Single grade vs split grade printing question

Jessestr said:

What I want to know if this has a limit? For example will it affect the other parts of the print and such?

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The high contrast exposure affects every part of the print. If you increase the high contrast time, every part gets darker.
However, the amount each part gets darker will vary with the intensity of the light that hits the paper - i.e. with the density of the part of the negative that corresponds with it.
Once the darkest part of the subject reaches maximum black, you can't make it any darker, so lengthening the high contrast exposure time won't affect that. But, the other parts of the subject which were formerly lighter than that darkest part will get darker when the high contrast time is increased, so they may start to block up and become indistinguishable in tone from the other fully dark parts. In other words, the contrast in the dark areas goes down, because more and more of the print is the same, indistinguishable maximum black. If you continue increasing the high contrast time, eventually the whole print will have no contrast - it will just be a black blob.

Jessestr said:

Okay, fair enough. But let's say I have this print which is very dark grey and with single grade I cannot get the right amount of blacks because else the highlights would suffer.

With split grade I could increase the exposure until that dark grey hits maximum black. No?

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Another side question: If you do single grade printing and have to use an extreme like grade 5. Which only affect the blue sensitive parts. Let's assume you have a decent amount of highlight detail. Printing on grade 5 won't reveal those because there is no green light for the low contrast stuff. Is this a valid conclusion?

Because when printing at grade 5 you still get some decent detail in the highlights and such. Even though it's said that it will not affect green sensitive parts?

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If you've got a negative which seems to print very grey and flat at normal (2 or 3) filtration, you can often get deeper blacks in certain areas by selectively burning those areas at a higher filtration. If you're starting with an underexposed or underdeveloped negative, this can make things more difficult because you have less tonal separation from all the shades of grey to black. It becomes tough to keep those subtle greys separated without everything going too dark. Unless you like that look of extreme separation between light and dark, which I happen to love in some cases. Google - Daido Moriyama "Stray Dog" for a good example.

For your side question - yes, for the most part. I have had many negatives where I didn't see all of the detail in the highlights until I did a test print at grade 0 or 1. Especially for areas like the sky, where there may be some cloud detail I'd like to emphasize. Before I start working on printing a negative, I do a test print between grade 2 and 3 for an overall assessment, another one at a higher grade if I want to get a feel for the image with more contrast, and another at a lower grade to try to bring out the highlight details. I use these to plan out my filtration scheme, and any burning or dodging I may want to do at different grades. The "Tower Door" image I showed earlier probably took me a week to get a print I was happy with. Other negatives have taken me months to finally figure out.

Printing at grade 4 or 5 only will often fail to show much of the detail in the highlight areas, if there is any. It all depends what's on the negative.

Here's an example of a print that came very easily - TMax100 developed in D-76 1:1 with normal development. Printed at grade 2.5 with no dodging, burning or split-grade needed. It was just a well-exposed negative that gave me that feeling of "light" I was trying to capture.

MattKing said:

The high contrast exposure affects every part of the print. If you increase the high contrast time, every part gets darker.
However, the amount each part gets darker will vary with the intensity of the light that hits the paper - i.e. with the density of the part of the negative that corresponds with it.
Once the darkest part of the subject reaches maximum black, you can't make it any darker, so lengthening the high contrast exposure time won't affect that. But, the other parts of the subject which were formerly lighter than that darkest part will get darker when the high contrast time is increased, so they may start to block up and become indistinguishable in tone from the other fully dark parts. In other words, the contrast in the dark areas goes down, because more and more of the print is the same, indistinguishable maximum black. If you continue increasing the high contrast time, eventually the whole print will have no contrast - it will just be a black blob.

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Exactly what I wanted to know !

So back to RC paper (cheaper and faster) to test out so many things... And find the correct development times for my film to make printing a bit easier. Almost every print I make feels like a battle of low contrast.

jimjm said:

If you've got a negative which seems to print very grey and flat at normal (2 or 3) filtration, you can often get deeper blacks in certain areas by selectively burning those areas at a higher filtration. If you're starting with an underexposed or underdeveloped negative, this can make things more difficult because you have less tonal separation from all the shades of grey to black. It becomes tough to keep those subtle greys separated without everything going too dark. Unless you like that look of extreme separation between light and dark, which I happen to love in some cases. Google - Daido Moriyama "Stray Dog" for a good example.

