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  #11  
Old 20th September 2017, 04:00 PM
Mike O'Pray Mike O'Pray is offline
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To be fair to myself and Mr Sherman, I think I will have to read his articles and watch and listen carefully to his videos again. At times in the videos I had difficulty following him. It was as if I has missed some point he had previously made which was the key to understanding where he was in his explanation. In the burning and then flashing video it looked as if his flashing was similar to burning i.e. there didn't seem to be a determined time for it.

As I say it may be me who is poor at following his instructions or it may just take me a while to "get into tune" with his style of presentation. Indeed his objective may not be "instructional" in the narrow sense of the word where "you tell them what you intend to tell: then tell them and finally tell them what you have just told them."

Mike
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  #12  
Old 20th September 2017, 05:32 PM
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GoodOldNorm GoodOldNorm is offline
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I think the jist of it is as follows; Steve Sherman exposes for the mid tones, then underdevelops by using dilute developer and creates edge effects with minimal agitation. He then uses blue and green filters to get the contrast he wants in his prints. His aim is to use less green (soft contrast) than blue (hard contrast). Green filtration if overdone can reduce contrast and produce muddy prints. He uses minimal green filtration to set his highlights then adds snap to his prints with the Blue (hard contrast) filter. In his flashing video he simply flashed the area of his print that had burnt out highlights he did this to reduce the high contrast. The methods he uses are not new, he has just tied exposure, stand development, the amber stain of pyrocat hd developer, paper flashing and split filtering with Blue and green filters altogether and called it "The power of Process". I am sure there is far more to it than that and Steve Sherman has far more knowledge than I have I guess the only way to find out is to purchase his video or attend one of his workshops. His prints look excellent so there is something to be said about his work process.
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Old 20th September 2017, 05:57 PM
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MartyNL MartyNL is offline
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This is one of the sets that I've gone for from Lee. The light transmission is almost identical which may prove helpful with focusing and exposure. The colours are rather pure and with very little overlap something that I thought may be useful. And the spectrum wavelengths appear to fit very nicely within the spectral sensitivity of say Ilford MG FB Classic.

http://www.silverprint.co.uk/wp-cont...B-Classic-.pdf

Now for the disclaimer. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing or if any of this is relevant!
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  #14  
Old 21st September 2017, 08:30 PM
Jerry Bodine Jerry Bodine is offline
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Marty, I also do not profess to be an expert on the topic of VC; there is certainly no shortage of variables at play but here's one to add to the mix: contrast difference between an enlargement and a contact print. There was a thread on this topic about two yrs ago that is worth a read:

http://www.film-and-darkroom-user.or...ad.php?t=11000

When I modified my enlarger light source to LEDs, the ones I used are cool white and had a color temp of 7500*K, made by Cree. The spectral distribution is shown on p.7 of this link (the blue curve):

http://www.cree.com/result/?q=xp-g

It’s noticeably skewed toward blue (definitely not balanced with green), but I checked it out with Ilford MGIV paper I was using at the time, using a Stouffer step wedge and the results were very good with Ilford under-lens filters (result without a filter was close to G2). I plotted the results with MS Excel and included in the plots the results with blue (47B) and green (58) color separation filters to see if the Ilford filters approached those limits. They did. The plots are attached. I moved the curves to coincide at the Zone II density to make it easier to compare the slopes (contrast) of individual curves, and it’s worth noting that when approaching G4 and G5 there’s not much difference in slope. However, those slopes are so steep that even a slight increase can cause a significant grade change. This is made more clear in the first link above. Notice the quirky curves for the lower grades that also can be seen in the Ilford Data Sheet for MGIV if one looks closely at the pdf (also attached).

I have more information that explains this behavior, but Ilford apparently has done a good job of correcting the problem with Classic paper. I’ve not yet completed similar tests of Classic and have not seen this behavior so far.
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  #15  
Old 21st September 2017, 09:06 PM
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Wow Jerry, that looks like quite a bit of work.

