Enlarging for max black

[Captain_joe6]

I think that this all really boils down to the following summary:

If all values in the process from capture to final print are held the same, then there would be no need to produce a test strip. Change anything, though, and reliably expected results go out the window.

To expand: if you had your personal film speed figured out as precisely as possible, and controlled your exposure and development accurately enough to yield a negative that had a known and finite range of densities, and if those densities fit perfectly the range of densities your paper was able to reproduce (and assuming you developed that paper to completion as you should), and your light source never varied, and your enlarger height never changed, then yes, it would, in theory, be possible to produce consistent, repeatable results throughout your photographic endeavours, using a constant aperture and time on your enlarger.

I am, at the moment, attempting to figure out this very system, with the addition of a metering and measurement component that will allow me to change height and filtration values while retaining maximum black with calculated changes to exposure time.

[Drew Wiley]

Whatever works for you works for you ... but I find all this a bit too mechanical, and I can
be as nitpicky as they come when it comes to using a densitometer when it's actually needed. In conventional silver printing, I'm a lot more concerned about the midtone gradation, how the highlights dry down, the overall feel of the image. The final punch to
the DMax is the last thing my own process, and is tweaked both by development time and the nature of toning involved, or sometimes with a little extra selective blue light. I might
start with blacks generically in split printing per se, but always leave some wiggle room
for fine tuning at the end.