Quarter Grades and Cold Light Printing

[Neil Poulsen]

I'm considering getting an Aristo cold light head. I have the Zone VI type II VC outfit and want this head for small negatives. I have the Beseler adaptor that enables me to do this. It's easy enough to use contrast filters with this unit, just lift the head and place a filter over the diffuser. Of course, I want the most recent lamp that was optimized for VC printing.

Has anyone experimented with filtration for quarter grades? In the past, I've found that half-grade increments are too large of a jump. Quarter grades would be about right. Steve Anchelle, in his VC printing book, discussed using Roscoe filters for VC filtration. I was thinking of using these in conjunction with the regular Ilford filters when I need to split the difference between two half grades.

Of course, I can do testing, which I don't mind doing. But, I'm interested in what others have found.

[Loose Gravel]

Rosco lighting gels can split grades to less than a 1/4. Get some greens and blues. They come in fractional stops. Experiment to find what you're looking for. The filters are cheap.

[Kirk Keyes]

Neil - Hollywood Lights on SE McLaughlin and about 17th (Portland, OR) seems to have a full line of Rosco filters in stock. $7 a sheet when I was in earlier this summer.

Kirk

[lee]

If you split grade print there is no need for 1/4 grades. The contrast is just controlled with green and blue filters. It really works well with cold light sources.

lee\c

[Ronald Moravec]

By splitting the exposure evenly with #2 and 2 1/2, you will get 2 1/4.

You may also use 25% #2 and 75 % number 3 and get 2 1/4.