Ralph,
Let me say at the beginning that I follow your posts with great interest and have learned much from your comments and approach.
My printing is intentionally low-tech; I use graded paper, a metronome and split-developing techniques for intermediate contrast. From what I can gather, this is somewhat different than your methods.
To address your questions.
First, I realize that a 20% test strip is rather coarse for fine work. Since I do most of my refining with full sheets, this is just to get me in the ballpark, somewhat like your electronically-metered print. I figure I can be accurate to about 10% with a 20% strip, since I can interpolate intermediate values. The test strip just deals with getting close to the correct exposure for a print highlight value. I deal with the blacks by later choosing an appropriate paper grade. I work hard at streamlining this process by refining my metering and negative development process so that I don't have to do a lot of testing on different paper grades when I print. My field notes always have a suggested paper grade along with the indicated development (e.g., N-1/gr3).
My first full print is on a paper grade determined from the contact sheet and the field notes. I err on the side of too soft if there is a question. If I find I have to go more (or less often, less) contasty, I make another test strip to get a highlight value close to "ideal" exposure and then make another full sheet.
Once I feel I have the right contrast, refining exposure, intermediate contrast and working in the dodging, burning, bleaching come next. Very small "exposure" changes I can usually do by adjusting development time. This is, in my experience, much more controllable than adjusting exposure time by small increments, say 2% or less. All this is done on a series of full prints, which I dry down in-between so I can evaluate them better. I try to combine steps (as I mentioned in my earlier post) if they don't interfere with each other, e.g., I'll add some edge burning while changing exposure a bit and adding a bit of dodging at the same time so I don't have to make three prints as long as the changes don't interfere with evaluation the individual changes.
Oh, and while I'm thinking of it, yes, I like longer exposures. 20-30 seconds is my preference although, due to my experience as a musician, I can fairly accurately time half-second increments (my metronome is set on 120bps). My example didn't stretch into longer times for reasons of space.
As far as the disadvantages of f-stop printing go; Since I don't have an f-stop timer, calculating and remembering the intervals seems a lot more complicated than using simple percentages, which achieve the same result, even when changing paper sizes, etc. Since I record all my dodging and burning in percentages of total exposure time, I can up- or downscale a print and keep the same basic dodging and burning relationship by simply figuring the new times as a percentage of whatever the new total printing time is. This, for me, is a lot simpler than multiplying by the square root of 2 all the time ;-) I developed my percentage-approach on my own many years ago and have never seen the need to switch to f-stop calculations, since they accomplish the same thing and I already have a practiced and workable system. Making say 10%, 5% or 2% changes in exposure time is easy to calculate and apply. One stop is 100% or 50% depending on which way you go, and while intermediate values are admittedly not neat divisions of full stops, one learns quickly what a given percent exposure change will do.
While you piece together test strips, I make full sheet prints, adding refinements till I'm satisfied. At the beginning, this can go fairly quickly, but once I'm zeroing in on what I want, I have to slow down and live with the prints. I often dry down several and pin them up under the lights for evaluation. Usually this process can be completed in a day, but sometimes I have to take a couple. Often, I get to a point where one "performance" of the negative, while different from another, is equally valid. Like a musician saying to himself, "I recorded that Chopin étude three times, and they are all different in small ways, but I like all three...." I often end up with a "batch" of prints that I feel are all equally good in their different ways. These go in the "keeper" pile. While repeatability is important to me, so is flexibility in interpretation.
Apologies to the other readers of the thread for this being long and a bit off-topic. Hopefully it is still of peripheral interest.
Best
Doremus Scudder
www.DoremusScudder.com
