Proud new owner of RH Designs Analyser 500

[Marco B]

Hi all,

I just received my new RH Designs Analyser 500 controller for my Ilford Multigrade 500 exposure system, delivered safely and well, and only a short time after ordering it online.

My Ilford 500C controller had started to play up again with malfunctions, so I finally decided to bite the bullet and get me the Analyser 500. The unit is slightly bigger than I expected, but seems extremely solidly build, a great match to my Durst Laborator L1200 enlarger and the Ilford 500H light head and power supply it is designed to control.

I look forward to starting to use it, and finally get back printing some 4x5! Haven't been able to fire it up yet, as my 500S power supply is currently not residing in my home. Will have it back tomorrow though... can't wait!

Any tips on usage welcome, still need to make my way through the manual properly, and rewatch those RH Designs instruction videos.

Marco

 

[Bob Carnie]

Its really nice to see people buying new darkroom equipment.
I hope you get wonderful use out of this unit.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

Congrats! I'm envious

 

[Henry Alive]

You have taken a good decision. Welcome to the club!

 

[Marco B]

Thanks.

I have now been able to fire it up connected to the 500S power supply. All seems well. This is a slight relief, as there was still the minor possibility that the issues with the malfunctioning controller were related to the power supply, and not the controller itself, as it takes all of its power from the power supply. This is not the case though, and the RH Designs Analyser controller works fine, and switches the lamps properly. I have just been playing around with the controller a bit, still need to make my way through the manual, but it is quite awesome to see the greyscale LEDs move when you change grades or exposure times.

 

[Marco B]

One question I hope you people can answer though, is how you deal with dodging prints? As the Analyser 500 switches the lamps one after another, in split grade style, and not both together regulating the voltages to the lamps and thus light output to regulate grade, as the broken Ilford controller did, how do you deal with dodges?

I mean, if the total time of 12 second is split up in 2 seconds green, and 10 seconds blue light, you effectively have to dodge twice to avoid changing local dodged contrast??? With maybe just 2 seconds available, that becomes an impossible task? Actually, this is a general question/issue when using split grade printing... not so much Analyser related.

This all is less of an issue with burns, as you just set a burn time on the controller, and burn in during the whole exposure. Although there still remains a minor issue, as I was used to setting 1 longer burn time, and simply do multiple areas in one go, quickly moving the shading paper between areas to burn. This can not be done in the same way with the Analyser 500, you can though set multiple burning exposures for different areas from what I saw in the instruction videos. Of course you get a whole lot of benefits back for that, with the automatic split grade printing, greyscale display, calibration etc...

I will have to change some habits...

 

[ic-racer]

One question I hope you people can answer though, is how you deal with dodging prints? .

One way to look at it for both split grade printing and your head:

When burning, you can try getting by with only burning the Green/Yellow light. Burning highlights when the Blue/Magenta light is on does not do much so you can just stop doing it.

When dodging shadows, try getting by with only dodging the Blue/Magenta light. Dodging shadows when the Green/Yellow light is on does not do much so you can just stop doing it.


Just to explain it again for clarity:
The Blue/Magenta light is what is making your shadows too black in the areas that need dodging.
The Green/Yellow light is what is going to make your highlights gray in the areas that need highlight burning.

 

[Marco B]

Thanks,

That is not a bad way to look at it. In addition, to make things a little bit easier, I will probably default to using target exposure times of 20-30 seconds minimum.

Marco