ILFORD 500 head used on fixed grade paper?

[ivan_maly]

Greetings to you all, has anyone tried working with Ilford 500 MG Head on fixed grade papers? Is it at all feasible or just far fetched? Perhaps by doing a silly thing such as removing the dichroic filters... or any other technique??

Odd as it may sound, but I acquired this head recently and my older enlarger is gone now - and have a lot of fixed grade papers which I would hate to see wasted...

Any input would be greatly appreciated, thank you, ivan

 

[Mike Crawford]

Will be absolutely fine for fixed grades. The contrast is reckoned to be in-between a condenser and a cold cathode which is a good thing and Ilford, (when they still manufactured these wonderful heads), used to recommend setting the filter to grade 4 for the best light. To be honest, I normally set it to grade 2 on such occasions, but that is usually for lith printing on Seagull. Best to do a test on different grades and see it there is any difference. I certainly wouldn’t want to remove the very delicate and easily damaged filters, unless you only ever want to print with graded papers. If so the grey metal holders are easy to remove with a small screwdriver.

 

[Steve Sherman]

Believe it or not, years ago I used to used graded Portriga Rapid paper. Same cold light source with a large green gel over top of the negative I would get a bit softer image from the same negative as opposed to when I used a deep blue gel over the negative using the same paper.

In other words, same exact graded paper with a green light yields a softer contrast print than a deep blue light with all other things remaining constant.

2 cents

 

[ivan_maly]

Many thanks for your very useful comments and answers! This is the beuty of APUG, questions answered in a flash. Although this was my first need for answers, I am seriously considering supporting APUG by becoming a member.
Thank you.