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Just focus normally on a junk piece of the paper you are using.
**********I have a durst m301 and I noticed I can focus sharply with the red filter in place and it'll be tack sharp under the grain focuser... But when I move the red filter away I'll have to refocus to get it sharp on the paper...
Has anybody ran into this problem as well??? I think I'll just focus without a red filter on a piece of paper that will be the "sacrificial lamb" then turn off the lamp and switching out the paper then expose it... Any other suggestions??
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Just focus normally on a junk piece of the paper you are using.
It seems strange to me that the practice of using a piece of paper to focus on can elicit such emotional responses.
***********I never used the filter.
I took one piece of paper and developed it without exposing it. I put it on my easel and traced the outline of the image area with a Sharpie marker. I did that for each of the favorite print sizes that I like to make.
So, now, when I want to make a print I can put that piece of paper on the easel and quickly move the blades to the size I want and I don't have to fuss. Then I can focus on that same piece of paper. The ink outlines also help me be sure I am composing to the print size I want. If my easel blades aren't set right it will show up immediately, even in the dark.
When I am ready, I put my special piece of paper away then get out a fresh piece to make my print with.
BTW: My Saunders easel is all black so I need something to focus on or I can't see the image.
***********Then you might as well toss the grain focuser and eyeball it.
I can see the difference in the grain focuser between having the paper under the grain focuser and not, and that's enough to convince me that given all the trouble we go to to avoid other very slight errors and sources of image degradation, like the difference between using an APO lens and an otherwise adequate modern 6-element lens, or choosing one film developer over another, or the possibility (suggested by Ctein in Post-Exposure if I remember correctly) that multigrade paper tends to be slightly less sharp than graded paper perhaps due to the difference in the spectral sensitivity of the paper depending on the contrast grade and that of human vision, that there is no reason to introduce an easily avoidable source of error by focusing without a focus sheet under the grain focuser.
Placing a piece of paper under the grain focuser to compensate for the missing paper thickness is theoretically correct
I always focus with a scrap piece of paper under the grain focuser. Why bother with something that has the precision of a grain focuser and not compensate for the thickness of the paper?
The red filter isn't for focusing!...
...You should focus using the light that will be used for making the enlargement - including any variable contrast filters that you want to use...
I can see the difference in the grain focuser between having the paper under the grain focuser and not...
BIZARRE. I NEVER heard that before... nor noticed it (which isn't to say that it's not happening)... interesting...
It seems strange to me that the practice of using a piece of paper to focus on can elicit such emotional responses.
I'm not sure if this is true. If I were making grain focusers I would build them so they were already compensated for the average paper thickness.
As above.... If the manufacturer has already compensated for the paper you may be making it worse, not better.
This subject comes up regularly but no one hase ever managed to state what any of the grain focuser instruction leaflets say (I bought mine second hand without instructions).
In the same section of Gene Nocon's book where he writes about viewing through a blue filter, he also suggests not wasting paper by putting it under the focuser. He is a much better darkroom printer than I will ever be so I took his advice.
Styeve.
We don't like it when facts get in the way of our opinions.
Manufacturers of focusing aids make no assumption about unknown paper or whatever thicknesses. The focus plane is always the bottom of your focusing aid. Whatever you set the focusing aid down on, that's the focusing plane. Please, see the file attached.
That's fair enough but I have never seen any data from a manufacturer to back this up. If we knew for sure one way or another our opinions could become fact (or fiction!).
Steve.
I think you'd be pretty hard pressed to distinguish one from the other. Opinions become facts only when you respect the apparent authority. And that's a fact.
Maybe I'm a bit unsure as to how one calculates DOF for an enlarger, since the print isn't going to be enlarged beyond its own size, and the DOF formulas used for camera lenses depend on assumptions about the enlargement of the negative.
Ask the person who made the claim that the paper is included to prove it to you.
No one made that claim, it's just an assumption. People also assume it isn't included but I have seen no facts to back up either assumption.
Steve.
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