For your side question - yes, for the most part. I have had many negatives where I didn't see all of the detail in the highlights until I did a test print at grade 0 or 1. Especially for areas like the sky, where there may be some cloud detail I'd like to emphasize. Before I start working on printing a negative, I do a test print between grade 2 and 3 for an overall assessment, another one at a higher grade if I want to get a feel for the image with more contrast, and another at a lower grade to try to bring out the highlight details. I use these to plan out my filtration scheme, and any burning or dodging I may want to do at different grades. The "Tower Door" image I showed earlier probably took me a week to get a print I was happy with. Other negatives have taken me months to finally figure out.

Printing at grade 4 or 5 only will often fail to show much of the detail in the highlight areas, if there is any. It all depends what's on the negative.

Here's an example of a print that came very easily - TMax100 developed in D-76 1:1 with normal development. Printed at grade 2.5 with no dodging, burning or split-grade needed. It was just a well-exposed negative that gave me that feeling of "light" I was trying to capture.

View attachment 166030 View attachment 166030

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Lovely image. Sometimes those b/w tones give me goosebumps !

Another very good explanation of what I wanted to hear. So, actually a single grade print at grade 5 shows less detail in the highlights than eg. a split grade print which still does some exposure at grade 0. Effectively making a sort of HDR picture - feels wrong to say it like that. Or yes, just to get the most tones out of the negative.

This stuff is so nice.. I'm that guy that needs to know what is going on. I cannot take things for granted too easily.

Basically, you are asking how the contrast of the negative is converted to contrast on the paper with VC-paper, right?

That answer is a bit textbook and theoretical, but I will try to make it simple:

Every negative has a contrast, contrast defined as: contrast= Dmax - Dmin expressed in logD

A properly exposed and developed negative of a scene with normal contrast will give you an overall contrast around logD 1 as per the Kodak data sheets. This overall negative should now match the right grade to expose the VC paper, which is around 3. That means, that when exposing this negative at this right grade, the highest highlight of the negative will be the highest highlights of the print (around Dmin of 0,05 logD) and the deepest shadows of the scene the deepest shadows of the print (around Dmax of 2 logD). Scientifically (not aesthetically!) it is be the best you can get.

If you have a negative with very low contrast, e.g. 0,5, exposing the VC-paper at Grade 5 should give the above described effect. So in this example, the contrast of the negative is "opened up" (from 0,5 in the negative to around 2 in the print) a lot printing with strong B&W tones and little greys. The other way around, if your negative has a contrast of 1,5 you print at a low grade opening only a little (1,5 -> 2) producing delicate grey tones.

In the above cases there was a match between the negative contrast and the grade to expose the paper, things get more complicated if there is a mismatch:

If you print a high contrast negative (e.g. contrast of 1,5 logD) with a high grade (e.g. grade 5), you will only be printing part of the information on the negative and loose the rest. Depending on your exposure time, you will only see the highlights or the shadows on the paper, the rest will be totally sunk in darkest black shadows or whitest highlights. The other way around, if you print a low contrast negative with a low grade, everything will look grey.

VC-paper is exposed with green and blue light to achieve the different grades, blue light (yellow filter) producing blacks and green light (magenta filter) producing grey tones. The exposure can be done in one step with the multigrade filters or correct colour filter settings or in several steps "split grade" one after another. Doing split grade, you make one (or several) exposure at grade 5 and one (or several) exposure at grade 0, which will result in the final grade.

All this is very nice in theory, but in reality there are some limitations:
- every emulsion is a bit different and reacts differently to the exposure with the green / blue light. This even might have a measurable between two batches of the same emulsion
- the paper manufacturer took the ISO norms on this topic more of an inspiration than anything else, probably also due to technical limitations
- every light source is different (down to a bulb change in the enlarger)
- other factors from your process including developer, temperature, Herschel, Schwarzschild, ....

