dilemma

**Greg Heath** · 12-14-2008 11:30 PM

Originally Posted by bowzart

NOT BAD AT ALL! As Thomas said. A very good effort.

But I gotta say, all the advice is very well intended but it's given by people who already know how. I've taught beginning Futo-gruphy now for about 35 years in Community Colleges, and I've learned a few things over that time about how people learn these skills. In my humble opinion, if you get into split grade printing and other advanced techniques as a rank beginner, it is going to be very hard for you to learn the basics which, if you have them, would make it much easier for you to learn those techniques later on, and not that much later at that. Of course you CAN learn that way, but you will waste a lot of time and blow through a LOT of materials -- you know, $$$.

I don't encourage my students to burn or dodge, even, until they demonstrate that they can handle exposure and contrast. Why? Because if I don't throw out the sea-anchor to keep them from just going for it, very often they try to fix things that ain't broke, and what they end up with is broke things that ain't fixed. I had one student who insisted on burning/dodging everything instead of learning to control contrast with the filters. In one lousy quarter (ten weeks) he went through $750 worth of paper without producing a single convincing print! I told him that our department offered courses in painting and drawing; since that was what he was trying to do, why not just take the appropriate course? It would be a LOT easier! So, my advice? Don't bother with any burning and dodging YET. Learn to do a simple edge burn, about 20% in from each side, with every print. That will get you used to the proceedure.

So, how to print -- BASIC.

First, take a strip of your paper, and cut it in half. Put one half under something or back in the box, which close. Take the other half out into the light, or turn the light on. Not for long, just enough to be sure that it's completely exposed. Develop these pieces at the same time you will the prints. This will give you a reference for comparison. Our brains don't do well with absolutes (you know, like GOOD and EVIL -- well, black and white). If you don't have these to refer to, your brain will tend to make what you have done LOOK like black, and LOOK like white, but having the patches will help you verify that your brain isn't tricking you.

Next, establish the lightest tone in which you wish to retain detail. I would suggest that for this, you consider (in the image you've shown) the highlights in the hair and the catchlights (little bright spots) in the eyes. With a #2(!!!!) filter, print a test to achieve the correct value. It doesn't have to match your white patch if you don't think it should be pure white. I suspect that the catchlights may be pure white, that the hair won't be. Your print has these values quite a bit too low, if we are looking for a "normal" print. I'll qualify "normal": Which member of your family is normal? But try to do it straight for now. Later you can (and I hope you will) get into interpretation, but let's establish a baseline.

ONLY THEN, when you have achieved the correct value in the lights, do you even look at the blacks (I sometimes take a paper punch and make a hole to look through in the patches, so that the local tones are isolated from context). Compare the black patch with something that you think should be close to a solid black - but most of the time, black areas should have detail in them but they ought to contain a full black somewhere. If your black is not black enough, you need to increase contrast. If the black is so deep that it erases detail that you can see in the negative, you need to lower the contrast. When you have made that determination, change your filter if necessary (probably will be). Test again FOR THE WHITE and, only if it is right, check the black as before. Since you are beginning, you will need, probably, to go back and forth a few times. My students often find that in making their first print, it usually takes several hours. It will get a lot faster when you have a base of experience.

Please get comfortable with this; then you can burn, dodge, split your filtration, build fantastic developers, pre or post flash, etc. and you will have the ability to actually identify what is really happening. Resist the temptation to try to cut corners; one decision at a time is what you need right now. You know, it is like being in a chemistry lab running an experiment - a print is an experiment. Cut all the variables, so you are only working on solving one at a time. One of the chemistry instructors took my class, and as we were going through this process, he asked "In this experiment you just did...?" I loved that.

Drinking wine with the neighbors helps. I process my paper in Beers. Well, that's a developer that a fellow named Dr. Roland F. Beers invented. Not advisable to drink it.

Good luck. Have fun.

Larry Bullis

Larry,

I have read your post over and over.

Here is a basic question because I don't know.

How can I expose the print for the whites and the blacks at the same time?

