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Problem Negative

Grillage

Member
Allowing Ads
Joined
Oct 21, 2005
Messages
70
Location
New Jersey
Format
Multi Format
I hope someone can help me with this one. I took way back in 1989 a great evening photograph of Devils Tower National Monument just as the 3/4 moon was rising. I was NOT trying to duplicate Ansel Adams "Moonrise" but I thought the composition was nice. The negative is very underexposed but the moon is a bit over exposed. The level of the moon in the photo is almost at level with the top of the tower. What would be the BEST way to reduce the amount of silver in the moon without affecting the rest of the negative? It is a 4x5 Tri-X negative. If I burn in the sky too much to get the detail in the moon the sky does not look natural even if I use a wide pnumbra. Any help at all would be appreciated. If anyone need to see a "Straight" print to get a better idea of what I am trying to do I would gladly send a copy via E-Mail. Thanks
 
First off, I would work off of a duplicate negative of you want to remove silver from a neg. How about take a different tack by making a mask? Make a mask that will block off areas other than the moon? Beats bleaching a neg I would think.
 
How about split grade printing. that should help reduce the amount of burning in to get a more natural look.
 
I am not familiar with masking. I really do not know much about it. Is it a big deal to set up and use? Thank you
 
I guess I could try that since I have a color dichroic enlarger. The moon is quite dense in the negative.
 
I do have a 2nd negative but I really do noit want to "Damage" either one of them.
 
Great stuff, but I was thinking about something much simpler yet. Just take a large piece of cardboard and punch a hole into it. Make it about half as big as the size of the moon on the print. That's the mask. Keep it close to the paper and burn-in the moon with a relatively hard grade to get detail into the moon. Don't be surprised if the burn-in time is several times the original paper exposure time. Open the aperture for the burn-in if you have to.
 
RalphLambrecht said:
Rick

What's your proposed strategy?
Click to expand...
Run a set of test strips for contrast and time for the moon, then the same for the balance, then combine for a fiished print. I'm not good at masking(i've done a bit of it, but not much). Using your idea sounds good, I never thought of using a small aperture for the burn in. It would be interesting to have a duplicate negative to try out, might be down-right fun to compare finished prints.
 
If you want to get really tricky, you can make a print on smaller paper, and then use that to make your burn-in mask - it makes it very easy to get the shape of the hole just right.
 

This is what I would do. I regularly use the hole on cardboard method as a generic solution for spot-burning.
 
My 2c - I would start with Rick's split filter approach to see how far it'll take me, then burn in what remains with Ralph's idea. Sometimes burning in an extreme situation can be difficult with regard to maintain a good edge transition. The split filter assistance in merging the range can minimize the amount of burning in required.
 
This would be my approach also. It's not terribly difficult to do and it works. Just establish a base exposure where the rest of the picture looks good in print, and then do your burning of the moon before or after the main exposure until you're happy (but don't switch. Decide on either after or before the main exposure, and then do it the same every time).

Split grade printing is something that can be very good, but mainly it's most effective when you use either the soft grade exposure or hard grade exposure to dodge and burn. This way you can take full advantage of using two contrast filters in various parts of the print.
But the key here is that you still dodge and burn. If the whole picture is done with one soft filter and one hard, you end up with a picture that looks like it was printed with a single medium grade filter.

You are actually lucky here that you have a perfectly round shape to burn in, which is surrounded by an area of even tone (sky). It could have been much worse with shapes a lot more complicated, or a lot more difficult to work around.

I think we'd love to see your results!


 
If you use a white card to put the hole into, you can see the part of the print that needs to be burned in without much guess-work at all. Some people use dark card stock for burning in. If you use dark card stock, you can't see the image on the card and you try to look under the darn thing - with a white card, at least on the lens-side you can see exactly where you want to burn/feather the burn. I'm not assuming you don't know that; just that I didn't see it here and I don't know what your experience is. Good luck. Would love to see the finished image.
 

I like your way of thinking. I recommend a card stock, which is black on one side and light red on the other. Hold it with the red side up, so you can see the projected image. This way, whatever light is reflected is red and does no harm. The black side facing the paper protects the latent paper image from light reflecting off the paper during the burn-in.
 
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