In your Berlin scene, you have encountered a simple problem: The negative in total has a high contrast, with two main areas of low local contrast (the shadows in the front and the sky). So you need to print the two different areas in separate steps with individual exposure time & grading.

RauschenOderKorn said:

Basically, you are asking how the contrast of the negative is converted to contrast on the paper with VC-paper, right?

....

In your Berlin scene, you have encountered a simple problem: The negative in total has a high contrast, with two main areas of low local contrast (the shadows in the front and the sky). So you need to print the two different areas in separate steps with individual exposure time & grading.

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Thanks for the explanation. Very clear.

Although I'm don't think the Berlin scene is a high contrast scene. Yes the sky and foreground is light grey and very dark/grey black. So if I wanted to print the picture at a single grade. I would choose an exposure for the sky and if it would have been high contrast.. the shadows would probably have ben blocked. But if I print this negative at grade 2. The shadows look dull, grey to dark grey. No real blacks. Which means that the density of the highlights aren't that thick right? So the negative density range is quite low = low contrast print. So it's not a high contrast scene? Or am I wrong?

Even though I overdeveloped the roll, the density for the sky was still low compared to the shadows. Not sure why. In real it looked like it had more contrast. Rest of the roll has way denser highlights (some even too dense) and print fine at grade 2-3.

Jessestr said:

... So, actually a single grade print at grade 5 shows less detail in the highlights than eg. a split grade print which still does some exposure at grade 0. Effectively making a sort of HDR picture ...

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Jesse,
Keep in mind that adding an overall grade 0 exposure to an overall grade 5 exposure is exactly the same as a single exposure somewhere less than grade 5. There's no free lunch here. What you can do easily with split-grade printing, however, is give different areas of the print a different contrast setting by selectively adding high-contrast or low contrast exposure to certain areas (burning with a high/low filter) or subtracting high or low contrast exposure from certain areas (dodging during high/low filter exposure). If your sky looks better with an extra exposure of "0" filtration, then it needed a) more exposure and b) less contrast.

And, back to the original premise: if your grade 5 print looks better with some grade 0 exposure figured in, then it looks better with less contrast (i.e., grade 5 was too contrasty).

Part of the difficulty with split-grade printing is understanding whether you need more/less contrast (different filtration) or more/less exposure (burning/dodging) or a combination of the two (dodging/burning with a high/low contrast filter).

If I were printing your shot on graded paper (fixed contrast grade) then, after I arrived at the contrast grade I wished to work with, I would find separate exposure times for the foreground and sky areas (i.e., dodge and burn as needed) to get optimum exposure in both areas. This is actually fairly common. With split-grade techniques, you have the option of treating these two areas with different degrees of contrast (between 00 and 5 anyway) as well. Therein lies the advantage of split-grade printing.

Best,

Doremus

Doremus Scudder said:

Jesse,
Keep in mind that adding an overall grade 0 exposure to an overall grade 5 exposure is exactly the same as a single exposure somewhere less than grade 5. There's no free lunch here. What you can do easily with split-grade printing, however, is give different areas of the print a different contrast setting by selectively adding high-contrast or low contrast exposure to certain areas (burning with a high/low filter) or subtracting high or low contrast exposure from certain areas (dodging during high/low filter exposure). If your sky looks better with an extra exposure of "0" filtration, then it needed a) more exposure and b) less contrast.

And, back to the original premise: if your grade 5 print looks better with some grade 0 exposure figured in, then it looks better with less contrast (i.e., grade 5 was too contrasty).

Part of the difficulty with split-grade printing is understanding whether you need more/less contrast (different filtration) or more/less exposure (burning/dodging) or a combination of the two (dodging/burning with a high/low contrast filter).

If I were printing your shot on graded paper (fixed contrast grade) then, after I arrived at the contrast grade I wished to work with, I would find separate exposure times for the foreground and sky areas (i.e., dodge and burn as needed) to get optimum exposure in both areas. This is actually fairly common. With split-grade techniques, you have the option of treating these two areas with different degrees of contrast (between 00 and 5 anyway) as well. Therein lies the advantage of split-grade printing.

