Cotact printing 8x10 using Jobo Varioformat easel, couple of questions.

[Ed Bray]

With the purchase of an 8x10 camera and some film holders my thoughts are now turning as to how I end up with some decent contact prints.

As I already have an 8x10 Jobo Varioformat Easel, I am thinking about using this coupled with my 'Better Scanning' 8x10 AN glass to use as a holder/contact press, and I could then use one of my 2x colour enlargers to provide the coloured light for the multigrade paper.

So: I would place the paper in the easel face up, then the negative emulsion side up and then the AN glass on top to press the negative to the paper, would this be correct?

As I would be contact printing and therefore unable to locally dodge or burn I think that the use of multigrade paper will allow the contrast to be altered slightly to suit the negative, correct or not?

[Brian Ellis]

It's been a while since I made contact prints but I don't think you place the negative emulsion side up if by that you mean the base side of the film would be in contact with the paper. My recollection is that you place emulsion to emulsion.

You actually can do some dodging and burning when contact printing, it just isn't as easy as when enlarging. The main problem I found was that reflections from the glass made it hard to see the areas being dodged and burned. So the dodging and burning had to be confined to fairly large, obvious areas such as the sky and horizon line. Others perhaps were more adept that I was. The good news is that when contact printing you don't usually need to dodge and burn to the same extent you often do when enlarging.

[Ed Bray]

Thanks for the reply Brian, I suppose it matters as to whether any details are reversed or not. I was just assuming that there would be a reduction in Newtons Rings if the emulsion side was next to the glass