"Creamy" look of split grade printing

[cyrus]

I once tried out split filter grade printing (meaning two exposures using a #1 and a #5 filter) to get a print with a sort of "creamy" white and purplish blacks look to it -- which is what was supposed to happen - sort of like the colors in the foam of a glass of rootbeer. This was in a school photography course.

Now, I just can't reproduce that at my home darkroom. Not sure why. I end up with a perfectly fine print. What gives? Same paper & everything.

[Ralph W. Lambrecht]

I once tried out split filter grade printing (meaning two exposures using a #1 and a #5 filter) to get a print with a sort of "creamy" white and purplish blacks look to it -- which is what was supposed to happen - sort of like the colors in the foam of a glass of rootbeer. This was in a school photography course.

Now, I just can't reproduce that at my home darkroom. Not sure why. I end up with a perfectly fine print. What gives? Same paper & everything.

A straight split-grade exposure (meaning two exposures using a #1 and a #5 filter) is no different from a a straight exposure using filters, VC heads or color heads. The benefit from split-grade comes from dodging or burning differently during one or both exposures. There are no 'creamy' whites or 'purply' black, which can possibly be credited to split-grade printing. They must have done something else in your school photography course. Actually, it sound like lith printing to me.

[Patrik Roseen]

Splitfiltering depends on the time of exposure using the different filters. I suggest you e.g. make a test strip of different exposure times using say only filter 1 to find the time for which the highlights gets that 'creamy look'. Once that's made expose paper with filter1 using this time and make a test strip with filter 5 onto this to find the time for which this filter gives you the 'blacks' you are after. Then you have the two splitfiltering exposures you are looking for.

I am assuming you use a multigrade paper and that your enlarger is capable of producing the 'right' light for the filters to work.

Note: there are different ideas of which order the filters should be used depending on the effect you want to achieve.

[Ralph W. Lambrecht]

This doesn't explain why it worked at his school and not at home. Why do you think the sequence of the exposures make a difference?

[N Dhananjay]

There is nothing magic about split filtering. VC paper have a low contrast emulsion primarily sensitive to green light and a hard contrast emulsion primarily sensitive to blue light. So, the ulimate contrast you get is purely a function of the amount of blue and green light that hits the paper. Now, it does not matter how that light hits the paper - whether it is through one filter that lets a certain ratio of blue and green light or wether it is through two filters, one letting in only blue light and one letting in only green light (since you get the same ratio as the first filter by controlling the amount of exposure through each filter). How could it matter? The paper does not know whether the blue and green light came in one burst or two or ten (ignoring reciprocity or intermittency effects). In other words, there is no exposure you can get through split filtering that you cannot get through exposure through an appropriate filter. You can get prints to look different by dodging and burning with different filters which therefore alters the local contrast in different parts of the image but again, those mechanisms are quite well understood. Now, one method could be easier for someone and allow one to arrive at a fine print faster using one method rather than the other. Also, a split filtering approach may let you reach contrast grades between the available filter but given that the available filters are in half step grades, I seriously doubt this is what people are talking about because I doubt peoples' ability to reliably tell differences of such small differences in contrast grades. As I said, I've never seen split filtering (if that is defined as exposure through two differnet filters) produce any results that could not be duplicated through an exposure through one filter. So, I doubt what you saw was anything special about split printing. Maybe it was lith printing, maybe it was someone demonstarting how easy it was to obtain a good print (if that is one with creamy etc) usinf split filtering etc. Some more details might help.

Cheers, DJ

[Patrik Roseen]

This doesn't explain why it worked at his school and not at home. Why do you think the sequence of the exposures make a difference?
I thought I would remind cyrus of the process in case it was forgotten.

As for the sequence I have seen many threads and discussions in which people claim there is a difference in result depending on the sequence of filters. Maybe it is all up to the human evaluation of the highlights and shadows using the different sequences and therefor different results.

Hopefully there are others who could elaborate on this, specifically when not using the extreme filters 0 and 5 but say 1.5 and 4 where both the green and blue reactors gets a shot of the light by the two exposures...

[Donald Qualls]

IMO, there *is* something magic about split grade filtering: the ability to control the contrast as precisely as you control exposure. When I have control within 5% on both the grade 00 and grade 6 exposures in split printing, it's like having a set of VC filters gradated in tenths of a grade, if not finer (not even to mention the ability to dodge or burn in with either filter, so as to obtain local contrast control as well as local exposure control). Of course, the exact same thing can be done with a stepless color or VC dichroic head -- but IMO it's easier to make a gridded test print and select both exposure and contrast off the one print than it is to fiddle with contrast settings and make possible half a dozen or more test strips chasing both exposure and contrast.

No, there's no difference between a split grade print and a conventional VC print with *exactly* the right contrast -- it's just a lot easier to get the contrast *exactly* right with split grade (based on my relatively limited experience, that is).

[Ralph W. Lambrecht]

DJ

You are absolutely right as far as straight split-grade printing is concerned, but complex split-grade printing (dodging during just one exposure for example) does create effects, which cannot be duplicated otherwise. Nevertheless, I also think that cyrus is talking about the lith-printing in his first post.

[Ralph W. Lambrecht]

... (not even to mention the ability to dodge or burn in with either filter, so as to obtain local contrast control as well as local exposure control) ...

Sorry for the snip Don, but that and nothing else makes the 'magic' of split-grade printing. Everything else is just like fine contrast control and can be had with any color head or many VC heads.