Best,

Doremus

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This made it even more clear. Thank you so much... so many kind people here!

if you wish could you explain your workflow a bit more in detail if you had to print that shot? Not sure why you are talking about graded paper suddenly. Never used it either. And you start with finding the optimum grade first? The way I've seen in from the internet is to find my exposure first and then adjust the contrast. And I never actually got any further than that, except for some burning in. So quite looking forward to hear your approach.

Doremus will no doubt answer himself, but I expect he used the example of fixed grade paper to illustrate that even when restricted to a single contrast, you can do a tremendous amount by just varying the exposure in different parts of the print.

And with respect to starting first with exposure or starting first with contrast, if you have a good proof, or are experienced with evaluating negatives in the first place, you can frequently evaluate the tonality and appearance of the various areas of detail in the image and arrive at a contrast choice before you pin down the exact exposure. At least get it into the ballpark.

Remember, you use changes in contrast to control how details are rendered, not to control how light or dark those details are. Also, split contrast printing only really comes to its own if you use different contrasts for different parts of the image.

MattKing said:

Remember, you use changes in contrast to control how details are rendered, not to control how light or dark those details are. Also, split contrast printing only really comes to its own if you use different contrasts for different parts of the image.

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Mhm. First time I read it like this. Seems that I got one of the fundamentals wrong?

What I learned is that you get the exposure you nees for example skintones in a portrait and use the grade to darken the shadows/blacks. Like if the hair is too grey, go a grade higher and voila, darker hair. But this seems to be wrong?

Jessestr said:

Mhm. First time I read it like this. Seems that I got one of the fundamentals wrong?

What I learned is that you get the exposure you nees for example skintones in a portrait and use the grade to darken the shadows/blacks. Like if the hair is too grey, go a grade higher and voila, darker hair. But this seems to be wrong?

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That is a quick and easy way to turn out lots of presentable prints from average negatives - the sort of approach a photo-finisher might take.

And it isn't a bad approach for a beginner when first starting, because it will quickly give that beginner a sense for how changes in contrast can affect the overall appearance of a print.

But once you get past that initial beginner's stage, you will realize that contrast is best adjusted for other reasons - primarily to adjust tonality.

Jessestr said:

Although I'm don't think the Berlin scene is a high contrast scene. Yes the sky and foreground is light grey and very dark/grey black. So if I wanted to print the picture at a single grade. I would choose an exposure for the sky and if it would have been high contrast.. the shadows would probably have ben blocked. But if I print this negative at grade 2. The shadows look dull, grey to dark grey. No real blacks. Which means that the density of the highlights aren't that thick right? So the negative density range is quite low = low contrast print. So it's not a high contrast scene? Or am I wrong?

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It seemed a high contrast from the picture of your negative you showed us, but this can be very misleading. So the answer is: I don´t know. In order to answer the question, either you are experienced enough to tell at sight or you use a densitometer. My personal choice: Heiland Splitgrade Controller & Comfort-Module as it will take into account the particular behavior of the paper and the light source and the Comfort-Module can pre-visualize the tones.

The conclusion that it is a low contrast negative solely because you printed it greyish on grade 2 seems to go a bit far to me. If you expose the print longer, you should get blacks, but most probably this will not be a better print either. The starting point should be your negative.

Looking again at your negative, you have an overall contrast between the two mayor sections which is significantly higher than the local contrast inside each of these sections, with little in between. So if you print at a low grade based on the overall contrast, there is nothing to print in most of the printable tonal range - there are too few midtones on your negative. And at the two ends of the printable range (i.e. what is captured on your negative), you loose the details because they are not opened up sufficiently.

I would start printing this particular negative by making separate prints until the highlights and the shadows are right (always taking good notes). Then I´d combine the results on one print. This gives me a technically correct & useful print (I guess thats what MattKing refers to as "photo-finisher") which I then get tweaked until the aesthetics&tones are the way I like it.

Jesse,

Matt pretty well answered for me (thanks Matt) so I can elaborate on something else. Matt stated it well:

MattKing said:

... Remember, you use changes in contrast to control how details are rendered, not to control how light or dark those details are. Also, split contrast printing only really comes to its own if you use different contrasts for different parts of the image.

