easels

[monochromeFan]

A quick question on easels, I know the ones with adjustable borders are extremely expensive new, and the used ones online are quite often damaged or to rusted up to use, from personal experience.

My question is a two parter. I have been getting by with just adjusting the image size on my borderless easel, and then just printing and dealing with various defects on the paper. Fun defects like:

1. sometimes i get circles of various grey tones around the image, like it was a rectangle place inside a circle, and random sides will fill out that circle with grey tones.

2. big black streaks or lines on the edges of the printed image. Not always the same from image to image. Each roll of fillm/camera has its own peculiar out come.


So is a bordered easel a good thing to have as it gives control, although many of the youtuber crown dont use a bordered easel all the time and still have good prints. Sometimes with very faimiliar black lines on the side of the image.
90% of what i do is 8x10

[phdgent]

These Black or darkish streaks sometimes occur due to the flair around the film negative in the negative carrier.
When the 'opening' in which the negative is held is larger than that negative, the light, what I would call (I am not a native English speaker, sorry for my unclear formulation), 'bows' around the edges and flairs the print.
This can happen when you print with black (film-) borders and, for instance, burn the sky then these darkish borders can occur.

Some negative carriers have variable blades too, just like a print easel.

That kind of flair due 'the light bowing around the edge' can happen when the easel's borders are too thick or not blackened. That's, amongst many other reasons, why easels have thin black blades...

But I do realise that these arguments are not necessary the origin of you issues.

For instance, these circles can be the result of an uneven film development (air bulbs?), perhaps you can have a look at your negatives?

[John Layton]

Sounds like your issues are not remotely related to your easel.

It would be great if you could possibly post a few photos of both negatives and prints which might illustrate your concerns - and this might help to guide us to further suggest that you might then share some further information...either about your camera or about your enlarger setup - or perhaps both.

[Willie]

"although many of the youtuber crown dont use a bordered easel all the time and still have good prints."

You are seeing them on a computer screen. Good is often not the same as Excellent.

Visit some gallery shows with top photographers and look at prints from the Masters.

If your prints don't match this kind of high quality, work on your technique until they do.

Be aware that even "The Masters" are not perfect. Excellent quality and perfection are not the same thing.

[monochromeFan]

"although many of the youtuber crown dont use a bordered easel all the time and still have good prints."

You are seeing them on a computer screen. Good is often not the same as Excellent.

Visit some gallery shows with top photographers and look at prints from the Masters.

If your prints don't match this kind of high quality, work on your technique until they do.

Be aware that even "The Masters" are not perfect. Excellent quality and perfection are not the same thing.

The print quality of a print made for a gallery showing is not going to be obtainable when using a 23cII enlarger and foma papers.

The gallery print is 90% of the time made by a printer who has decades of experience, and is paid to devote up to a week of time to make a single print, going through the entire spectrum of massive amounts of test strips, changes in filter grade, etc. Its like giving a person a piece of charcoal and teling them that they can draw as good as davinci after a week of scribbling

[Tin Can]

I use Speed Easel

But that’s not the problem

I hate the UNSQUARE ADJUSTABILITY FAILURE

waste of money

[ic-racer]

If you are drymounting, like Ansel Adams outlines in his books, there is no need for masking blades or specialized easel. Just hold the paper down somehow. Otherwise, one needs a 4-blade easel if the prints are to be shown with nice borders.
Another option for not using a 4-blade easel, is to use archival corner mounts with a masking overlay bevel mat board. That is how I did it for many years as a student, before I could afford a 4-blade easel.

[Robert Bowring]

First of all, do not put any faith in what you see on youtube. I have watched hundreds of darkroom youtube episodes and saw very few that had anything worthwhile. It is just hard to believe that there is so much bad information out there. In my opinion a good adjustable easel is one of the tools every darkroom should have. I think the 4 bladed easels are the best. I have seen how expensive they have become but are worth every penny. I have been using mine for close to 50 years now and would not be without it.

[Alan9940]

For many years, I used single-size easels that have an iron bar about 1/4" square that forms the borders. I only used 8x10 and 11x14 because those were the sizes I print 99% of the time; more 8x10 than the larger. I really liked these easels because the bar around the borders is pretty heavy and really held a sheet of paper flat. The only thing I didn't like was when printing an image size smaller than the unchangeable size of the easel, the image edges looked "soft." Hard to explain in words, but the edges just weren't crisp (hard edged.) As my matting style evolved over the years, I went with an adjustable blade easel because it enabled me to get sharp edges for any size I wanted to print. This was a better fit for my framing style, at the time.

[Doremus Scudder]

Two-bladed easels are a lot cheaper than the 4-bladed ones. They will work very well if you have room to move them around on the enlarger baseboard. I printed with two-bladed easels for years.

You simply have to position the top-left corner where you want it in the projected image. Then adjust the two blades to get the cropping you desire.

If you like the classic presentation of prints trimmed to the image borders and dry-mounted on mat board, you don't need an easel at all, just a good rotary paper cutter

That said, I love my Saunders 4-bladed easels!

Best,

Doremus