Being that this is really one of my first prints ever...ok maybe my 4th print with an enlarger. I think you are telling me to expose with a #2 to get a baseline print. Then increase the filter and expose the print over his face and hair only, and block the rest of the paper from the enlarger light...then develop the print. Once I get "that" to where I want it to resemble the white paper (reference sheet), then go back with another paper sheet and do it again for the black areas, like his pajama's. Once I have the blacks represented correctly with as dark as I can make it without losing the details in the blackness. Then go back and do it all again but this time apply those times and filters to each part of the print and then develop for the result.

I in my beginner knowledge and practice I was exposing the print with a higher filter number to get the blacks dark enough by way of exposure and bringing the "whites" to a lighter shade by dodging the light to gain a lighter face without losing the details of his skin...

So by my explanation, and your credentials I am proceeding in an inaccurate way to produce a print. Would this be correct ?

Thanks for your input.

Greg

**bowzart** · 12-14-2008 11:47 PM

Greg,

The reason for #2 is simply that #2 is SUPPOSED to be "normal" but as I say, "which member of your family..."

I think it is great to start with #2 because it is RIGHT in the Middle between 00 and 5, so it will give you a great idea about whether you are shy or excessive on the contrast. It is best to choose a starting point and stick with it. If you don't, how can you evaluate what you have?

Here's another control you may find useful: We use proof sheets for 2 reasons. First, we usually want to know what we have in the way of images. Most people settle for that, and they make the proof sheet to show the image so they can see it. Unfortunately, they often end up trying to print negatives that don't deserve the effort, because they usually don't consider the second reason. That is to tell us how our negatives measure up. Again, I'm going to suggest starting with a #2. Print your roll so that the edge of the film in the center of the sheet merges with the black, but in the corner of the sheet the edge should be just barely visible. I'm assuming here that you will be making your proofs at say, f/8 where "cutoff" is no longer a factor. The principle here is that the center of the field is closest to the lens; the corner the farthest from. The difference in the distances equals lost light. By printing to this precise set of parameters, you can be sure that you are printing to full black, but not overprinting. This gives you the best platform for seeing what is in your negatives. Does something in the negative equal full black, or do you start with a gray? If you start with a gray as the darkest tone, you are overexposing in the camera. If you don't see detail in the blacks, if it goes deep black, you are underexposing. Do you have anything approaching white. or are your whites blown out? In the first case, not having anything at or near white consistently throughout when your negatives pass the exposure test, will indicate that your development time is too short (too little contrast). Second case, whites blown out look like paper - that indicates that you have too much contrast, which results from either a very wide subject brightness range or overdevelopment.

Get it? We are establishing Controls, so we can intelligently evaluate what we have.

Your proof sheets may not look great. If that is true, your negatives aren't great, and you can easily figure out why. I make my students proof this way. It's funny. They come out of the darkroom with a test strip, and ask me whether I can see the holes. The test across the center to corner, not even considering what's ON the film, only the edges. Then, they instantly know whether they have negatives worth printing! It is amazing.

These students, in ten weeks, aren't all printing like St. Ansel. But there is usually one or two who are entering the hallowed realm, and they understand what AA was doing. When they keep at it they quickly become very impressive. It is this little bit of discipline that makes it work.

You have spent a lot on your darkroom. You better buy a light meter. Because our eyes adapt to the light level, it is pretty much impossible to use your eyes as meters. Our brains are squirrely organs. They deceive us all the time. You see through your eyes, not with them - to paraphrase William Blake.

No, it takes no time to think about it, just typing - that's it. This stuff is automatic pilot. I've been doing this for so long - I live and breath this stuff, and I'm really just a machine that presents it and won't let students get away with anything. If I'm going to be on this thing, when I see a need, if I don't answer it if I can, why am I here? I might as well be out shooting or at the very least, frying some trout. You aren't in my class but I'm here to help. I don't make enough teaching to keep me from giving it away. It is great when somebody can use it. That's all I care about.

Go do it.

L

**bowzart** · 12-15-2008 12:14 AM