Thanks for sharing.
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Old 22nd September 2017, 09:04 AM
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There is an excellent article on split printing by Les McLean on this site. I would be quite surprised if using Blue and Green filters in preference to Ilfords filters made any noticeable difference to the final print. Finding a technique that works for you is probably more important. Starting with a low contrast negative, then increasing the print contrast with a grade 5 or blue filter (as Steve Simmons does) at the final stage sounds reasonable, but is it better than starting with a correctly exposed and developed negative that holds all the information? In Les' article I see he prefers to use a negative with slightly more contrast than normal. The choice of negative exposure may be down to how the negative is going to be enlarged or contact printed. The type of enlarger light source has an effect as does the difference between contact printing and enlarging. I do not print enough to be an expert, it is an area where I need to develop my skills but as always finding time to do these things is always difficult. I have a lot of work on over the next three months but I am hoping to set aside some darkroom time. Marty good luck with your experiment with the green/blue filter approach I don't see why it should not work, the Ilford 400h and 500 heads have a Green/blue filter system in them.
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  #17  
Old 22nd September 2017, 04:36 PM
Jerry Bodine Jerry Bodine is offline
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Obvious errata: My curves coincide at Zone VIII, not II; the window for editing the post had expired. I confused myself thinking of negative curves, rather than paper curves. Apologies.

I agree with Norm that exposing the negative to retain shadow detail (as is normally done), rather than for the mid-tones, would be preferred.

Another excellent source regarding split-grade printing is Way Beyond Monochrome, 2nd Ed. It's very detailed in the use of under-lens filters blended with the blue and green light sources.

Marty- The only reason I did all that work was due to the fact that Ilford said their under-lens filters were designed to be used with a tungsten light source (~2800*K), not the 7500*K of my LEDs. So I wanted to make sure my system would perform well.

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  #18  
Old 22nd September 2017, 07:05 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GoodOldNorm View Post
There is an excellent article on split printing by Les McLean on this site. I would be quite surprised if using Blue and Green filters in preference to Ilfords filters made any noticeable difference to the final print. Finding a technique that works for you is probably more important. Starting with a low contrast negative, then increasing the print contrast with a grade 5 or blue filter (as Steve Simmons does) at the final stage sounds reasonable, but is it better than starting with a correctly exposed and developed negative that holds all the information? In Les' article I see he prefers to use a negative with slightly more contrast than normal. The choice of negative exposure may be down to how the negative is going to be enlarged or contact printed. The type of enlarger light source has an effect as does the difference between contact printing and enlarging. I do not print enough to be an expert, it is an area where I need to develop my skills but as always finding time to do these things is always difficult. I have a lot of work on over the next three months but I am hoping to set aside some darkroom time. Marty good luck with your experiment with the green/blue filter approach I don't see why it should not work, the Ilford 400h and 500 heads have a Green/blue filter system in them.
I couldn't agree more. The very same thought had crossed my mind!

I believe there is some 'common wisdom' which states that split grade printing is particularly useful for 'difficult' negatives...
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Old 22nd September 2017, 07:22 PM
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And I don't know about anyone else's experience but whenever I've had to resort to the 'more extreme' higher and lower grade filters, it's usually been a clear sign that my exposure and/or processing was off. And invariably any subsequent prints bore the scars of a salvaged print.

Nevertheless, I'm curious to see if I can add a new string to my bow.
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  #20  
Old 3rd October 2017, 08:41 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GoodOldNorm View Post
....From what I have read cold light can be quite blue but using a 40y yellow filter above the negative carrier will cancel out the excess blue light....
The old cold light heads were quite blue because most people used graded papers, and blue was all that was required. I have read conflicting reports of the effect of filtering that light for VC use. The filter can only remove something (e.g. excess blue) but it can't make the light green if green isn't there. Some indication is to view the light reflected in the base of a music CD at the angle that gives the rainbow effect. Then you might get some idea of the amount of green present. (This can also be a useful test of a LED safelight and can reveal the surprising presence of undesirable colours.)

The later Aristo single tubes were of a wider spectrum and were optimised for VC filter use. Most of the tubes in the used market would be the old sort unfortunately.
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