Back in the darkroom after a long break. The negative is 35mm fuji acros. It was weird light the day of the picture, and the sky is overexposed versus the ground.
In photoshop, I have no problem getting the sky how I want it to look, by making a curve, dragging the highlight point down and the 3/4 mid down and then making a mask right along the horizon line.
At the enlarger, however it's a different story, I cut a shape of cardboard to try and match the horizon and am burning in with the 00 filter, but I have to open the aperture up all the way to 2.8 and even so I simply cannnot get the sky as dark and perfect looking as I can digitally. This was an 11x14 print on ilford warmtone but I was hoping to print is 20x24 once I'd figured out the negative. Even opening the lens up all the way I'm having to burn like 25 seconds with the 00 and my base exposure at between F4 and 5.6 is 30 seconds.
I'm also printing with a fairly large white border. Would flashing/adding pre-exposure help me get the sky closer to my digital version? I can handle losing a little contrast up there, but don't want to lose contrast in the ground or not be able to have my white print borders. (I don't have actual image of the physical print as it's drying at the lab, but have approximated my struggle here on the scan) The band of overexposure on the top left edge is also frustrating, it seems to show up more on the analog print then the digital.
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