Heiland Splittgrade

[paul owen]

Hi Armin I saw a review in a copy of "Darkroom User" (I think!!). Seemed a great idea. But spoke to RH Designs and decided that it was a hell of a lot of money. But the major reason I decided against it was that I thought it would take some of the fun/enjoyment out of my printing!! I know this may sound strange, but I felt that an important part of the print-making process was simply being automated, and taken out of my control. BUT, if you are turning out large volumes of prints then this is probably an essential piece of kit!! Paul

[Don Welch]

Armin,

There is a review of the Splitgrade in the May/June 2001 issue of PhotoTechniques. This is Vol. 22, No. 3. If you email them at circulation@phototechmag.com you can get a back issue.

[Diego Rigatti]

There is a deep review by Erwin Puts at http://www.imx.nl/photosite/technical/heiland.html

I use a similar analyzer made by Durst and it gave me back the pleasure to stay in the darkroom: three minutes to have a print perfect in contrast and exposition, ready to start with burning and dodging.

I heard from the Italian importer that the Splitgrade is even better than the Durst one (we are going to compare prints made through the two different systems from the same negative)

[Rick Obermeyer]

This all sounds like a new spin of the Durst Multigraph at the same high costs! A word to the wise if I may, after reading through all the smoke and hype, it comes down to the "programmed paper types". I see that they list a select few and those papers not listed can be manually exposed. The same with graded papers. Why pay large sums of money for something that still requires manual exposure, that is, trial and error testing? On the otherhand, you can be tied into the select few programmed papers! There are some nice papers on the market that I didn't see listed such as Oriental Seagull, Bergger, etc. It comes down to the question of how good is the product support for this new equipment. As a Durst Multigraph owner, I can tell you that when you use one of the programmed papers and the unit is calibrated to the paper, everything turns out fine. I can also tell you that Durst has the worst product support of any company I've ever done business with. Their comment in regards to getting testing data done to program another paper was, you send us two 25 sheet packs and perhaps within a year we'll get back to you with the data! There is no product support by Durst in regards to the Multigraph and new papers! The paper testing and programming is the whole idea behind these two technologies. Without the paper testing information to download into the unit, what good is it? Might as well save your money and stay with the trial and error testing method! The whole thing is only going to be as good as the product support you get for it!

[Mani Sitaraman]

There are some threads in the Leica forum here on LUSENET

http://greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-one-category.tcl?topic=Leica%20Pho tography&category=Darkroom

A couple of the enthusiastic reviewers in there will be happy to answer your questions.

I did not find the Erwin Puts article to be particularly useful. Input from an experienced VC printer would be much more useful.

In any case I think the Heiland is one step beyond the multigraph in that it ties densitometric analysis of the projected negative to downloaded/programmed VC paper information and the motorized filter pack.

But its no substitute for burning and dodging as necessary.

[Diego Rigatti]

Rick,

You are right regarding the lack of prompt reaction from Durst in sustaining Multigraph; on its side, Heiland seems to periodically update the software making it available through its web site.

[Diego Rigatti]

The Heiland web site page where the history of the upgrades in the software (downloadable) is shown is http://www.heilandelectronic.de/html/english/products/history.htm.