Which measuring device should I choose and is banning the test strip a illusion?

[Brian C. Miller]

You can make a test strip mask yourself. I made one out of some cardbord, and then blackened it with a marker. I wrote the times in f-stop increments on it. So if you feel artsy-craftsy, then, hey, no problem!

[mdarnton]

In this week's Amateur Photographer magazine (UK) there is an interview with black and white printer Robin Bell.
He says he can look at the projected negative on the baseboard and see what exposure to give.

I had just about decided not to say anything, but seeing this, here it goes: Over the years that I was making a living in photography, one of the things I did several times was work as a B&W printer in labs, and here's what I did.

I never used any time other than 5 seconds. If the enlarger wasn't bright enough to do that, I put in a bigger bulb, so that the average time was around 5 seconds, two stops down. After a while in any darkroom, I could hone in so that I could stop the lens down until the image on the baseboard reached a brightness I recognized, for that five second exposure. Any burning in was done in 5 second increments. Dodging--well, that was done quickly, wasn't it? The trick was to look at the highlights (the dark areas) and notice how they were disappearing as I stopped down. It's important to keep conditions the same--don't be moving around safelights, for instance, and I only used one type of paper, so I didn't have to adjust for that. Print size doesn't matter, once you calibrate your brain.

It was a surprisingly-easy skill for me to acquire once I decided to try. It works as well with filters on VC paper as not. You don't ever learn it if you don't try (similarly to how letting the camera do exposure automatically doesn't teach anything.) I rarely missed an exposure, and never by much, so the second was always spot on. I didn't use test strips, just test prints, since there were so few of them. You learn a lot more from a test print, anyway.

I found that moving the timer around defeated any attempt to standardize on a look on the baseboar, so 5 seconds it was. It could just as easily be 10 or 15, or anything you're comfortable with, but I was usually working in a high-pressure atmosphere, and time was money.

You wouldn't believe how many prints I could make in a day.

[Toffle]

That is very interesting, Michael, and it sounds like it worked well for you. I am a little confused, though it may simply be a misunderstanding on my part. Way back in my printing education, I was told that there was an inherent instability in paper at any time under 8 seconds. (Now that I think of it, my paper negatives have never had a problem, and those come in at much less than 8 seconds)
I wonder, is there an understood reciprocity failure [ed. thanks, Nicholas] for paper at short exposures? Apart from the splitting of seconds to dodge a print at 5 seconds, it seem so rushed to me, but perhaps that is because I have often aimed for long exposure times on complex prints. Again, I am not disputing your methods; if it worked for you that is all that matters. I just have a hard time wrapping my head around the speed at which you have to work for a 5-second print.

Cheers,
Tom

[ROL]

and second is banning the test strip an illusion?

As in the all important test strip printing devices? Of course – that's why in the spirit of simplicity, my prints are always mere figments of my imagination.

[Nicholas Lindan]

I wonder, is there an understood reciprocity [failure, ed.] for paper at short exposures?

There aren't any appreciable reciprocity effects over a 1 to 256 second range of exposure times:

http://www.darkroomautomation.com/su...ermittency.pdf

Claims of reciprocity anomalies with paper seem to have been the result of timing and/or light attenuation errors. Any lamp warm-up/cool-down has to be compensated for and the light intensity has to be stabilized and controlled to better than 1/20 of a stop.

[mdarnton]

Toffle, I have never heard this. I started doing this when I was 18, in the 60s, and never thought much about the technical aspect of it: I was working in a very aggressive situation, and that was what worked. I never saw any reason to change, because it worked for me, right up to the time I switched to digital. I guess it was fast, but it never seemed that way to me. I was hired to be one of three people to do a summer lab job, and they found other work for the superfluous two others. :-) I won't tell you the number of prints I was making a day, because you won't believe me.

[Steve Smith]

The trick was to look at the highlights (the dark areas) and notice how they were disappearing as I stopped down.

A bit like an extinction lightmeter?


Steve.

[RalphLambrecht]

I am using the RHDesign combination of the Stopclock and Zonemaster II with much satisfaction. For run of the mill prints there is no need to make teststrips, for serious printing however it still is necessary. The catch is the time you have to invest in learning how to take readings and the calibration for each paper. Once done it is a big saver of time and paper though. I wouldn't like to miss it.

+1