Small print looks focused - enlarged one doesn't. What am I doing wrong?

checking if focus is moving is very easy to do. Just focus a neg on baseboard and leave it for 10 mins and then check without touching anything. If it has gone out of focus then you have a problem. Could be the bellows compression as I mentioned or could be the lock wear as I an mentioned. It's all part of configuring and checking your set up.

I had understood that the filter was used during enlarging, now I think you have clarified that it was used on the camera, right?

Suggestion. Start with making a new negative. Perhaps a landscape or buildings, something you can do with your camera lens at infinity. Camera on a tripod, no filter, use a lens hood, hand held meter, something about F:8 on the lens, shutter speed as needed per the exposure meter. Oh, and use a fine grain film like Plus-X or HP4.

Then try enlarging to a 8x10 and see if it is sharp. It should be, with almost any enlarger and lens.

Let us know how it turns out.

Good Luck.

Bob - no, they don't. It's a crappy carrier in need of replacement but I don't know where to obtain a suitable replacement for my enlarger.

To clarify, the yellow Lee filter was used on the camera at the time I took the photos to add a little contrast to an otherwise flat overcast day. It was not used on the enlarger.

I will try a few of the suggestions made and see how I get on - adjust grain finder, try to see if enlarger goes out of focus after few minutes etc etc.

Ted

You do need glass for that carrier, and for sure your neg is popping, Focal Point in Florida will sell you the glass, I would recommend a couple of units.
remember AN on the top.
the advise to focus and wait 30-1minute to see if something sags is very good.this will help you isolate the problem, neg popping is a whole can of whoop ass and will drive you crazy, cleaning glass is the lesser of two evils.
Bob

ted_smith said:

Bob - no, they don't. It's a crappy carrier in need of replacement but I don't know where to obtain a suitable replacement for my enlarger.

To clarify, the yellow Lee filter was used on the camera at the time I took the photos to add a little contrast to an otherwise flat overcast day. It was not used on the enlarger.

I will try a few of the suggestions made and see how I get on - adjust grain finder, try to see if enlarger goes out of focus after few minutes etc etc.

Click to expand...

You don't really need a photograph/negative to see if there's creep or to check focus.
Use an end clip from a developed roll of film & put a scratch on it. An "X" from corner to corner works well. You can check focus with the focusing aid or make prints of different sizes. Also make a print(ck focus) and then let the enlarger sit for a few minutes to ck for creep.

After all of this, have you looked at the negative itself through a magnifier yet?

Doesn't look like enlarger alignment to me, because the blur is consitent across the frame. Doubt the Nikon lens is at fault, though I've never had much luck at enlarging wide open (I'm assuming 5.6 is wide open for your nikon). If I had to guess, the filter is at fault or the grain focuser. I don't think its the size of the print, as the blur is clearly more than the resolution of the paper, or what could be expected from low lens resolution. Not sure if you made multiple prints, but is it possible the enlarger moved after you focused? My D2 sags on a rare occasion and goes OOF.

I feel a bit daft.

I was looking at my enlarger today, from the side. I noticed it's spinal column was not aligned with the wall and appeared to be further away from the wall at the top than it was at the bottom. When I looked properly, I realised the two small rubber feet at the fron of the base board were hanging over the edge of the table on which it resides instead of being perfectly flat on the table!

Now, I'm not 100% sure this is the problem, because I assume the base board is still parallel to the lens, i.e. the base board has dipped by 3 degrees, but then so must have the lens? That said, it seems like the most obvious cause of the problem?

It's summer here in the UK so it doesn't get dark till late and my darkroom isn't great at shutting out the light so I have to do everything at night, buit when I can, I'll have another go and all the other suggestions made and let you know.

2F/2F - no - I haven't got a magnifying glass. If I did, would it be possible to notice something as subtle as this on something so small?

The base board will indeed still be parallel to the lens board and film carrier.
So it probably is not the cause, no.

I hate to say it. Make a high resolution scan of the negative to see if it's sharp or not.

Yes, always make sure your enlarger is aligned, although your latest observation is with all likelihood not the actual problem.

Your enlarging lens is as good as they come.

Bob Carnie's advice on using glass neg carrier is a really good suggestion. Your prints will be sharper, and consistently so.

I think it's a problem with the negative just not being sharp enough, but either way, the enlarger still needs to be aligned, and a glass neg carrier is a good thing. If you have those sorted out, you will truly see if there is something wrong with your negatives.

Good luck, Ted!

- Thomas

For the third time, whatever you focussed the grain magnifier on in the print should be sharp regardless of whether your enlarger is correctly aligned or not. Stuff to either side up or down might not be sharp because of misalignment but if you focus with a grain magnifier, then that one thing should be sharp. So what did you put the grain magnifier on and is it sharp. If not then you have a problem somewhere else even if your alignment is out. So just because your baseboard wasn't right doesn't automatically show that that is the problem.

OK guys - I've tried a few things.

