Hi all,

I think I grasped the jest of Les McClean article on dry-down. However my analyzer doesn,t have a drydown compensationfeature. It will only let me adjust printing time in 1/12 of an F-stop. Can anyone tell to what percentage 1/12 of an F-stop equates. Is it 1/12 100% or 1/12 of 50% or even somthing else.

Thank you

Jaap Jan

As long as you calibrated your analyser from dry highlight teststrips, you should have assessed them after drydown had occurred, so just trust what it is telling you. If not, , when using non-calibrated papers, I give -1/12 compensation which seems to be about right (1/10 is 10 % right --- then 1/12 is close enough for me)

hope that helps

Jaap,
I use a pretty foolproof method for dealing with dry-down. I use an old FB paper dryer to dry the test strip/print. The down side is that it takes 10 mins or so before it dries, but it's never let me down once. By the way, is it me, or does Ilford FB warm seem to dry down more than some other papers ( e.g. Forte Polywarmtone). Regards, BLIGHTY.

Blighty,

I haven't used Ilford Warmtone that much. I do use Forte Polywarmtone and I love that paper. I do agree it doesn,t dry down as much as ine my experiance Ilford Multigrade IV. But to be honoust, at the time I changed papers I also started to type down my prints when drying. It seem to curtail dry-down somewhat and also leaves relatively uncurled print. I sure hpoe to be able to buy Forte paper in the future

Jaap Jan

I used to use a 1500 watt hair dryer to dry color prints to evaluate the color. I takes only a minute or so and did not appear to cause harm. This should be useful with test strips and prints even if not for the final print.

The Analyser predicts the tones on a final dry print so while the print is wet it's likely to look lighter. When you calibrate your Analyser, be sure to dry the test strips thoroughly before making any adjustments - that way dry down is taken care of automatically. That's why the Analyser doesn't have DD compensation.

Most FB papers dry down between around 9 and 13%, i.e. a sixth to a quarter stop. Hope that helps!

Regards
Richard Ross
RH Designs