Valuate test strips or work prints wet or dry?

Pieter12 said:

I may be wrong, but it seems to me the dry-down effect on prints is caused by the fact that a wet surface reflects light differently than a dry one, so dry-down is more dramatic on matte finish paper than glossy. Or is there something else happening here?

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pentaxuser said:

If you print on RC paper as opposed to FB then the dry-down will be a lot less and may even be so insignificant as to not matter but try it out the same way anyway to see the outcome

pentaxuser

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As mentioned above a few times already, drydown is a combination between the paper and emulsion shrinking when drying. Try this: measure your paper when wet and then again when dry; it's an eye-opener. But, the look of a wet print in the fixer tray under a suitable viewing light is as good as it gets. Prints never look as good anywhere else.

RC paper has a base that doesn't absorb water and therefore doesn't expand when wet, hence less drydown effect.

@InExperience:
You don't need a teacher to learn these techniques. It helps to have an experienced worker helping you learn, but you can get everything you need from books, forums and trial-and-error. I'm an autodidact as far as photography is concerned.

Best,

Doremus

Doremus Scudder said:

@InExperience:
You don't need a teacher to learn these techniques. It helps to have an experienced worker helping you learn, but you can get everything you need from books, forums and trial-and-error. I'm an autodidact as far as photography is concerned.

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In facts, on the book of Tim Rudman, he said, you can’t learn if you don’t have the wastebin filled.

Thank you.

[QUOTE="Doremus Scudder, post: 2288989, member: 135"
RC paper has a base that doesn't absorb water and therefore doesn't expand when wet, hence less drydown effect.
Doremus[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the reply. For RC printers the key here is how much less is "less dry-down effect" It is irrelevant to the OP as he uses only FB and I have seen examples in Les McLean's book on the dry-down effect on FB and yes it is enough to make a difference albeit it might be fairly marginal to a casual observer such as someone looking through a series of prints but Les makes no mention that I can see about what less dry-down is in percentage terms for RC

I am thus tempted to conclude that as it hasn't been measured then it may be close to insignificant but if you have a source for RC percentages then I'd be interested in looking at the information.

Thanks

pentaxuser

Since the drydown for RC papers only concerns the shrinking of the emulsion, I would imagine that it would be much less than fiber-base papers, perhaps negligible.

And, since RC papers dry quickly, there's no reason not to just compare a wet and dry print quickly and get an idea.

I've found that "drydown compensation" doesn't work nearly as well as Fred Picker and a few others think it should. Giving a fixed percentage exposure decrease for all images printed on a given paper (after "determining" somehow what that percentage should be) just doesn't work. Drydown in more apparent in lighter areas of the print so the distribution of tones in any given image makes the drydown effect different for each print. I've found no better way of evaluating drydown in the final prints than to actually dry them...

Best,

Doremus

Doremus, there is the classic, "Oh, shit" method of dry-down determination. Of course, best discovered after a final print has dried rather than after printing an edition of them -- which I believe is an AA story.

If I saw the texture and detail in the highlights I wanted in the wet silver gelatin print, I knew to drop the over-all exposure about ten percent, and the next print might have slightly different burning than the previous to work with the reduced exposure (perhaps adding the time back to some darker areas or bringing some highlights back down to the previous print.

In the beginner's darkroom, other pressing issues are safe light 'safety' (and reflections from enlarger) -- fogging the highlights plays havoc with trying to dial in contrast and exposure.

One thing I saw happening in the university darkroom I worked at, would be students with test strips or test prints in hand (but hopefully in a tray), stick their heads out of the darkroom door, thrust the test into the room light, make a quick decision, and disappear into the dark again. Many times those students would come out with their final print and it would be oddly darker than it should be. I'd make sure they exposed and developed the same.

But sticking their heads out of the dark, quickly judging the print with eyes still use to the dark, their first impression would led them astray, and they'd pick an exposure time that was a little too long....usually the difference was more than drydown could account for...but often blamed. Probably a deadly combo.

Vaughn,

I use your method, but with the test strips. I find the highlight value I like and then drop the exposure about 10% for the initial full-size print. After that, though, it's dry every print down well-enough for me to make an informed decision about what to change on the next attempt. Often, I'll tack up three or four prints that are very close in exposure and contrast and let them all dry before tearing up most (or all) of them and making yet another.

I worked with a Zone VI enlarging timer for a while, with it's built-in drydown compensation dial. I quickly arrived at the conclusion that a particular percentage of compensation (exposure reduction) was just too simplistic a solution for making really nuanced fine prints. I now work more slowly, spending a whole lot more time thinking about what to do for the next print than actually printing. My motto: "Waste time, not paper." Changes in dodging, burning, flashing, bleaching, contrast (split-printing too) and exposure all get considered when deciding what to do from one print to another. I make notes along the way and record the final "recipe" in my printing record for the future.

The light for evaluating prints is really important to me, as well as letting your eyes adjust to the brightness after you've switched on the white lights. I've got a large magnetic white board on one wall of the darkroom that's lit by a combination of ~3200K and daylight floodlights (my approximation of what I consider ideal gallery lighting: tungsten lights with windows/skylights) that I use to evaluate prints with. I also look at them in low and very bright light. A print needs to work in low light too, since most display areas in people's homes are not nearly as brightly lit as galleries.

Best,

Doremus

Curious. Will bleaching redress the dry-down effect? Maybe combined with selenium toning to get some of that wet contrast back...

When in doubt, I dry the squeegeed off test strip for about 20 sec in a little old toaster oven. Leave it in too long and you'll have the deepest DMax of any paper! - plus some smoke in the room. But for serious final evaluation, I just never know until I've seen a full-sized, toned, air-dried print. Very subtle differences can be the distinction between a good print and a great one. But you need to be on the road awhile to distinguish such things. And you might need to evaluate your final print under more than one variety of lighting. Bleaching? Yes, that can enhance or even salvage a print from blandness in certain cases. Farmer's Reducer works to reduce highlights, but not overall density, so it can selectively create more contrast between shadows and highlights. It's a helpful tool to have in your tool kit, but is no substitute for learning how to get a correct exposure to begin with. You also have to re-fix and re-wash bleached prints, so that procedure certainly isn't going to save you any time. Toning is a more involved topic; but all papers achieve their full DMax potential only with toning. Selenium is just one option; and combined with the topic of toning is how they affect final image color.

I have been doing what Maris suggests for over 40 years. My setup is almost exactly the same - a 25w tungsten light bulb in a ceiling inset light, about 3-4ft above and slightly forward of the viewing area, with its own wall switch. I also don't leave the print in the tray, which has its own misleading issues.
I have a piece of plexiglass, behind and slightly higher than the fixer tray, angled so that when I stand 4ft away, my eyes are close to a straight on viewing angle. I let the print drain a bit on the plexi and turn on the one low wattage light.
Once I had the wattage and distance from the print worked out, I never had to make any estimated adjustments, although to Matt's point, a dried print (Ilford WT Fiber) is no match for a wet print, in terms of overall snap and brilliance. When I look at the final prints as I hang them for drying, I think, "they will never look this good again."