RE: old UV tubes less contrast?

David,

>
My enlarged negative process starts with a 35mm Scala original. This
is printed on APHS and developed with HC-110 1:11. Scala's low
contrast nature works in my favour (as well as skipping the inter-
positive step). I'm very happy with the resulting enlarged
negatives, they seem to be in the right ballpark for VDB.

I have and am using the Stouffer 21-step tablets. I did some tests
with them the other day and am getting 16 steps with VDB (2 coats on
Stonehenge). So does that mean that my negs to be the same? 16 steps
or log 2.4?
>

Sounds like your enlarged negatives are right in the ball park. At this
point I would make some small enlargements using the same image of actual
photographs and print them after varying your development time by about 15%
over and under the developing time you are processing with now. Also include
a negative processed at your normal time for comparison.

This should give you an idea of how close you are coming to correct
processing time. Just make sure your coating and exposure technique is
consistent which it sounds like it is.

You didn't say what your development time is with the 1:11 dilution of
HC-110 but I would guess that it has to be pretty short based on my
experience with the developer. I wouldn't stray much under 4:30. Also rotary
drum processing will almost always produce more consistent negatives than
tray processing.

Using a densitometer does make producing enlarged negatives easier
especially when used with plotting software such as Phil Davis' WinPlotter
program, but you can achieve good results with out either, it just takes
longer and consumes less testing materials.

>
Reading the enlarged negatives is frustrating. I've tried using the
step tablet to compare tones (through the white cards with holes) but
the high-lights in this particular image are small. This is where a
densitometer would come in handy.
>

If you have a color analyzer such as the Beseler PM2L, you can use that as a
densitometer. They can be found quite cheaply on eBay. They are accurate
enough for dup work although you will need to bias the null setting to read
densities above log 2.0.

Good luck,

Don Bryant

P.S. I pray that my message gets posted, some do, some don't.
Received on Fri Mar 3 21:29:55 2006