Paul VanAudenhove PM'd me suggesting I use my 50mm lens to look at the negative instead of a maginifying glass! Great idea - I'd not thought of that, so I put the neg on my lightbox and peeped through my lens wide open. It doesn't look out of focus to me, but then I don't have the best eye sight.

Then I tried putting a neg in the carrier, turning on my enlarger and quickly focusing using my grain finder. Got it in focus then left it for 5 minutes powered on. 5 minutes later, no grain was visible! So that obviously suggests the neg popping issue may well have crept in here, especially seeing as I made several prints without ever moving the negative out, so it probably got fairly warm.

Then, perhaps most signficantly, I noticed my enlarger has a "Protractor" like dial just behind the lens to show a left or right tilt of the lens head (sorry, I don't know the technical term). Instead of being at 0, it was at about 3 degrees to the right. This suggests to me that the lens plane itself was at a very slight (3 degree) angle to the base board, which for larger 10x8" prints is perhaps quite a bit...more so than a small 6x4. So I've now corrected that too and fastended into place.

So now it's flat on the table, the lens head is properly aligned, and I have learnt about doing small 6 second bursts of exposure instead of long 30 second single blasts, I will have another go when I get chance and I will let you know.

I've also enquired at secondhanddarkroom.co.uk about buying a replacement negative carrier, because mine is rubbish and falling to bits, which cannot be helping.

Thanks again all for the help

Tlitody...comments like "For the third time..." are not especially helpful. Whilst I appreciate it may already have been suggested, it is fair for a relative beginner to printing to perhaps suspect (and I didn't say it WAS the cause) that a misbalanced enlarger on the desk might not be conducive to successfull printing.

All of this, and you haven't even looked at the neg through a loupe yet?

ted.. which durst enlarger do you have... i have both teh m301 and m606... I'VE had ur same exact problem and found the solution... for me I was using the red filter to get my focus... well it does defract the light and when using the red filter my pictures were slightly out of focus but looked fine in 5x7....

As soon as i started just using a dummy piece of paper to focus instead of the red filter my pictures became tack sharp... so maybe that's what's happening... dont' use any filters under the neg carrier at all... use above neg filters AND do not use the red filter to focus..

here's the thread discussing it...

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Ted:

I wouldn't recommend replacing 30 second exposures with several (5?) 6 second bursts - the total exposure is very different, and you don't eliminate problems with negatives "popping"

I haven't printed using a Durst enlarger for quite a long time, but IIRC Durst enlargers were quite good at preventing "popping, and I would think that the Ilford head would help prevent that too.

As 2F/2F says, what does a loupe/magnifier tell you about the negative?

heespharm said:

ted.. which durst enlarger do you have... i have both teh m301 and m606... I'VE had ur same exact problem and found the solution... for me I was using the red filter to get my focus... well it does defract the light and when using the red filter my pictures were slightly out of focus but looked fine in 5x7....

Click to expand...

This is an issue of how the human eye works. Patrick Gainer published a piece on this a while back in Photo Techniques magazine, IIRC. The bottom line is that it's best to focus using white or green light. Red light will cause you to focus incorrectly.

FWIW, I've got a Philips PCS130/PCS150 enlarger, which uses three separate lights: red, green, and blue. I remembered this issue today during a printing session and I did a simple experiment: I focused using green light, as I usually do, then switched to blue light, then to red light. I noticed that the grain seemed just a little bit blurry when I switched to blue light, and using red light I couldn't make out grain at all, just a red blur. When I focused with red light and switched to green, again everything became a blur. I didn't bother making test prints when focused with each color, but maybe I should, just to check Gainer's article using a different technique. Because of the way the Philips enlarger is built, the effect I did observe cannot be accounted for by diffraction in the filters, since the filters are in the light path before the condensers, negative, or lens. This is purely an effect of how the human eye works.

srs5694 said:

This is an issue of how the human eye works. Patrick Gainer published a piece on this a while back in Photo Techniques magazine, IIRC. The bottom line is that it's best to focus using white or green light. Red light will cause you to focus incorrectly.

FWIW, I've got a Philips PCS130/PCS150 enlarger, which uses three separate lights: red, green, and blue. I remembered this issue today during a printing session and I did a simple experiment: I focused using green light, as I usually do, then switched to blue light, then to red light. I noticed that the grain seemed just a little bit blurry when I switched to blue light, and using red light I couldn't make out grain at all, just a red blur. When I focused with red light and switched to green, again everything became a blur. I didn't bother making test prints when focused with each color, but maybe I should, just to check Gainer's article using a different technique. Because of the way the Philips enlarger is built, the effect I did observe cannot be accounted for by diffraction in the filters, since the filters are in the light path before the condensers, negative, or lens. This is purely an effect of how the human eye works.

Click to expand...

I think it's rather how the lens on your enlarger works.

Focussing with green light helps because we are most sensitive to green. A focus shift in the eyes because of changing wavelength is accomodated by a focus shift by our eyes.

A trick your enlarger lens cannot perform.
Shows why colour correction is important in a lens that's used for B&W too.