Re: [Leica] Split printing

[Mark Rabiner <mrabiner@concentric.net>]

leica@olemiss.edu wrote:
> 
> >My own personal and perhaps not common take on this might be the fact
> >that I've gotten really enamored with this whole split printing
> >approach... two consecutive exposures, one for the highest contrast, one
> >for the lowest. With the Aristo it is a blue softlight for the high and
> >the green for the low; you just flip a switch.
> 
> >I would have thought this split printing thing would have revolutionize the
> >black and white darkroom world by know and I read it's easier to teach as
> >students have trouble with the concept of contrast. But such is probably
> >not the case. For a while we'll have an edge.
> 
> Printing, without dodging or burning in two exposures at a different contrast levels, will only give you a contrast # something in between the two. Each VC filter allows green and blue light to pass through in varying amounts. It really doesn't matter whether the blue light arrives in one exposure, and then the green, or the blue/green light is delivered all at once. The end result would be the same. I don't think the two exposure printing without masking can achieve tonal distributions that aren't achievable with a single exposure under the appropriate filtration. Of course, burning and dodging with different filters is a very powerful method of modifying images, but, there is no magic can be worked by simple split filtering. Such a result would have to come from changing the curvature of the characteristic of the emulsion and that is fixed by the emulsion itself.
> I truly belive that mostly split printing proponents see something there for their efforts. Like so many Leica things, it's just an issue of personal preference, on which reasonable minds can and do disagree.
> For further reading, I recommend the article "Variable Contrast Papers Revealed", by Phil Davis in Photo Techniques, Sept-Oct 1994.
> 
> KT

I have printed black and white for thirty four years, the last four
using the split printing technique. Though you speak with great
authority KT your assertions are patently false, each and every one of
them. It might be more interesting to find out from where you got them.
Is it the article you are quoting? 
You never quite got around to telling us just how much experience you've
had with the technique. Have you tried it even once? I doubt it.
In the nice few months I have been on the lug I have said a few dumb,
non backed up things and read quite a few but nothing comes close to
being as insulting to any ones intelligence as this.
Mark Rabiner