Silver gelatin prints little too dark or little too light

Hi all,

Sometimes I get my FB prints little too dark or little too light. I notice this when prints are dry, and when I look at them in day light.
It is really small nuance, but I would like to correct it.
What procedure is best to lighten or darken print a little bit? Toner, bleach...? I would not like to change color or prints (tried with high concentration of selenium toner).
Somebody told me that I can lighten print a little if I put it for long time in fixer again?

I can't make my own solutions (don't know where to buy raw chemistry), but I regularly get stuff from fotoimpex.de.

thanks,

Best = Reprint with a different exposure time

ic-racer said:

Best = Reprint with a different exposure time

Click to expand...

+1

Also, it could be that your darkroom viewing light (the one you use when judging your print after fixing) is inconsistent.
What works for me: 40 watt bulb, about 1 meter up from viewing surface pretty much straight up (I don't know the precise distance, but it is mounted in the ceiling and always the same, covered by diffusion glass.)
Pull print from the fixer, rinse for 30 seconds in a tray of water.
Place on a piece of glass at right angles to my eyes, as I stand and look down at it, staight on (so, the print is just above counter level). Final dried print always looks right, and my system also accounts for print dry down.
I had to try different wattages, etc, till it worked, but it always does.

I have always printed three different looks for myself and my clients.

It always is significant as to where your print finally ends up. I sometimes see the darker prints under halogen lights and they really pop.
For portfolios that are viewed in different locations I sometimes select the lighter prints.

I think it is very good practice to have darker and lighter prints than what one would consider normal. Certain images look best dark and others tend to look best on the lighter side.

I have always been considered a deep printer , which means my best prints look best with halogen spots highlighting them.

I do not think there is any right answer to your question, as you can change the lighting conditions for most prints.

There is no silver bullet. But it is helpful to acquire a range of options. Different kinds of paper have different amounts of dry-down, and lighting in the darkroom or studio might not equate to final display lighting. Often it is easiest just to reprint something, especially on a different day, after your eyes and mind have had a good rest from long printing sessions. Bleaches work best only on tiny areas of a print - best for adding a little sparkle to a highlight rather than overall lightening, which is tricky. It's easier to go the other way, and enrichen blacks in some papers with some extra selenium or gold toning. Not even Babe Ruth hit a home run every single time, so there's no shame in having to redo certain
things in the darkroom. It's part of the learning curve.

Get a Zone VI drydown timer

chip j said:

Get a Zone VI drydown timer

Click to expand...

A what?

drydown; highlights change a lot (the whole print changes actually) as things dry. You have to dry a print to see how it's going to look. I use a hair dryer or microwave if I'm in a hurry to dry a test strip.

Its basic purpose is to be a timer gadget that translates your enlarger exposure times while making test prints into a warped time that will keep your dry prints looking the same. Theory being that you expose your tests normally and decide which one looks best wet, then use the dry timer for the final print. Yes, you have to set it up first for your paper and toning but it then takes care of the percentage math for you.

It has its fans and detractors, like all darkroom aids. Personally I think that it's a bit over the top for a hobbiest but a working fine print photographer should like the consistency.

Im a secret snatcher, I need to use a timer for development and not pull the print before the timer goes off, otherwise I get grey prints. This is more important with test strips when I'm calibrating my meter.

I print dark by nature. I like to capture a certain mood, plus I just love a dark tonal range! I usually print two. One dark and another... not so dark.

And RC paper has less of this drydown effect. Foma has some. Ilford RC paper seems almost immune to drydown changes.

Les McLean, late of this forum has a website where he describes dry-down very well. Worth a look. Just google under Les McLean Photography. He covers it in his book as well which is a worthwhile buy.

It is called Creative Black and White Photography. Secondhand versions are available on Abe Books, Alibris or Amazon and not expensive.

pentaxuser

Well I do use a little toaster oven to dry down test strips, which helps... But it's not quite the same as seeing a full print, all toned, truly air
dried. For that reason, I have very little potential use for yet another of Fred Picker's gadgets, as much as I appreciate a couple of them.
Very subtle differences can spell the distinction between a good print and a great one, and that is something I can only properly evaluate well
after the printing session, when my eyes are fresh and the print is fully dry the real way.

