Ortho Plus unsharp masks

[resurgance]

Hi there,

I am new to this forum, having been once a 35mm'er then 6x7, 6x8 now 4x5 with a shiny new Chamonix 4x5, 90mm f8 fujinon SW up front. Totally hooked, loving movements and huge (for me) negs.

For a favourite old steam/diesel sawmill shot with lots of rough sawn timber and machinery shot through a wooden building I tried an unsharp mask. I came to the conclusion through various means that I needed to expose a 4x5 contact onto Ilford Ortho plus with a 100W halogen enlarger (LPL 6700) at 5x7" height for 10sec @ f16, and develop in ID-11 1:1 for 2min rotary. Overexposed underdeveloped. The contrast of mask came out great so I think - I do not use a densitometer, but it was flat, grey, and the resulting image post sandwich was quite impressive, once I tweaked the contrast up a grade and a bit.

It had really big motley grain though, which affected the final image (still sharp and pretty amazing considering). I have never played this much with development etc before, and suspect that the grain was from being severely underdeveloped?

So I was going to try halving the exposure to 5 sec, raising the enlarger head to 8x10 size and increasing dev to 3 min. This I was hoping would be underexposed, overdeveloped, but I am just guessing.
I will work through a bit of a process to find a good combo, but am feeling a little puzzled at exactly how I would go about determining ballpark exposure without densitometer, given that I am just starting to grasp curves and densities anyway.
I do have a 'darkroom automation pyro meter' that apparently can be used for densities and straight light output, and I know that I could somehow determine exposure based on asa 3 for ortho plus - my next move is to use my minolta spot meter on the baseboard pointing up and figure exposure out that way.
Has anyone used the pyro meter, or how could I determine exposure on enlarger semi accurately? I have also a DeVere 504 as my main enlarger, that has a modern enlarger lamps Model 3 LED VC head on it - so unfortunately I don't have a standard setup to copy and paste others times etc.

Feel like a bit of a cowboy, and would appreciate a point in the right direction to join the dots, and get me going down the right path?

Thanks,

[cowanw]

Did you see this?
http://www.largeformatphotography.info/unsharp/
and this
http://www.waybeyondmonochrome.com/W...MaskingEd2.pdf

[resurgance]

Hi there, thanks for the reply

Yes thanks, I have scoured all posts, and all sorts of sites but I will narrow it down to one statement and two specific questions,

"Hi there, I am loving 4x5 and learning better practice in the darkroom, great forum you have here, I have been gleaning info for nearly a year, and have finally joined, thanks for having me...."

Questions are;
- Why the motley grain - which I answered myself tonight when after using a totally different exposure, developer and developer time the 'grain' was still there, and I realized that this 'grain' was not grain but acid etched glass a.k.a. anti newton glass that I had lying around in my darkroom (discarded from my Devere after I was still getting flipping newton rings!)

- How does one determine exposure using a densitometer when you only have an exposure index on a graph; To be honest I feel like I should be gleaning this from the books I have - I own 'way beyond monochrome' but am just on the verge of understanding darkroom work from a graph/physics point of view. I am no stranger to the darkroom, but am new to the repeatability through recording results, and really thoroughly understanding all of the fundamentals regarding negative density, best grade control etc. I always just winged it when I was a lot younger, now after a 15 year break I thirst to learn the proper way, but feel like I'm missing some practical steps.

The WBM book mentions a 7.5min dev given an EV of -3.0 on the baseboard - now this to me is interesting, but I have no idea how to get an EV reading, or can I do this with my Minolta SpotF - I doubt it would go into negative EV numbers? any other way?
It does also say that it is easy when you have a densitometer, as a density of 0.3 is 1 stop of exposure - SO I think I need to some up with a 'film speed graph' for using my darkroom automation enlarging meter. Think there's a gonna be some film wasting.

Am I on the right track or is there a better way?

These may be classed as silly questions, but I am itching to discuss this with someone, as I am the only large format guy in my city (that I know of) and so far I have not heard of or met anyone locally where I live that is on the same page.

Thanks

[Larry Gebhardt]

To use a densitometer to help you make your masks you will want to do your tests by contact printing a step wedge. This will tell you what the original density was and how your exposure and development of the mask were. You will then need to extrapolate the results to your film images. Personally I find the densitometer to be useful when you are setting up the process, but not of much help after that.

[Larry Gebhardt]

The Darkroom Automation Pyro meter is very useful (but I don't use the pyro function), and is probably all the densitometer you will need for black and white masking work. It is more of a hassle than a dedicated unit since you need to put the material to read into the negative carrier. And there's no way to read reflected values (for print readings).

