I am looking for some information to give to students about pre-flashing photo paper at a low contrast 0 or 00 to help add detail in highlights of a contrasty print. Where could I find an article, etc?

-- Dan Hott (DpHOTTo@aol.com), January 20, 2002

Answers

I don't know about sites but I have done this a good deal. With the negative in the holder, after printing, I would use a Kraft negative envelope and use about 1/10th of the time of the exposure and put the negative sleeve under the lens moving it during exposure. A normal 10 sec exposure with a 1 sec flash works well in most cases. You will see the highlights come right in. These envelopes are for 4x5 and 8x10 film and are somewhat opaque/frosted white tinged envelopes. Hope this helps

-- Scott Walton (scotlynn@shore.net), January 24, 2002.

This is how I was taught to do flashing:

Place a small sheet (e.g. 4x5) of your paper on the easel. Cover one edge of this - say 1/2" - with a sheet of opaque material. Set your f/stop at f/22 and do a test strip by exposing the sheet in increments of 1 or 2 seconds for up to 10 seconds. Process the paper and let dry (or use Ansel Adams' trick of drying in a microwave). The edge you had covered will not have been exposed and so should stay at the base white. This is your reference. Look for the exposure that shows the first hint of gray darker than your reference. This is the threshold of the paper. Use the next lower exposure (e.g. if your 1st hint of gray was at 3 seconds, use 2 seconds) and flash the paper. This allows specular highlights to remain pure white but the rest of the sheet will show a lower contrast.

-- Ron Gratz (rkgratz@mtu.edu), January 30, 2002.