Tips for Contact Printing?

[Alan9940]

Attachment 186645

Press R for safe light, Yellow or Purple for split grade printing.

With some testing you find what exposure time of yellow gives same middle gray than purple, then by balancing the exposure time with each color you have variable contrast with MG papers. You also burn shadows or highlights with the grade you want.

Yellow makes the same than green, because yellow is green + red, having the red no effect. Also purple does the same tan blue. Blue or Purple is high contrast, green or yellow is low contrast.

It's better to use yellow and purple (than green-blue) because the additional red allows to see better while burning/dodging.

I place the bulb 2m high, under it I place a cardboard with a hole to better control exposure, the remote IR command can adjust power, but when you press R you get full power, so I find the convenient way is the cardboard with a bore.

Also a smaller light source (because of the bore) helps sharpness if contact is not perfect. I use a 8mm glass on the neg+paper, so no lock needed.

I glued a little plastic on R-Y-P buttons to (in the remote) locate where they are without looking at.

Wow, this is an interesting idea! It sounds like you're contact printing on to VC enlarging papers. Do you think the bulb is bright enough to print on the much slower silver chloride papers like Lodima? I assume one would use the white or blue light for these papers?

[Pere Casals]

Wow, this is an interesting idea! It sounds like you're contact printing on to VC enlarging papers. Do you think the bulb is bright enough to print on the much slower silver chloride papers like Lodima? I assume one would use the white or blue light for these papers?

Alan, the LED effectiveness is around x10 the tungnsten one, so a 6W led is like a 50 or 60W tungsten. If a 50W bulb was enough for Lodima then the 6W LED will also be, but if you go to that then get the one that Randy posted, the RF remote command is better. Even you may place it inside the enlarger if you want, because RF signal should reach easier the bulb.

... so you convert a regular enlarger to a "split grade enlarger", with no need to place filters in the drawer which is bad if enlarging a negative because the projection may move...