RH Designs Analyser Pro

Luckypete said:

its about gaining those years of experience and where to meter your negs.

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It took me a while to get the hang of this as well. Just remember to meter using white light. I've made that mistake a few (dozen) times

Yes thats an interesting point.

Of course it's easy to forget; also measure the shadows first – which is counter intuitive for those who don't use negs regularly.

However the manual starts by saying measure the highlights first then goes on to say the shadows.

The manual and the videos need a serious update, there's lots of "reading between the lines" to do to follow the instructions !!

I find I only get in trouble when I meter a very dense shadow area and then expect it to print with detail even though there is no detail on the neg. (I'm telling the meter I want a light grey when the neg is so dense it can't possibly print it light grey without messing up all of the other values). Once you calibrate and get the hang of where to meter and the grey scale life will be good. I am way more productive in the darkroom since I got it, can't imagine not having it now.

I have now calibrated the device; initial results are really good especially on a very difficult low contrast neg. Still need to learn where to position the scale but I guess thats experience!

I find the only time Analyser pro lets me down is on low contrast negs. It gives me a huge range of options to choose from. But a high contrast neg it gets right 99% of the time. I'd like to see a forum, or website where people who own Analyser Pro's can compare notes and calibrations.

markbau said:

I'd like to see a forum, or website where people who own Analyser Pro's can compare notes and calibrations.

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Start a thread here. I recently calibrated my Analyzer Pro for my 'new' LPL enlarger and I can share my settings.

Yes I would say low contrast negs are the ones that throws the AP off – my calibration did help but some negs just confuse it.
It would be great if there was a group dedicated to the AP.
Considering it is such a highly regarded tool and there are many, many units out there, the information is somewhat scarce; the videos are useful but also leave more questions than answers IMO.
The guys that make the AP say that they are selling more than ever, and they are considering remaking the videos and rewrite the so-called Manual, but...
I guess i'll just keep on using it and gain more and more experience; however overall I'm pleased I bought it.

As someone who hasn't used an Analyser Pro can I ask what does it say about metering the right part of the negative? By that I mean does it give advice like "use the darkest part of the negative in which some form of texture can be seen under a white light and at the most open aperture "

I use those words because my Philips Analyser uses words to that effect. The problem I have is that some negs are easier than others to spot an area that conforms to the advice and even negs with reasonably open shadows seem to vary

What I have tried as an experiment is to get the exposure via the analyser for a certain part of the negative and then find on another neg what I see as the same area. I find that I can't always spot what the analyser tells me is the same area as the previous shaded area. Once I find the same area on the 2 negs according to the analyser it wasn't the area my eye had chosen

Maybe the only sure route to such accuracy is experience with my Philips analyser but with the RH Designs one there is added help of shades appearing on the meter itself, isn't there? Is that the best way to ensure accuracy?
Thanks

pentaxuser

Learning where to meter is the key to the AP and it only comes with experience. The instructions say to always meter the shadow area first where you want some detail. I was recently printing a scene shot at night, if I were to meter the sky, which was pitch black, I would have gotten an unusable reading, so simply metering the densest part of the neg is no good. Similarly with highlights, if you were to meter a specular highlight, (eg light source) which should print paper white, the reading would result in a very overexposed print as it would give you an exposure where the highlight would be a very light grey instead of pure white. The greyscale on the AP does not go from DMin to DMax, in zone system terminology it is more like zone III to zone VIII. With practice the AP saves me much paper and time as it gets me to my final filter/exposure much faster than with traditional methods.

logan2z said:

Start a thread here. I recently calibrated my Analyzer Pro for my 'new' LPL enlarger and I can share my settings.

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Which one? 4550, 670? I need to do some new calibrations but I loathe doing boring technical things. Plus I use three enlargers, so it makes it that much worse. The numbers for the Saunders VCCE don't jive with the other enlargers because of the neutral density, the CE part.

I did a calibration for Foma 111 a couple years ago. I promptly stopped using that paper right afterwards. Of course I did... I'd share the numbers but I did it differently than the instructions. I really need to do one for Ilford Warmtone. I have like 1000 sheets of it. I just end up using test strips after plugging in the numbers I found somewhere on the web and they weren't even close...

Patrick Robert James said:

Which one? 4550, 670?

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The 670.

Patrick Robert James said:

I need to do some new calibrations but I loathe doing boring technical things.

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I hate it as well.

I went through the calibration procedure when I first got the Analyzer. I was using a Beseler 23C II at the time. I must have messed something up along the way because the calibration I came up with wasn't great. I ended up tweaking it over time based on observations of my prints because I couldn't bear going through the whole process again.

When I got the LPL I decided to again attempt a full calibration. This time I must have done it correctly because I'm getting prints that are really close on the first attempt.

As much as I hated going through the process I'm glad I did because the calibrated Analyzer is saving me lots of time and paper. But there's no denying that the calibration is painful and I've been holding off trying some Bergger fiber paper because I don't want to go through the process again.

logan2z said:

The 670.



I hate it as well.

I went through the calibration procedure when I first got the Analyzer. I was using a Beseler 23C II at the time. I must have messed something up along the way because the calibration I came up with wasn't great. I ended up tweaking it over time based on observations of my prints because I couldn't bear going through the whole process again.

When I got the LPL I decided to again attempt a full calibration. This time I must have done it correctly because I'm getting prints that are really close on the first attempt.

As much as I hated going through the process I'm glad I did because the calibrated Analyzer is saving me lots of time and paper. But there's no denying that the calibration is painful and I've been holding off trying some Bergger fiber paper because I don't want to go through the process again.

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Berger warm tone is real close to Ilford warm tone FYI.