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Old 21st April 2019, 08:55 PM
Mike O'Pray Mike O'Pray is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Daventry, Northants
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It may simply be that you like a very high contrast print in which case what I am about to say can be ignored but if you need grade 5 to get what may be a "normal" looking print then you may need to examine your negatives

Correctly exposed and developed negatives should as a rule give good contrast at about grade 3 to maybe 3.5. This gives you scope where required for "artistic " reasons to use grade 4-5. Unless you use grade 5 to give you a "soot and whitewash " look and this is your preferred option then we are back to negative exposure and development.

The easiest way to settle this is to show us a print at max magenta then. Nearly all of my prints look right to me and those I show them to at grade 3-3.5 and I'd get comments from my viewers if they were grade 5 prints but it could just be a matter of taste

Showing us a print to your taste may help clear matter up

I too have a colour head but choose, for ease of exposure calculations, to set my colour filters to zero and use Ilford under the lens filters which will give a genuine grade 5. The great thing about Ilford filters is that grades 00-3.5 require one exposure and grades 4-5 require double whereas colour filters require that you need to do tests to calculate how much increased exposure you need to compensate for the increase in magenta

Mike
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