They were made by Zone VI Studios in Vermont. You calibrate for the particular paper you're using {I don't quite remember how}, and it adds or subtracts secs or parts of a sec to give you a perfect print every time,{ as far as drydown goes}. They're expensive & not that easy to find {though I just saw one on e-bay, I think}. Chip {wish I had one}

Ansel Adams had a neat idea. He would take a print out of the wash, then put it in the microwave to dry quickly. After viewing that, he would then decide which way to go on the next print. I use the old fashioned test strip method to determine exposure. No surprises that way, and it saves a lot of time. I use natural light to make a determination because that's what my prints are keyed by. Inconvenient if you print at night, but I do not trust artificial lighting to do this. It's an old habit from my painting and printing days, and I stick w/ it.

If it was just a matter of drydown compensation, I would not have bought the Zone VI unit, but it came with the voltage stabilizer. I end up always using 6% anyway, because who knows which way the print is going to go in terms of bleaching and toning after that.

For compensatiing the drydown effect I illuminate my water bassin for the prints not to bright. They seem slightly darker than they actual be.

Hi there,

To darken a print you can use Fotospeed Chromium Intensifer and to lighten a print you can use Fotospeed Farmers Reducer – both of which are sold by Fotoimpex. You can also easily mix these up from raw chemicals which you can buy from Saban Suvatlar Fototechnik, Simrockstraße 178a, 22589 Hamburg. 040/395709 | Fotosuvatlar@live.de (I last bought stocks for my two-bath developer from them a couple of years ago, so, if they are no longer in business contact Wolfgang Moersch). Neither of these chemical treatments should be part of your regular workflow but, rather, as a way of saving a print when money is an issue.

The important thing is to get your prints correct for the intended viewing environment. I never look at my prints in daylight because they are never seen in daylight. They are either shown in an exhibition (with gallery lighting), displayed in our home during our annual open studio (with 100W lighting) or in the homes of purchasers (generally with 40W lighting). A long time ago I went around a number of galleries (not museums as they have pathetically low 'conservation' lighting which is the result of them using tungsten/halogen spot lighting that is detrimental to framed photographs / watercolours framed behind glass) and friends houses to meter the average lighting.

In my darkroom I have a strip light which, when a dry print is placed directly under the light on the viewing table, is the equivalent of the average gallery lighting. When a dry print is viewed by the entrance door, this is the equivalent of the average lighting in people's homes. These two viewing environments are what I use to judge dry prints.

The most important piece of kit in my darkroom is a microwave oven for drying fibre-based test strips for viewing in the appropriate viewing environment (i.e. either for exhibition / display during our open studios or for a purchaser to display in their home).

Bests,

David
www.dsallen.de

Depending on what type of paper you are printing on, but if it is resin coated, can I suggest that when you have decided on the grade and the depth of tone, you do a small print from a section of the image and dry it using a hair dryer and then look at it in a good light. It doesn't have to be daylight if you are printing B&W. Papers nearly always dry darker than when they are wet.

Many thanks to all, especially David Allen .

"Way Beyond Monochrome" has a specific suggestion for a darkroom viewing light source, including a recommended light intensity at the print surface.

I have volume 1. I understand the information is also in the current volume 2.

Maybe Ralph Lambrecht can point the OP to which page the reference is on.

It is basic knowledge (but where was I when I needed to know this??) that to sepia tone prints they must be about 10% darker in order to look "perfect" once toned. This translates almost exactly (for me) to the drydown.

In other words, instead of throwing all my fb prints that are too dark and the ones for which I didn't care for the drydown, are all getting salvaged into the sepia tone.

The new problem that arises is wether you like sepia or not.

... Same goes for basic bleaching. Some papers will exhibit a different tone (hue) in the bleached area compared to the unbleached. Then you
have to refix them anyway. Sometimes the cure can be worse than the disease.