Illumination for (wet) print viewing?

[Steve Goldstein]

I've read in vary places (Way Beyond Monochrome being one) that a lot of people use EV6-EV7 (@ASA100, if that matters) for viewing wet prints. How is that best measured - by incident meter at the print location or by reflective meter off a white card?

I found that the two methods give very different readings for the same light, presumably because the incident meter assumes an average reflectivity whereas the reflective meter is trying to force everything to grey.

[E. von Hoegh]

Incident; an incident reading measures the light falling on an object, a better specification would be illumination in foot-candles, by definition an incident measurement. A reflected reading would be dependent on the tones of the print plus any reflection from the glossy/wet surface.

[Steve Goldstein]

Thank you. That's what I suspected.

[ic-racer]

I just checked my area and it is EV7. Though I don't view wet prints, I analyze dry test prints.

[Ari]

I don't know the EV, but I've used a 100W bare bulb at 50cm (about 2ft), and it was a pretty accurate method for many years.

[Maris Rusis]

I inspect tonal values of wet gelatin-silver photographs at EV 2.5. This intensity is low enough to simulate the effects of dry-down. If I make photographs that look good wet under a bright light they will all be too dark when I pick them off the drying screens the next morning.