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Old 10th November 2012, 08:07 PM
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MartyNL MartyNL is offline
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Default Enlarging lenses in stepless control position

While in the darkroom today I used a fixed printing time and only changed the lens aperture in the stepless position.

I was using a simple Patterson/Philips system 2000 PDT 2020 and PDB 2053 analyzer timer probe which was not connected to the enlarger but used purely as a measuring device to find the correct lens aperture.
My RH Designs meter/analyzer is long over due!

I found it refreshing and quite a revelation as the machine took care of any head height and filter adjustments.

Does anyone else have any experience or views on using the stepless position of enlarging lenses for exposure control rather than using time?
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Old 10th November 2012, 09:35 PM
alexmuir alexmuir is offline
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No views yet, but will give it a try. I have an analyser that should work, and stepless lenses. It's always good to try something new. I would want to avoid max and min aperture, however, but assume you set an initial time that places aperture around mid range?
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Old 11th November 2012, 12:18 PM
PaulBJE PaulBJE is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MartyNL View Post
While in the darkroom today I used a fixed printing time and only changed the lens aperture in the stepless position.

I was using a simple Patterson/Philips system 2000 PDT 2020 and PDB 2053 analyzer timer probe which was not connected to the enlarger but used purely as a measuring device to find the correct lens aperture.
My RH Designs meter/analyzer is long over due!

I found it refreshing and quite a revelation as the machine took care of any head height and filter adjustments.

Does anyone else have any experience or views on using the stepless position of enlarging lenses for exposure control rather than using time?
Yes Marty I have been using a similar system with a simple analyser and once I had mastered where to take the reading it works well.

As Alex says I try to keep the lens aperture around f5.6 to f8. The 'time' only varies using different papers tp keep within those parameters.

Paul Enters

Last edited by PaulBJE; 11th November 2012 at 12:27 PM. Reason: Wrong names
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Old 11th November 2012, 12:45 PM
Lostlabours Lostlabours is offline
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Before the days of digital minilabs the roll head colour printers used different focal lenght lens to make different size enlargements rather than adjusting the height. The focus was fixed and each lens ajusted to give identical exposure times.

With identical exposure times there's no colour or contrast shifts which was critical in professional colour labs where customers expected consistency regardless of the image size, often ordering a few sizes off the smae negative particulrly for wedding/portrait work.

Colour and B&W papers suffer from reciprocity and keeping the exposure time the same overcomes the changing effects at larger sizes.

Ian
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