Split Grade Printing with VC Paper

[spacegoose]

I'm thinking about trying the technique to get better prints,

though I've read - prints from well exposed and processed negatives shouldn't require it ... might they still benefit from it?

One thing I haven't completely understood ... and that is, once you have the ideal shadow and highlight print exposures, and then expose the paper for the shadows,

won't exposing for the highlights affect the the earlier shadow exposure - e.g. add more to it - or do the filters somehow cancel this?

Thanks,
Bill

[vinny]

for me, it's easier. if you need to burn in a highlight, you use 00. If you want to burn in a shadow, you use grade 5.
Which the enlarger set at 00, I make the exposure for the highlights and any burning needed before switching to grade 5 to give the base exposure and any burning needed.
Does one grade exposure add to the other? yes, a little bit but you'll figure that out.

[Drew Wiley]

Forget about hypothetical grades. What you do need to know is that a deep blue or magenta filter will expose the high contrast emulsion of the paper, while a deep green or yellow, the low-contrast layer. There are all kinds of things you can do with this basic information, but not all VC papers are exactly the same; nor are all negs the same. But what I often personally do is punch and develop the blue filter test strip first, then supplement that with either a little bit of white light, or perhaps more selectively, a bit of green exposure, to fill in highlight detail, either overall or selectively thru burn-in. It is very easy to do with a little practice.

[cowanw]

Go to the library and get Way beyond Monochrome, there are some real aha moments there
http://www.waybeyondmonochrome.com/WBM2/Welcome.html

[Robert Bowring]

There was a very good article some years ago in, I think, Darkroom Techniques. It compared split filter printing with single VC filter printing and concluded that there was really no difference. You could make the same print either way. I have tried split filter printing and could never find the advantage. It may be just me but it just seems to be a lot of extra work. I would recommend that you give it a try and see if it makes a difference for you. I am sure there are some negatives that would probably benefit from split filter printing but it seems to me that if you have a properly exposed and developed negative there should be no difference.

[Colin Robertson]

"It compared split filter printing with single VC filter printing and concluded that there was really no difference. You could make the same print either way."
Yes, and no.
Multigrade (VC) papers come from the manufacturer capable of a certain range of contrast grades. That's inherent to the paper irrespective of how you print. A spilt-grade print made using equal exposures at grade 0 and grade 5 will look just like a print made through a grade 2.5 filter. Where split grade becomes useful is by introducing the possibility of burning and dodging different areas of the print at different grades.
Perhaps an area of shadow which is a little thin in the negative- you might hold back completely on the grade 0, and expose only at grade 5 to up the contrast. In the same print you might give an area of high contrast less 5, and burn in on 0. I have some recent negatives, long exposures of moving water and black rocks on Fomapan 100 which are challenging to print, and split grade makes them do-able. I also have plenty of lovely, flexible HP5/PMK negs where split grade is completely unnecessary.
Unfortunately, this is like the 'spot meter or incident' arguments which come up sometimes. People will defend the technique which works for them with a religious fervour, when really all tools have their own value in different circumstances.

[Drew Wiley]

I happen to work with three radically different kinds of light sources: a conventional CMY subtractive colorhead, a true RGB additive head, and a V54 coldlight which I often employ with hard blue and green separation filters. I can replicate results in any of these modes, regardless of split printing mode or mixed simultaneous (in the case of various colorheads). Strategically, I might prefer one method over another due to dodging and burning characteristics of a specific negative, or simply relative to the enlarger requirements of a particular format of film. 90% of the "heavy lifting" involves none of the above, because most of my negs print quite well just with basic "white" enlarging light. I'm more likely to employ splits or filtration tweaks just to fine tune the highlights, shadows, or resistant areas of a neg. So forgive me if I don't understand what all the fuss is about. There's more than one way to skin a cat.

[ic-racer]

Where split grade becomes useful is by introducing the possibility of burning and dodging different areas of the print at different grades.

If you do it in two exposures it is 'split grade' printing, but I find it is easier to do in one exposure of mixed filtration, in which case it is not 'split grade' printing.

[Drew Wiley]

The two kinds of techniques can be combined and are not mutually exclusive. You can get a desirable overall effect using the appropriate color of mixed light on a
colorhead or with "grade" filters, and then fine-tune the shadows or highlights, or selectively burn-in discrete areas, using split-printing technique with hard filtration. I do this rather frequently. Whatever work, works. The more tools in the toolbox, the better.

[bob carnie]

"It compared split filter printing with single VC filter printing and concluded that there was really no difference. You could make the same print either way."
Yes, and no.

I have printed both ways for over 35 years, split prints for the last 15 years and IMHO there is no way a single filter print can be made that matches a multiple filter print.
There are many ways to do this and experience tells me that using two or three filters is a much better method than single filter.