I'm curious if anyone else experiences this- I often make several B&W prints, changing filtration or exposure slightly. The results seem obvious enough in the darkroom. Later, after the prints are dry, in the light of day, the differences are invisible or insignificant. Why did I bother? Do we tend to see things because we expect to see them, i.e., I increased the exposure so of course there's more detail in the highlights. There's also the issue of dry down. I find I can see detail in highlight areas (dry) that simply didn't exist at all in the wet print. Maybe I shouldn't print so late at night :-) Anyone else marvel at what they do and don't see when the lights come on?

-- Conrad Hoffman (choffman@rpa.net), January 05, 2002

Answers

Conrad, I experience this all the time. It's comforting, however, to hear that someone else suffers this affliction.

-- Ted Kaufman (writercrmp@aol.com), January 05, 2002.

> invisible or insignificant

Happens to me all the time. Usually it means I'm trying too hard to get it "just right" when it was right enough an hour ago.

Drydown and density increase with toning also regularly get the better of me.

-- John Hicks (jhicks31@bellsouth.net), January 06, 2002.

Here are some of the old time secrets of master printers who worked in all those fine B&W labs of days of yore.

A. Do not look at your print when wet with a bright light, or room light. Your brain is making a compensation.

B. diffuse your view light and add pink or magenta to its color. Standard way for doing this was the pink seperator that came in dry mount tissue.

C. Keep your darkroom dark (except for safelights and viewlight) at all times while printing. Make two prints of a number of images keep one wet, dry the other. Study the dry down effects under your print view light over your rinse or hypo tray.

D. Use two paper developers. A short stint in a slow working very soft developer minimizes the dry down effect on some papers.

E. Standard view light was a cheap 5x7 safelight and 7 watt bulb with a shroud made of cardboard and black tape with opal glass or clear with waxed paper, pink wax tissue and other improvised softening and dimming materials. Play around with the intensity and color till the wet print gets as close to the dry print as possible both the lightest highlight, and the deepest shadow details. Remember the subtle differances. Do this for each paper you use and keep the prints for future referance.

F. Try a Thomas safelight, it makes a differance. Most great volume printers worked in large rooms with safelight illumination everywhere. They lit areas where the light was not needed to ease thier eyes. Use a (unsafe)safelight or dim off white light as a lightbox for viewing negs and other stuff that you are now doing with room light. The idea is to keep the extreams of brightness to a minimum. For some reason, the warmer the white light (less yellow & Green), the better your eyes see the detail in the near highlights of a wet print.

G. Try a different fixer. The amount of acid in a fixing bath changes the translucency of some papers. Do not use hardners.

-- Fred De Van (fdv@mindspring.com), January 06, 2002.

Yes, it happens to me all the time too. It is particularly problematic with warm papers such as Portriga. Fred has excellent advice--I have a fixture with a 15 watt bulb in it for judging prints when they're wet. I also find that warm papers often seem to have dual tones when wet, but when dry they appear monochromatic.

-- Ed Buffaloe (edb@unblinkingeye.com), January 06, 2002.

Fred, you're a genius! I have an unused 5x7 safelight that I'll convert to a print viewing light. This will replace a reflector flood that I'm now using. I keep a very small bulb in the flood, but I suspect not small enough. Last week my wife was cutting fabric in the darkroom (go figure) and replaced the bulb with 100W. That was *really* too bright :-) I had never heard about the magenta trick, but because safelights have to be on the reddish end of the spectrum, it makes sense not to drag the eye between both different intensities and color balances. Maybe for other reasons too. I'm also thinking that a foot or knee switch on the viewing light might be really handy, if I could avoid accidental turn-ons. Thanks Fred, and everyone else too.

-- Conrad Hoffman (choffman@rpa.net), January 06, 2002.

I'll jump in with a 'me too'. I print mostly with RC paper and the drydown isn't all that much. When I tried printing on fibre, I worked a print to be nice when wet. I blasted out a couple of prints and then dried the whole group. Imagine my horror when I found them all dark due to drydown. It was an afternoon down the drain.

I've read somewhere (here?) that after doing a wet test print, take the strip you like and subtract 10% time. I do my test strips in 2 sec increments. Generally, I find the one strip I like and subtract 2 seconds (making it one strip lighter).

Usually, if I'm uncomfortable with the print being slightly too light when wet, it will be ok when dry.

-- Johnny Motown (johnny.motown+bwworld@att.net), January 06, 2002.

Kodak's RC has a good 5% dry down but Ilford's RC has only about a 2%. Working in fiber there is a heavy drydown of at least 10% for Ilford and for Kodak, Luminos and Forte papers there is a good 15-20%. If you factor these into your times by subtracting the times to start, your dry prints will be perfect when dry.

-- Scott Walton (scotlynn@shore.net), January 07, 2002.

One thing that can be done is to make a test strip of an important detail area and dry it quickly in a microwave (about 1 to 1 1/2 minute for double weight fiber paper, or whatever works for you -- my microwave doesn't have a "photo paper" setting). Gives you a good idea of a dry down effect.

For some reason the strip seems to dry very shiny in the microwave. I just used a glossy fiber paper test strip so I could have it in my hand as I wrote this, and it dried almost like an RC gloss. However, you can dull it a little by rubbing it on blue jeans to "buff" a little of the shine out.

-- Jim Rock (jameswrock@aol.com), January 07, 2002.

I also use a microwave (a la A.A.)to dry work prints. It makes the highlights easy to judge. I still have to subtract about 5% on the final time to allow for selenim toning. I'm in the process of rereading "The Print" for about the 8th time in preparation for John Sexton's workshop on the expressive print. Every time I reread it, I pick up something new!

It is required reading for any serious B&W worker!

-- Gene Crumpler (hassieguy@att.net), January 08, 2002.

Greetings,

In addition to using a microwave, I have a hair dryer in the darkroom and it works for drying fiber prints. While it takes much too long to completely dry the paper, after 30-60 seconds it will dry the emulsion and the visual effects of dry down will be revealed.

A friend suggested making two prints, dry one and keep the other wet. Adjust the room lights until the wet print looks like the dry print, thus effectively balancing the dry down effect. Theoretically it sounds good, but I haven't tried it myself.

Regards,

-- Pete Caluori (pcaluori@hotmail.com), January 08, 2002.

In addition to the microwave drying of prints, some Zone VI cold lights have a feature that can "dial in" the appropriate dry down factor into the exposure. Both those will help manage the effects of dry down.

-- Joe Lipka (joelipka@earthlink.net), January 10, 2002.