Has anyone ever tried preflashing Ilfochrome prints to reduce contrast? did it do much good?

-- Wayne (wsteffen@mr.net), May 24, 2000

Answers

In the days when only the old contrasty CPS material was made, many big labs making cibachrome in Europa preflashed the material regurarly before use. I tryed myself once, not so very serious, and couldn't see any significant improvement, in every case nothing that was worth the effort. The use of the low contrast CF1k has made even masking mostly inessential, at least in commercial work.

-- Jan Eerala (jan.eerala@itameri.net), June 07, 2000.

I've been using the low contrast paper for a couple months now, and I've been pretty pleased with it. the saturation is more than adequate for my tastes, and its contrast is more bearable. Since nobody answered my question for a few days I did try flashing it a few nights ago. It took a while to get the amount of flashing right without fog, but I finally did. It didnt make much difference in contrast though, maybe very slight, which I suppose might be expected with the low contrast paper. I've only tried it on one slide so far though.

My only complaint with the low contrast paper is that along with the overall lower contrast comes lower contrast in the highlights, and theres seemingly nothing I can do about that (other than perhaps masking, which doesnt appeal to me).

-- Wayne (wsteffen@mr.net), June 07, 2000.