Don't take everything you read in it as fact. There are errors in several of the recipes.Originally Posted by alavergh
Don't take everything you read in it as fact. There are errors in several of the recipes.
I have used Farmer's Reducer many times to reduce the overall density of unsharp sheet film masks, or to cut toe density/fog a bit differentially. Usually a minute or
so in a tray. So in principle it's perfectly straightforward. But I don't think I'd want to fool with a primary black and white neg intended for making a print per directly without first carefully testing a disposable neg of comparable range and overall density. Easy to lose gradation information you might not want to lose. The whole point of masks is that you don't have to sacrifice the primary shot to make discrete corrective adjustments, or in other words, to salvage a shot that be difficult to
print otherwise. Once you've messed with it with bleach, ain't no way to backtrack.
Yes but that's the easy way!
The bleach method is an easy way to wreck a negative. My method works!
Thanks,
Kirk
at age 73:
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep"
This is true. In the old days would a professional retoucher make a duplicate and work on that instead of the original?
It's easier to work the other way, and selectively intensify with selenium; but even that requires care if its only localized. Fooling with the original neg should only
be a last resort. As I already indicated, I've good a LOT of experience with Farmer's and negs, so know the parameters. If a mask gets overbleached, it can simply
be remade. Once you're original is messed up, that's it.
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