What is your favorite gear for contact printing?

[John Kasaian]

1. A sheet of glass
2. A sheet of glass that is hinged on a base
3. A printing or POP frame
4. A self contained contact printer (ie a box with a light scource inside)
5. Something else

..and what is the largest size format you contact print?

[Paul Hamann]

For Azo or enlarging paper two sheets of plate glass. For POP a printing frame.

[Mark Sawyer]

2. A sheet of glass that is hinged on a base.

(Two sheets of 1/4" glass hinged together with duct tape. The lower piece of glass has a black matte board on its top surface.)

11x14 is the largest I currently contact print.

[Ole Tjugen]

A contact printing frame for everything up to 8x10", and a cheap clip frame for anything larger - currently up to 12x16".

[John Bowen]

For Azo, I use a vacuum easel. Works like a charm and is very efficient.

I used to use a Contact printing frame, but once I got a vacuum easel, the frame was sent to an early retirement.

[ic-racer]

I could find no simple or easy solution that worked for VC papers. Most of the issues were related to the difficulty in making test prints without violating the dust free surfaces along with the impossibility of thoroughly removing dust under safe-light conditions.

I concluded the following:
1)Enlarger light projected to the baseboard is not diffuse (even with 'diffusion' enlarger)
2)Diffuse light is needed unless all 5 surfaces are totally dust free (paper surface, negative emulsion side, negative base side, bottom of glass, top of glass)
3)The weight of glass up to 2" would not hold double weight fiber based paper flat enough to get good contact with diffuse light.
4) A printing frame may have been the answer, but for a little more than the price of a good one I just got an 8x10 enlarger

[Richard M. Coda]

Vacuum easel

[SamReeves]

Cheapest RC paper I can find and a contact frame for me.

[Vaughn]

B&S contact printing frames (wonderful things.) But will be switching to a UV light source with a vacumm frame...will be very nice!

Vaughn

[Oren Grad]

I put a large piece of thin glass on the enlarger baseboard, the paper and negative on top of that, and then a piece of 1/8" glass on top to complete the sandwich. I have glass in different sizes for the top of the sandwich, so I can pick something convenient for the size of the negative I'm printing - 1/8" glass gets pretty heavy in the larger sizes. The light source is my LPL 4500II color head.

I haven't been doing a whole lot of printing lately, but my most recent contact prints were from 11x14 negatives - that's as large as I've gone. My contact printing is mostly on glossy variable-contrast RC these days, with keepers toned in selenium and treated with Sistan.