Tom Kershaw
Subscriber
My MG500 is a mix of equipment. However both head units have the blue / green filter sets. As far as I know I'm the third owner of my De Vere 504 / MG500, originally purchased by the first user in 1996 or thereabouts.
You may be right when you say I may be right.You may be right but in the video I linked to it seems that a single grade did not produce a print that matched the split grade one ...
That's a valid assessment and reason enough for us to do our own experiments and find what works for us. It's easy to get bogged down in the darkroom working on stuff that doesn't really matter.Mostly the reason I've moved away from split grade printing is that I was paying too much attention to the shadows and the highlights. Ya, they're important, but (IMHO again!) the mid tones are mostly where the action is, and that's where I want to (mostly) fix my attention.
Oh, yes I did. It is very easy to get good negatives and prints if you use compensating negative developers (such as FX-21). I hardly have to alter contrast at all, and I have a dichroic head. Using Ilford's latest MG (V). You really should not have to alter the paper contrast for most scenes. Some lenses have a bit less brilliance than others, and sometimes you are using a long lens and the image is affected by long distances (dirty air), and sometimes flare affects things. But for the most part, you hardly have to do any manipulation at all. I do "street" photography, and there is usually no time for fancy metering.
And most of the time, I don't even need to dodge or burn either. But I'm also printing my own negs.
Basically my approach when I split-grade print. Often, though, I'll "single-grade" print and then just use extremes (max M or max Y) for burning.I have been split printing now since 1997 when Ilford Warmtone was introduced. I believe there is a difference in quality after thousands of prints.
What I like about low filter and high filter printing is the ability to bring in the delicate highlight details with the lower filter and then with hits of the higher filter bring in the contrast and dmax. There are prints that I have made both ways and with single filter printing I find the dodging and burning much more laborious and in the wrong hands quite visible.
I do not like 0 filter but rather I like to start on a filter that gives me a soft and delicate print based on the Original Scene and the quality of development of the film .
Lachlan,And they changed them back again to Y&M with the later MG500 and the MG600 for even better reasons. Ilford quite literally state that the only way to get a genuine G5 is with the G5 filter, which is... magenta - and that the blue dichroic in the older MG500 cannot hit an actual G5. Kodak's data for their papers essentially agrees, though they seem to suggest that the Ilford MG400's magenta dichroic was capable of delivering more contrast than any other filtration system...
Lachlan,
FWIW, I get significantly more contrast out of Ilford MG Classic and other similar papers with a #47B filter than I can get using max M on my Chromega heads. It amounts to 2-3 fewer stripes on the step wedge. I don't know about WT, but the neutral-tone papers I use all seem to respond similarly (Foma 111, Bergger NB).
Best,
Doremus
Except that FX-21 isn't going to deliver meaningful compensation effects. If it did, it would deliver a curve like XP2.
Mostly the reason I've moved away from split grade printing is that I was paying too much attention to the shadows and the highlights. Ya, they're important, but (IMHO again!) the mid tones are mostly where the action is, and that's where I want to (mostly) fix my attention.
The kinds of filters likely to be actually used are not going to be equal in density.
Nor are the respective layers of the paper equally sensitive.
Therefore some hypothetical LED test is going to be quite misleading.
Good point but do you know for a fact i.e. you've actually tried this and thereby have produced exactly the same result as you obtained with a split grade print?Perhaps someone could ask John Finch to try boosting the contrast of his straight apple print used in his video enough to make it identical to his split-grade print.
Mark
Good point but do you know for a fact i.e. you've actually tried this and thereby have produced exactly the same result as you obtained with a split grade print?
Essentially we are back to my original question which was: Is it as simple as this and can it only be done by fractions of a grade of me or less than the grade that MG filters provide. This is what I have yet to see done Everyone makes videos showing split grade is done and why it has benefits per se, including Ilford Master Printers and yet despite the not insubstantial number of contrary views that it confers no benefits no-one seems to have grasped the nettle and made a video that proves it confers no benefit
I should add that when I say "no benefits" I am not referring to the 2 you mention but no benefits in a best "straight" print v a slit grade one with fractions of a grade
You'd think that in advocating the advantages someone would at least have seized on the "less effort" benefit
pentaxuser
[...] no-one seems to have grasped the nettle and made a video that proves it confers no benefit
BTW, a PM pointed out to me that my statement that "it's the only way to get multiple grades in a print" was wrong. Here's another way to get multiple grades on the same print: You could print a landscape at grade 2, and burn the clouds with a grade 5 filter, and now you have two grades on the print.
But tb' = tg, so the split exposures of (tg,ig) and (tb',ib') have the same time, and thus can occur simultaneously, which is a monograde exposure.Therefore, any split-grade print can be changed into an equivalent monograde print.
older colorheads, including the Chromega, were often less efficient than the later versions.
There's also probably a likelihood that many people using split-grade end up printing an effective 1/2 grade+ harder than they might have gone to if they printed using a single grade exposure and their socially conditioned understanding.
Indeed. There’s probably some general confusion regarding how dichroic heads (or at least most of them) work. It’s basically two filters (max contrast/min contrast) in the light path to the mixing box and the relative amount of one filter to the other in the light path is what you are controlling with the dial(s). It’s “split grade” in one exposure - which is the same as using an intermediate filter. People claiming split grade does anything special are trying to sell you on something and/or don’t understand how light/VC papers work.We're also 3 pages in and no one has noticed that the Ilford MG400 and MG500 are operating as split-grade integrated into an effective single-grade equivalent...
By proof, I think you mean a demonstration of making a split-grade print, and then making a monograde print that's identical. I think such a proof would be weak because somebody could always reply, "It worked for that example, but there are other examples that cannot by replicated with monograde." (I just invented the term "monograde"). So the best we can do is provide a mathematical proof, which I'll do below.
To avoid bothering with convolution of differing unknown spectra, let's assume the paper responds to exactly one wavelength each of green and blue.For any split-grade print, let tg = green exposure time in stops, ig = green light-intensity in stops.Likewise define tb and ib for blue.Let d = tb - tgLet tb' = tb - d = tgLet ib' = ib + dWe have reduced blue time by d stops, and increased blue intensity by d stops, resulting in the same blue energy impinging on the paper.Thus, exposures (tb,ib) and (tb',ib') will produce identical results, within reciprocity limits.But tb' = tg, so the split exposures of (tg,ig) and (tb',ib') have the same time, and thus can occur simultaneously, which is a monograde exposure.Therefore, any split-grade print can be changed into an equivalent monograde print.
BTW, a PM pointed out to me that my statement that "it's the only way to get multiple grades in a print" was wrong. Here's another way to get multiple grades on the same print: You could print a landscape at grade 2, and burn the clouds with a grade 5 filter, and now you have two grades on the print.
Mark
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