Well,I'm about 5 years into occaisional, but fairly regular black and white printing in my home darkroom with an Omega ProLab condenser enlarger. To this day, I still have problems with excessive print contrast (blocked up higlights, printing with #1's and #2's, excessive burning-in required, etc.,) I upgraded my enlarger to diffusion with flashed opal glass, and this helped alot, but recently while printing some cibachromes, I discovered this conversion left a noticeable central hot spot. Hence I feel I have to return to the condensers. At least this way, the light is more even across the print. I know the callier effect will not effect color reversal printing, so returning to a condenser enlarger will be a boon to cibachrome printing in terms of reduced exposure times.

Anyway, back to black and white issue. I've seen some master printer's work, and description of their techniques in Photo Techniques magazine, etc, and can compare their print tonal range, their dodging and burning efforts, etc. I'm struggling too much with print contrast.

Therefore I'm trying to tweak my overall technique to improve the ease with which I can make a good print. For example, I recently began to develop negatives much more carefully now to control for contrast range. FWIW, it seems the negatives which I do print nicely seem flat, nothing like the sample ideal negatives in the Kodak black and white reference guide, for example, or like a negative which intuitively looks properly developed.

Another possible tweak might be the following: I had sometimes long exposure times with the 75 watt bulb in condenser house, but am now set up for much shorter exposures with a 250 watt. I hope will improve contrast control to a small degree because shoter times, means less reciprocity failure in the highlights, I reason. I have also incorporated use of black and white filters on the taking lens to help put some tone in otherwise white skies, etc., and finally, am in much better awareness of the importance of not over developing film.

Finally, I have continuously agitatedmy prints in the developer, and wonder if this is another potential source of increased print contrast? Andre