Click to expand...

When starting out, we tend to think of "contrast" as blacks and whites in a print. This is really just the brightness range. Contrast, better understood, is the degree of (density) difference between tones. Imagine you have a negative with just two grey midtones, pretty close to each other. Now, you can print these at a number of different contrast settings (0-5) and you'll get more separation between the tones in the print as the setting moves toward more contrasty.

Often, we have a negative that screams for lots of separation for a particular part of the image. Let's say we have a scene with a wooden building, white clouds and some very dark, shaded parts. Now I can print this so the blacks in the shaded part of the image are black in the print and so that the clouds are white. That's fitting the overall subject brightness range into the range of the paper by adjusting contrast. That's Mark's "photofinisher" approach. However, I might look at the wood on the building and decide that it would look a lot better with more texture, more separation between those close tones, i.e., more local contrast. The only way to get this is to print at a higher contrast setting (or paper grade... more later about graded papers).

So, I choose a higher contrast setting; one that makes the wood look like I want it to. But now, the whites are blown out and the blacks are blocked up. What to do? Here's where we can get creative! First choice is to just dodge and burn, which amounts to giving the whites more exposure and the blacks less exposure to get them to appear how I want them. At this point, we've given our print three different exposures and we see that it is exposure, not contrast, that determines what is black and what is white in a print.

We could go on to refine this a lot more, by doing even more dodging and burning, giving graduated exposures to parts of the print, etc., etc. But then, we might find that the clouds, even though exposed "correctly" now, are too contrasty. So we decide to do our burning of the clouds at a lower contrast setting. And maybe the shadows still look muddy, so we want to up the contrast there. So, we end up dodging the shadows even more than needed, and then burning them back with a high-contrast filter. Now we have a print with multiple exposure times and multiple contrast settings. We like it now!

As for graded papers: Many of us learned on premium graded papers before VC papers existed or were deemed good enough for fine prints. There are still some things that graded papers do better than VC papers (nuances of tonality in the mid-tones, toning characteristics, image tone, etc.) and I still do a lot of my printing on Ilford Galerie and the Foma and Slavich graded papers. With graded papers, you don't have the option of having areas of different inherent contrast on one print; you basically have to live with the single contrast grade of the paper you choose. When I print on graded paper, I make an educated guess about which contrast grade I want (I usually indicate which contrast grade to start with when I make the exposure...). I then make a test strip, find my exposure based on the highlights and then make a straight test print. I evaluate this to see if I want to change contrast. If so, I make another test strip, find my exposure and then make another test print. If I need an intermediate contrast, I'll mix up a soft-working developer and spend time determining how long I should develop in the soft developer and then in the contrastier developer. This all sounds like more work than working with VC paper, but it really isn't. Making small changes in filtration with VC papers requires a change in exposure and more test prints as well. Sometimes, this is more work and more of a headache than dealing with graded paper, for me, anyway.

Currently, I tend to print on graded paper first and only move to VC when I need contrast grades outside the limitations of the graded papers (Most graded papers are only available in grades 2 and 3, sometimes 4), or when I need to split-grade print.

Best,

Doremus

Doremus Scudder said:

Jesse,

Matt pretty well answered for me (thanks Matt) so I can elaborate on something else. Matt stated it well:

When starting out, we tend to think of "contrast" as blacks and whites in a print. This is really just the brightness range. Contrast, better understood, is the degree of (density) difference between tones. Imagine you have a negative with just two grey midtones, pretty close to each other. Now, you can print these at a number of different contrast settings (0-5) and you'll get more separation between the tones in the print as the setting moves toward more contrasty.

Often, we have a negative that screams for lots of separation for a particular part of the image. Let's say we have a scene with a wooden building, white clouds and some very dark, shaded parts. Now I can print this so the blacks in the shaded part of the image are black in the print and so that the clouds are white. That's fitting the overall subject brightness range into the range of the paper by adjusting contrast. That's Mark's "photofinisher" approach. However, I might look at the wood on the building and decide that it would look a lot better with more texture, more separation between those close tones, i.e., more local contrast. The only way to get this is to print at a higher contrast setting (or paper grade... more later about graded papers).

