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Argentum
19th February 2009, 05:37 PM
I'm just wondering what peoples experience is with these units. Do they simplify and speed up the process of arriving at a final print? And how are they with printing potraits as the documention says that you need to make adjustments to retain correct skin tones. This concerns me as it looks like the unit will just stretch/compress the negative contrast to make it fit the paper exactly rather than picking an area of the negative which you want to print on a specific tone and working out what you need to do to achieve that.

RH Designs
20th February 2009, 03:12 PM
...it looks like the unit will just stretch/compress the negative contrast to make it fit the paper exactly

I suspect you meant to say it adjusts the paper contrast to fit the negative - which is exactly what it does. If you add the oddly-named "Comfort" controller you get a ten-step zone scale akin to our grey scale to assist with tone placement, but it's still really best thought of as an automated print-making tool, with all the caveats that implies. If you have negs with a full tonal range, you'll get prints with similar, but if you want to explore the negative you're better off with test strips or an Analyser Pro. Think of it as an auto-exposure camera vs a hand-held spotmeter and you won't be far wrong. That said it is a very finely engineered piece of kit which works extremely well, but with a price to match!

Argentum
20th February 2009, 03:46 PM
That's kind of what I thought but if you need to produce a volume of of prints in a short time, then it could have advantages. Problem is that they would be portraits and that is not what it seems to be good at. However, if your negs are consistently exposed and developed, I would have thought it should be possible to build a paper channel which works without having to fine tune each print. Expensive to find out that it doesn't though.

RH Designs
20th February 2009, 05:05 PM
I would imagine that if the lighting etc is consistent then yes, once set up for the "look" you want it should be able to produce good quality prints consistently as well. It is best for making decent quality prints from large numbers of negatives rather than for fine art printers I think.

Gary Holliday
21st February 2009, 01:44 PM
I looked into purchasing the Heiland, but I'm unsure still. Most discussion on the Heiland is in German, so I'm a bit in the dark about its suitability. I was wanting it to print 30-40 wedding photos and needed something to speed up the process.

I'm not sure if Richard offers trial periods with the Heiland before purchases? I think I would need a demonstration to see if it would fit with my style of printing.

I had wondered if it was responsibile for a lot of the dull printing of B&W prints people report from labs.

Argentum
21st February 2009, 03:53 PM
Gary, I think we had this discussion in another place.

The heiland unit should be capable of printing to produce any contrast you like with local burning and dodging at any grade variation you like.
But as a shortcut to printing portraits, which is what wedding images are, it is unlikely to get it right first time unless you have exposed facial tones very consistently and built a profile to make it do that.
Instead of metering the brightest part of the print, you need to be able to meter a face highlight and have that reproduced at say a print value 6 or 7. That is not how it is designed to work out of the box. But it should be possible to build a paper profile which will make it do that and providing your negatives are consistent exposed for facial tones, then it should work. But I would still expect to have to maybe make aat least two prints for each image rather than just one. But that may be much quicker than making test strips, especially split grade test strips.

But it always comes back to the concept that if you have produced very consistent negatives, then making two prints using a standard enlarger setup may be just as quick. That's the 64,000 dollar question. Is your shooting technique good enough, which I'm sure it is, and if it is, will the heiland really save you time. This is something I have been mulling over. The unit is ideally suited to always making the paper contrast fit the negative exactly. But that does not place any specific subject feature on any specific print tone which is cruicial for portraits. So you have to do some calibration work to make it come close to doing that which I think should be achievable. But if it can't get it spot on first time, then what is the benfit.

I think the way to think about this is that the unit is very capable, but if you are treating each photo as a fine print, then it will not be any quicker. But if you are looking for a formulaic approach with prints at good work print or slightly better, then it should in theory be able to save some time. But whether its enough time to justify its cost is another matter and there is a danger that it may make you lazy about taking the print past what the auto function will do you for you.


One of our members, mono, uses two of them. http://www.monoart.de/index.html and http://www.film-and-darkroom-user.org.uk/forum/album.php?albumid=54

He may want to chime in with his experience. And I assume Richard Ross has tried one out as he sells them and has given some feedback.

presspass
2nd March 2009, 07:09 PM
I have been using the splitgrade units for about 10 years. They work very well with conventionally-developed negatives; if you use a toning developer, you will have to interpolate. You probably won't use the first print as your final one, but splitgrade gives a great starting point and the multiple burns are very handy.