser highlights act during printing. (trying to control that, was one of the goals, which proved to be quite interesting and the answers in this thread has revealed techniques I was not aware of).

I have another negatives, with the same issue, more or less, but in that negative, the challenge is to get separation between a white jacket and a bright background: (see below)

Again, (this negative) scan is deceiving, since, during the actual printing (I have the 30cm*40cm print framed at home, which was made with 0 and 5 split-grade), I experienced the same issue as with the sky, in the original post in this thread. The lower area with the jacket/background faded to gray as one block of tones. I actually think I ended up burning that area with no filter, which was "ok", but now I know that using 1-2 contrast-filters can probably yield better results and if not, flashing techniques can be used.

If was to print this again, I would definitely use the information in this thread to get a better separation between the jacket and the background and actually using new found knowledge \o/.
The buring-procedure is easier on this shot though, so I would most likely try to burn in the lower-half of the photo (and top left) in various 1-2 grade filters more easily than the city-shot.

I do tend to get into these kinds of issues, because I often shoot people and often shoot back-lit, unless it's cloudy so I expose for the person (skin) and then the background-brightness increase accordingly, creating situations with these highlight-issues, controlling it for printing would help me a lot anyway.

Zorki-1d with Industar-22 50mm Fuji Acros 100, HC-monobath (Donald Qualls formula), 15 minutes
Shoot data: 1/200s @ F4

If you really want to control the sky, that print is a great candidate for paper-plane level masking. You need a couple silkscreen register pins that are the same size as a regular paper punch, some litho film and lith developer.

Basically, you lock in your focus and don't touch the enlarger. You punch a sheet of film and develop in lith dev - you'll get a black tower with white sky. You can spot bleach the sky, and you can do a quick farmer's reducer to shrink in the blacks and help with registration. Then you opaque out the gray details to black or red on the litho mask.

You punch you paper, expose for the tower/scene, then stick the mask on the pins and expose the sky. Doing a "smaller print and holding it up higher" will give you dead-giveaway glows.

Here's an imgur thread where I replaced a sky with this method.