So, I choose a higher contrast setting; one that makes the wood look like I want it to. But now, the whites are blown out and the blacks are blocked up. What to do? Here's where we can get creative! First choice is to just dodge and burn, which amounts to giving the whites more exposure and the blacks less exposure to get them to appear how I want them. At this point, we've given our print three different exposures and we see that it is exposure, not contrast, that determines what is black and what is white in a print.

We could go on to refine this a lot more, by doing even more dodging and burning, giving graduated exposures to parts of the print, etc., etc. But then, we might find that the clouds, even though exposed "correctly" now, are too contrasty. So we decide to do our burning of the clouds at a lower contrast setting. And maybe the shadows still look muddy, so we want to up the contrast there. So, we end up dodging the shadows even more than needed, and then burning them back with a high-contrast filter. Now we have a print with multiple exposure times and multiple contrast settings. We like it now!

As for graded papers: Many of us learned on premium graded papers before VC papers existed or were deemed good enough for fine prints. There are still some things that graded papers do better than VC papers (nuances of tonality in the mid-tones, toning characteristics, image tone, etc.) and I still do a lot of my printing on Ilford Galerie and the Foma and Slavich graded papers. With graded papers, you don't have the option of having areas of different inherent contrast on one print; you basically have to live with the single contrast grade of the paper you choose. When I print on graded paper, I make an educated guess about which contrast grade I want (I usually indicate which contrast grade to start with when I make the exposure...). I then make a test strip, find my exposure based on the highlights and then make a straight test print. I evaluate this to see if I want to change contrast. If so, I make another test strip, find my exposure and then make another test print. If I need an intermediate contrast, I'll mix up a soft-working developer and spend time determining how long I should develop in the soft developer and then in the contrastier developer. This all sounds like more work than working with VC paper, but it really isn't. Making small changes in filtration with VC papers requires a change in exposure and more test prints as well. Sometimes, this is more work and more of a headache than dealing with graded paper, for me, anyway.

Currently, I tend to print on graded paper first and only move to VC when I need contrast grades outside the limitations of the graded papers (Most graded papers are only available in grades 2 and 3, sometimes 4), or when I need to split-grade print.

Best,

Doremus

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A-ha.. So I got one of the fundamentals wrong. What is a "photofinisher" you both used it but not sure what it is?

So let's take a look at an older picture of mine. Shot on Tri-X 400, developed like I did back then in HC-110. (this is a scan of the negative - print looks better) Straight grade 2-3 looked good. However, she was lying on a couch and I still had the texture of the couch in there, didn't want that. Wanted to have only blacks around her with no detail.

So there are three (and probably more options on handling this print if I am correct)..?

Option 1: Because I learned, expose for the highlights, use grade to darken the shadows. I grabbed grade 4 so the detail in the couch disappears. Is this the wrong approach? Okay her skintone got affected too, it got more contrast but I liked that side-effect.

Option 2: Burning in those parts are the approach you would take? However, that seems a lot more work than adjusting that grade. I'm not a landscape photographer. I mostly do portraits and now focusing myself on documentary. So I guess it's a different approach for portraits.

Option 3:
"Darkroom dave" told in an article or video. Split grade reduces having the dodge and burn because of the technique. If I wanted the couch to be darker without dodging and burning. I could do a split grade of the print and just lengthen the grade 5 exposure which only affects the shadows/blacks (up to a point)? So the skin tone would stay relatively on grade 2-3 which gives more tonal values? What I mean is, is it possible with split grade printing to control exposure of the lights and the dark separately? Compared to the single grade exposure at grade 4. Where the couch is darker but the skin tone got more contrast and less tonal values. Right or is this false?