[Brian Ellis]

" . . . not even to mention the ability to dodge or burn in with either filter . . . "

How do you dodge with a filter?

That aside, I thought Phil Davis effectively put to rest the idea that there was some special benefit to "split filter" printing (meaning the making of two separate exposures using two different filters, not the use of different filters to adjust local contrast) in his article that appeared years ago (1994 I believe) in Photo Techniques magazine.

[lee\c]

only if you value anything Phil Davis has to say.

lee\c

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Could you perhaps mean split toning?

[Ralph W. Lambrecht]

" . . . not even to mention the ability to dodge or burn in with either filter . . . "

How do you dodge with a filter?

That aside, I thought Phil Davis effectively put to rest the idea that there was some special benefit to "split filter" printing (meaning the making of two separate exposures using two different filters, not the use of different filters to adjust local contrast) in his article that appeared years ago (1994 I believe) in Photo Techniques magazine.

There is only a benefit when doing something, like dodging, during one of the two exposures, but not during the other. Just mixing two exposures brings no benefit.

[Chuck Pere]

For another view of the topic see:

http://www.freelists.org/archives/pure-silver/01-2005/msg00144.html

May not be as simple as it seems.

[JW Dewdney]

This doesn't explain why it worked at his school and not at home. Why do you think the sequence of the exposures make a difference?

Did you use the same water for the dev and everything? The alkalinity and/or mineral content can definitely affect print 'color'.

[Ralph W. Lambrecht]

You got the wrong guy. I didn't do it.

[Ralph W. Lambrecht]

Chuck

This is only at the very extreme ends of contrast with very brief grade-5 exposures. This has little to do with the dicussion at hand.

Don't let the extremes and exeptions mud the clarity of the simple explanation, which is good for 99% of the procedure. IMHO, that too often done by some individuals, who are far more interested in presenting themselves than solving someones problem. Your link is a good example.

[Patrik Roseen]

I am struggling to understand the logic in various posts here...Why do I get a feeling there are some who are very negative about split filtering...

There seem to be three different reasons for split-filtering:
1) A very simple procedure to overcome a problematic negative spanning over a too wide light range. So instead of dodging and burning, two filters are used to compress the highlights and still get a fair contrast in the shadows.

2) Instead of finding the optimal graded filter or VC adjustements two filters are used as a 'cookbook like procedure'

3) To dodge and burn different areas of a photograph thereby allowing different contrasts for different parts...and still not having to first find an optimal filter or VC-adjustment.

Many people enjoy the cookbook-like-style which splitfiltering offers...and as with any recipy people can then go off an expirement in different fashions.
But I sense there is something else lurking under the surface, or?

[Ralph W. Lambrecht]

Patrik Roseen wrote:

There seem to be three different reasons for split-filtering:
1) A very simple procedure to overcome a problematic negative spanning over a too wide light range. So instead of dodging and burning, two filters are used to compress the highlights and still get a fair contrast in the shadows.

Works (without the contrast in the shadows) and is equal to other VC techniques, but the dodged and burned print will have more sparkle and contrast.


2) Instead of finding the optimal graded filter or VC adjustements two filters are used as a 'cookbook like procedure'

That's the same as above.


3) To dodge and burn different areas of a photograph thereby allowing different contrasts for different parts...and still not having to first find an optimal filter or VC-adjustment.

That really works well and can't be done otherwise. This is where split-grade printing shines.

[cyrus]

Thanks for all the help. I have emailed my instructor to see if I was imagining things. No it wasn't lith printing -- which I have yet to play with.

It wasn't so long ago, so the matter is pretty simple to remember. In fact I remember the print quite well -- breakwater at Coney Island shore; bits of rocks and pier pylons sticking out of the water.

We exposed a print at 5, only long enough to get a hint of the deepest shadows.
Then we exposed at 1.

The end result differed from a "straight" print in two ways.

First, I had been having a lot of trouble burning in a very irregular section of the straight print. Trying to burn this section in resulted in a "halo" effect on surrounding sections because I wasn't able to match the dodger shape to the image, and I tried so often that I ran out of cardboard paper to cut up to make dodgers. Anyway, using the split filter technique, this part came out fine on its own.

Second, there was a slight hint of purplish color to the shadows -- the whites were sort of creamy looking, and the shadows had a purplish tint. It sorta looked like Selenium. We didnt tint anything in the class but I remarked that it has the same over all color scheme reminded me of a glass of rootbeer.

The class was at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. Since I live nearby I don't think the ph of the water can differ so much. I have emailed my instructor to figure it out.

In fact I remember asking him how the split filtering thing works to create that look. "Creamy" was his word for the effect, not mine. And he had been in the biz since when I was born.

[Ralph W. Lambrecht]

cyrus

So what are you doing differently in your darkroom?

[robc]

Please tell us how many people were using the developer trays and were they all using the same paper as you. How near to exhaustion was the developer. Frequently in a students environemnt, the chemicals get contaminated with splashes from stop or fixer or someone making a mistake and putting a fixed print into developer. Was the print fixed to completion and washed fully afterwards? In other words, you have no way of replicating the exact same conditions in your own set up, so don't expect exact same results.

If you want blue purple colour, then develop in coldtone developer and selenium tone at around 1:12 dilution. I assume you are using a neutral/cool tone paper and not warm tone.