How much Magenta to use when printing

[coops]

After being away for several months I finely made it back into the darkroom last night to make some prints. I had been disapointed with my prints since day one and almost gave up on it. I recently purchased a Fuji GF670 and shot off a few rolls and decided to try again. After picking my best test strip I made a print with that exposure and then made another test strip adding some magenta. I arbitrarily picked 60 units? My enlarger goes to 200. Anyway, I made several really good prints ( for me anyway), and am really looking forward to making more. My question though. As I said I picked 60 units of magenta for no good reason. Is say 10 seconds exposure of 60 Magenta the same as 5 seconds of 30 magenta? Or 20 seconds of 120 units? How do you choose how much filtration?

By the way, I shot Hp5 at box speed using the manual settings on the camera as opposed to spot metering with my 4x5, and the negatives were all fantastic. Perhaps I was doing something wrong when shooting 4x5 and thats why my prints were not so good. The Fuji is sharp also.

[jp]

Depends on the paper/color head/etc.. There are usually charts in each paper box that tell you what grade 60M is.

Exposure will differ when changing color on a normal color head. I pick a contrast, then nail down the exposure.

[bob carnie]

I have found 200 magenta is good for grade 5
100 magenta is good for grade 4
white light gives you more power and seems to be around a 1 1/2 or 2
20-40 yellow would give you around a grade 1
200 yellow is what I use for 00 burns and flash

for every increase of 30 magenta you will notice about a stop of density loss.. adjusting the yellow will be barely noticable.

As Jp498 says there are a lot of variables.

type of developer, type film stock and developer used to process the film.

What you can do is purchase the ilford filters and make a series of prints to a known density with each filter.

Then by using your dichroic filters you can match with the filters and record the density changes as you go up.

With Magenta I figure about 30magenta change is a full grade, except when you hit 100 magenta, which I feel is about a 4 and a 4 1/2 I would put the filter at 150.

your values will be different from mine and you would be wise to spend an afternoon with some VC RC paper doing these tests.
Once you have matched prints you can pretty much determine your starting points with various negatives just by placing a known negative beside the new negative on a light box and compare.

[bob carnie]

just a bit more.

you choose the magenta due to the contrast of the negative, the density of the negative will determine how much time you need to expose on the enlarger..

make sense?

[mcherry]

I used to print with a VCCE head but have now been printing B&W with a dichroic head. I use a combination of both yellow and magenta at all times to maintain exposure consistence through various "grades". The VCCE head is still my favorite for straight B&W work though and I may pick up another for a second enlarger I just grabbed. You can find a chart to use as a starting point on both Ilford's site and in the book Way Beyond Monochrome (which I highly recommend).

Having said all of that, I never was really truly pleased with my darkroom work until I learned to split print. Since that time, I spend more time on any given print but the results are what I envision.

[ic-racer]

After being away for several months I finely made it back into the darkroom last night to make some prints. I had been disapointed with my prints since day one and almost gave up on it. I recently purchased a Fuji GF670 and shot off a few rolls and decided to try again. After picking my best test strip I made a print with that exposure and then made another test strip adding some magenta. I arbitrarily picked 60 units? My enlarger goes to 200. Anyway, I made several really good prints ( for me anyway), and am really looking forward to making more. My question though. As I said I picked 60 units of magenta for no good reason. Is say 10 seconds exposure of 60 Magenta the same as 5 seconds of 30 magenta? Or 20 seconds of 120 units? How do you choose how much filtration?

By the way, I shot Hp5 at box speed using the manual settings on the camera as opposed to spot metering with my 4x5, and the negatives were all fantastic. Perhaps I was doing something wrong when shooting 4x5 and thats why my prints were not so good. The Fuji is sharp also.

"How much Magenta..." That is like asking "How much exposure time..." In both cases you use trial and error to zero in on the best settings using test strips. Exposure meters may save some time but you still may want to do some test strips before exposing an entire sheet of paper.

I find it easier to zero in on a correct exposure time by using the combined Magenta/Yellow settings as listed in the Ilford paper insert.

[cowanw]

Is say 10 seconds exposure of 60 Magenta the same as 5 seconds of 30 magenta? Or 20 seconds of 120 units? How do you choose how much filtration?.

Just to be clear, the two are for different purposes; the time is for exposure of the print and the magenta is for contrast. So no, 10 seconds exposure of 60 Magenta is not the same as 5 seconds of 30 magenta.