**** Edit #2: While I'm breaking my head at home thinking about this. This above paragraph doesn't sound right. Because everything you do in split grade (without burning and dodging) should be possible to do in a single grade right. That means if I split graded it like I said, I'd just print it a lower grade eventually if it was a single grade print? So burning in is the only option left? Going to leave my thoughts in here. ****

So with spit grading I didn't had the need to use burning techniques on the couch to make it darker and retain the contrast at a normal grade (2-3) in the skin. (again) Right?

And if I still wanted a bit more contrast in the skin, I could opt to print at grade 1 for the first exposure instead of grade 0. (third time) Right?

-- I call this, theoretical printing on APUG , just to check if I'm getting this stuff right ... I need a workshop ---

Sidequestion:
However, I really like having that high contrast look. The images for my exhibition were first scanned and editted on the computer. I got the look that I wanted as said before. Exposure at skin tones, grade for the blacks/shadows. I'm a fan of that "look" especially for that series. If I wanted to continue working like this (I quit this type of portraits, but let's just assume).. Would it be good to keep printing like this at a higher grade or would you recommend a longer film development for that series? Both have the same effect I guess...

-----

Funny though. But it's like you said: "When starting out, we tend to think of "contrast" as blacks and whites in a print. This is really just the brightness range. Contrast, better understood, is the degree of (density) difference between tones."

I followed a tutorial by accident 2 years ago, by some guy named Taylan on YouTube. He had a darkroom in Turkey. Watching the video learned me only those two things. Expose until the skin tones looked good and adjust the grade if your blacks are too low or too high. Too high: lower contrast. Too low: higher contrast.

So, to recapitulate on the Berlin print which has a not fully bright sky, but rather a light grey sky and a dark foreground. I was not able to get the print I want, unless I printed it at grade 5 (the whole print) and did a burn in exposure at the sky at a lower grade. Follow me here: I chose for grade 5 because I did not get decent blacks until choosing that grade. But a straight grade 2 print of the foreground gave me so much detail in the bushes.. more tonality. So if I wanted that same tonality, I just had to print it at a lower grade and burn in the bushes until I get a decent black?

So confusing this Compared to digital this is a nightmare to understand, especially if you never lived in the era of film. For you guys it's second nature, for me it's a whole new concept to understand. Maybe I should go back to basics again. Start from the beginning with normal printing and forget about what I know.

Funnily enough I printed 27 fiber prints for my own exhibition which looked great to my eyes. Not sure how I ever did that. Lot of images underexposed due to bad lightning situations. It was a routine, I could always start at grade 4 because all of the pictures were taken inside with the same type of lightning.. different days though. I just used the grade to get the contrast right and the blacks where I wanted. Exposure for the skin tones and that was it. Only had to burn in some corners once, because a higher grade would block my shadow detail. So then I had to print at grade 2 and burned in the corners to get a moody atmosphere.

Thanks once again.

Edit:
One more but pretty important question. This has been the most helpful thread in my life about darkroom printing and it helped me a lot to understand things already.

So, I've talked about film developing and over development to be able to print at grade 2. Now I thought I had to find a development time which will print my negatives almost perfectly on grade 2 without too much problems. But having troubles with the Berlin scene clearly show that it's not possible.

To find out my development time: if I make a straight grade 2 print of a normal scene with correct development. What should it look like? And how can I know when the development time is insufficient or too much?

Or even if the scene is low contrast, is it possible to see if it's developed well?

michael_r said:

If I may interject, I think OP needs to first take a step back from split grade, begin with some sound basics, and proceed from there. Often in this type of thread it seems to me that local contrast and local exposure adjustments are being confused/mixed up. Split grade (a specific case of variable contrast printing) doesn't seem to be well understood. It is my belief particularly where one is less experienced, that printing should proceed in a more logical manner.

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Exactly That is my plan. However I'm trying to read some books like way beyond monochrome. To check out what split grading actually provides. So I'm going to take a step back and start printing with single grades like it should be. After I master that I'll go to split grading.

But that doesn't mean I would like to know the answers to my questions. It would clarify a lot. Thanks though!

Somebody should just write a book on how to make something easy sound complicated.

