Your Thoughts? 1st time trying split grade...

[Bob Carnie]

And may the Force be with you.

[David Brown]

I'm planning to spend the day in Valerie's darkroom in the next few weeks, and she's going to help me grasp some if the basics. I'll report back after that and let y'all know how it's going.

You're in good hands.

[DavidBrunell]

I recently adopted spit grading in my work and have been very pleased with the results; systematic, reliable, plenty of room for creativity.

[Richard Jepsen]

Unless you are burning and dodging during each of the soft and hard exposures, split grade printing is no different than using a single intermediate grade filter.

I made a half hearted effort to split grade print. I thought it harder to determine exposure. The technique lengthened my workflow with no better results. The technique seemed somewhat gimmicky. I only burn and dodge to balance the print vs dramatic effects.

Later I read an article in Photo Techniques. The article, written by two retired Kodak engineers said there was little advantage in split grade printing.

If a negative is not within a narrow range I go back and re-shoot. It makes printing easier. I burn up less time in the DR and have higher satisfaction. A twofer.

[Mark Crabtree]

I struggled with finding a system of contrast adjustment that worked for me with color heads. I switched to split grade printing for a while and really liked being able to separate the shadow and highlight exposure adjustments. It is a very appealing way of approaching contrast adjustment to me, but a bit of nuisance in the details. The dual tube color heads let you do something similar with a single exposure, but I never manage to get that system into my darkroom.

Eventually, I came up with a way to separate the shadow exposure with the color head, and then dial in the highlights I want. It is not as direct an approach as the split grade system, but in real life (at least mine) ends up using about the same amount of time and paper. If you are printing negatives with hugely varied contrast, then the split grade can be an advantage in getting it (or very close) on the first print.

As others have said, the same end result can be obtained either way. This has been proven numerous times. I had to convince myself of that since I was getting to prints I thought I couldn't obtain any other way; I found that I always could match them. Any advantage is in the path that gets you there.