[cowanw]

You can try something like this to replace the densitometer for a print. a bit more complicated but cheap.
Especially useful If you contact print a step wedge, with your negative.
https://www.currys.com/product.htm?P...ELS_AND_GUIDES

[Drew Wiley]

I think you're making life way more complicated than it needs to be. I'd learn the basics of masking first, if this is the kind of thing you need for your own workflow.
For one thing, masks need to have a very low gamma evenly extending the entire length of the original negative itself. And rotary dev is pretty aggressive. ID-11 or D76 can be made to work, but you're already using such a short dev time that there's not much control. I'd recommend highly dilute HC-110 instead, for example, 1:31 from 1:3 working solution, NOT stock. A good masking film is FP4, though TMX100 is even better. For most black and white printing you rarely want masks with a DMax higher than .30. A simple homemade densitometer adequate for general evaluation consists simply of a couple holes punched in a piece of black cardboard so you can compare the density patch on a step tablet to a small area on your developed mask. Later on you can refine this by plotting curves if you wish; but it sounds like you're really at an early stage of experimentation where you wouldn't know how to interpret the curves anyway. You first need to learn to practical implications of printing with a mask; and simple test strips will do this a lot faster. But in theory, a .30 mask obviously equates to one extra
step in density, so you need to open your enlarging lens one stop more to get your ballpark printing equivalent.

[resurgance]

Thanks for the replies,

I have a darkroom automation exposure meter, and am just grasping the density side of things. Until now I have always printed by feel, but it is material intensive, and I really like the calculated approach, which I am learning.

Larry I have a step wedge negative that I will contact print onto the ortho plus to plot a speed curve.

Drew I agree, I am on the fringe of understanding, but I am keen to learn, and quick to when this interested. I am interested in unsharp masks primarily as quite a lot of my subject matter has a lot of detail, and I love that sharp look for some shots, rough sawn timer in one of the shots is stunning!
I like ortho plus so I can work with it under safelight, I acquired 2 Kindermann LED safelights that are 620nm, safe for ortho film. I also used some fuji microfine stock (I shoot mostly acros) which worked quite well, in a tray - the stock developer has a 10min dev time for acros, so its not a high potency dev like some stock solutions. I was around the 'native' speed of it it to my estimation, and underdeveloping it to produce a very flat low range neg. The DMax figure you gave is handy, I'll work on that! I will keep reading and reading, and hopefully my conscious and subconscious selves will work together and decide that they understand now...~~~!

Back to the darkroom!

[Drew Wiley]

Ortho film is OK unless you want to learn color film masking, which is different in many respects, depending on the specific media. I just use old Kodak curve plotting sheets which I stockpiled eons ago. One could simply xerox them, or get plotting software if that is your inclination. There are some real differences between step tablets and actual film you might use. Be careful with old tablets which have discolored. But I would seriously look at tray rather than drum development for masks. Dilute 1:2 ID-11 is workable, but make sure it has stabilized first. It won't give a perfect curve; but if you do end up with a little bit too much toe, or some residual fog on the mask, you can clear it with about a minute in Farmer's reducer, which is a very nice tool in general for fine-tuning masks by reducing density. I personally find masking work to be fun because there are so many ways to do it. Normally I don't get horribly fussy when making masks for black and white work, but for color work have developed some very precisely repeatable regimens replete with custom math programs and dev temps within 1/10th deg F - and for that kind of thing you do need a good densitometer. But you've already begun your journey, and I hope it's a pleasant one!

[resurgance]

Drew nice work on the colour masks!

I set out with my darkroom with the sole purpose of doing B&W - I can imagine it would be technically a lot harder to achieve great colour prints! working to 1/10th degree sounds challenging. The Farmers reducer is a great suggestion to flatten out slightly dense masks thanks - Does it take out the highlights and shadows equally at the same time?

Last night I made some more masks based on your comment about having a Dmax of 0.3, and I ended up with exactly that, measured with a densitometer that sits on the baseboard - it measures in stops and I took a reference reading from the clear portion of film I created when exposing the contact, and had a hair over 0.9(stops), which I divided my three to give me the overall density. Looking forward to printing tonight. I do not have any registration gear, but just line the 4x5s up on the light table after taping the first one down. Because I am underdeveloping there is still a lot of detail in the highlights of the mask, without the density in the shadows (opposite with positive I am guessing)

The journey has been very pleasant thanks, and I am quite driven to learn which is nice - when I have done it in the past I only worked on small format, and printed RC with no toning, now my two favourite formats are 6x12 and 4x5; I have many photographic subjects/projects in mind, have a well set up permanent darkroom and am making superb (with room for improvement of course) 12x16 and 16x20 FB prints; I have discovered selenium, and drag bleaching with ferri, after admiring the late Barry Thornton's work, discovering masks I could go on for hours....

Back to the darkroom!