Contact printing 8X10 negs

[Drew Wiley]

Bruce - a cold light would indeed be very slow with Azo. Colorheads are generally much brighter, and I have even easily enlarged onto Azo from small negatives. But
there's also something to be said for a bright bulb simply hanging from the ceiling.
Lot's of different ways to have fun and achieve excellent results.

[CG]

Because the light coming from a bare bulb isn't collimated, like the one that's projected through a lens. If you raise the dodge tool, the area underneath it will still receive some stray light. The dodge tool will make just a penumbra, not a true shadow ...

As far as I can see it, it all depends upon the size of the light source as seen from the printing paper, and also upon the height of the dodging tool. An angularly broad source would force you to stay very close to the paper, whereas an angularly narrow source would act quite a bit more like the light from an enlarger and allow you to use more height if you want to soften the edge of the shadow.

If you want a sharp image of the dodging tool, then you would have to stay right down on the paper. Usually, I want to soften the edges of areas I mess with.