Grain Focusing - any advice?

Shmoo

Member
Joined
Nov 21, 2003
Messages
973
Location
Southern Cal
Format
4x5 Format

I found that using the blue filter got me close enough to focus that I would then take it off the Peak focuser and spent a relatively short time fine tuning the focus. By limiting my time with unfiltered light, the retina-toasting effect isn't as severe...and I'm using a condenser head on a Beseler 45 MCRX.
 

RJS

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Joined
Jan 4, 2005
Messages
246
Location
Southern Cal
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Multi Format
I come late - for various irrelevant reasons. Faced with this problem using a cold light and particularly wanting to print consistently with the optimal aperture of my enlarging lens I purchased a rheostat from Aristo. This enables me to focus more comfortably, using a dimmer setting, but also to always print two stops down from wide open.
 

gainer

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Joined
Sep 20, 2002
Messages
3,699
That is not true. There was no measurable focus shift of the lens itself. I proved this by making prints with red, green and blue light after focusing visually with green light, using the grain focuser. None of these prints was out of focus. On the other hand, refocusing with red, green and blue light using the same grain focuser produced out-of-focus prints with red and blue light. You see, the eye is most sensitive and has its highest resolution in green light. The resolution is markedly less in blue and red. Both the image and the crosshair are fuzzier in red or blue light. The image of the crosshair cannot be in sharpest focus on the retina in red or blue light if it was set in green light because of the chromatic abberation of the eye. The combination of focus shift of the eye, which you can easily demonstrate to your self by measuring the nearest point of clear vision in different colors of light, and reduced resolution gives a wider spread in focus errors as well as a bias of the mean.

There is no point in arguing the theory when the theory does not explain the experimental results. The lens I used was a Rodagon apochromatic which is optimized for reg, green and blue.
 
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