"I followed a tutorial by accident 2 years ago, by some guy named Taylan on YouTube. He had a darkroom in Turkey. Watching the video learned me only those two things. Expose until the skin tones looked good and adjust the grade if your blacks are too low or too high. Too high: lower contrast. Too low: higher contrast"

This makes sense when the choice of grade is an one grade for the entire picture.
If the photograph you have to print is really two pictures (or more) in one (like the one we are talking about) then you need to combine the effect of different tools for each of the areas that require different treatment.

cowanw said:

"I followed a tutorial by accident 2 years ago, by some guy named Taylan on YouTube. He had a darkroom in Turkey. Watching the video learned me only those two things. Expose until the skin tones looked good and adjust the grade if your blacks are too low or too high. Too high: lower contrast. Too low: higher contrast"

This makes sense when the choice of grade is an one grade for the entire picture.
If the photograph you have to print is really two pictures (or more) in one (like the one we are talking about) then you need to combine the effect of different tools for each of the areas that require different treatment.

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This! Never thought about it like that. Good point!

Jessestr said:

What is a "photofinisher"

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I hope that this lack of understanding is due to the differences in geography and language between us, and not because Doremus and I are just too old .

A photofinisher is a volume based commercial processing lab. Someone who one might send all their rolls of film with holiday, birthday party and other low importance shots on - basically the sort of lab that 90% of people who took photographs used to use when everybody used film.

Busy photofinishers would develop and print hundreds or thousands of rolls each day.

Victors intensifier. Selenium tones is good for one grade. Beers print developer

MattKing said:

I hope that this lack of understanding is due to the differences in geography and language between us, and not because Doremus and I are just too old .

A photofinisher is a volume based commercial processing lab. Someone who one might send all their rolls of film with holiday, birthday party and other low importance shots on - basically the sort of lab that 90% of people who took photographs used to use when everybody used film.

Busy photofinishers would develop and print hundreds or thousands of rolls each day.

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Difference in language it is. Thanks !

How about this approach:

Select the contrast grade to get the texture you want in important areas of the print. Use dodging, burning, bleaching, split-grade printing techniques to bring the rest of the print "under control," so to speak. It's really that simple, and that difficult.

Don't like that texture in the couch? Find a contrast that makes the skin tones "sing" and deal with the couch by burning. If you have a white area that needs some work, dodge, burn or bleach it too.

All of this printing stuff, however, assumes you have a "cooperative" negative, i.e., one that is exposed adequately and developed so that the manipulations you invariably have to make are as easy as possible. It's a system; how I want my print to look determines the way I expose and develop my negative, which influences how my print will look. The better I know what I want my print to look like, the more I plan at the time of exposure.

Some situations make negatives that print easily. Others do not. The cloudy-day-with-bright-sky-and-dark-featureless-foreground situation happens a lot. Knowing how that's going to look helps me a) compose my shot better so I don't have to deal with the inherent printing problems (limitations of the medium) or b) skip the shot entirely (a great subject in bad light makes a bad photograph).

To find your optimum development time (I assume you're shooting roll film and so recommend you find one time that mostly fits all situations), keep track of the type of shot you mostly shoot and optimize your development time so that those shots print well on an intermediate grade (e.g., grade 2). The others will, hopefully, fall somewhere inside the latitude of the contrast adjustments available to you. That's all there is to that, too.

And, be aware that there are situations that simply don't let themselves be photographed easily. That is our challenge; your trash can is your best friend when working with incalcitrant subjects.

Best,

Doremus

Doremus Scudder said:

a great subject in bad light makes a bad photograph

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Unless you are blessed with Jane Bown type vision:



(although maybe it is just dim light)

Matt,

That's perfect light... even down to the catchlights in the eyes. Stunning!

Doremus

Jessestr said:

However I'm trying to read some books like way beyond monochrome. To check out what split grading actually provides.

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"Way Beyond Monochrome" is comprehensive, demanding & perfectionistic with a technical focus - more than 500 pages in total. It will answer a million questions you never knew you had which in my case was a little confusing.

It is a good book, but maybe as the second book on the topic. A good starting point might be something a little lighter.
I personally have found Tim Rudman´s "The Photographer´s MASTER PRINTING COURSE" very instructive & spot on.