What's the secret?

[Toffle]

I agree with many of those suggestions. I do it like this: tape the negative to the glass after removing dust from the negative and glass. Use foam that is dark gray or black. Set the paper on the foam. Then you should be able to see well enough line it up reasonably well by moving the glass. Unless you are printing thin negatives at less than MIN-TIME-FOR-MAX-BLACK the clear tape should not show up in the prints.

Thanks, IC (and others)

To be clear, the issue is not the printing paper moving on the easel, it is the negative (in this case a paper negative) squirreling around on top of the sandwich when I try to set the glass. In general, I'm not out that much, but when you are trying for that "perfect" contact print, any misalignment is too much. I think, in additon to a healthy felt/foam backing, I'll be trying a variation of the tape technique soon. For now, I think I'll skip the "wet paper" tecnique.

This may all be academic in a week or so... I'm checking out a 4x5 Besseler in the next few days. It may find its way to my studio.

Still... there is something to be said for those sexy 4x5 contacts I've been working on.

Cheers,

[John Koehrer]

Try a glue stick. Use a dab on the corners of the neg & align on the paper. I think 3M has something like they use on th PostIt sticky note.

[jnanian]

the other thing you can do is flatten your paper negative under
something/s that are heavy ... books, sheets of glass &C .. or
if you have a drymount press that is good too
then you just put your flat paper on the unexposed paper
and have no problems at all ...
some people use rc paper for paper negatives
i wonder if they have this trouble too ...

i wouldn't use glue stick or tape ...
it seems like something that had the potential to cause trouble