Re: [Leica] printing questions

[Jesse Hellman <hellman@home.com>]

Just a few thoughts on printing - everyone has his own method and if it
works, I am not to say it is not good. The only important thing in the
end is the print.

F-stop printing never made sense to me. First, while we set ,at best,
quarter F stops on the camera, when we enlarge we often use very small
fractions of time relative to F stops. That is, the difference between
ten seconds and twenty is one F stop, but two prints could differ
significantly if the exposure were changed one second. But maybe I don't
understand the method.

I read Tim Rudman's book, the method is simply the inverse square law,
and yes, it gets you into the ballpark. So it can be helpful as a
starting point. Often the contrast one wants changes with print size, so
I can never go strictly by the math. Instead of using the size of the
print you can mark the enlarger column. It is less acurate but still
useful.

Over the years I gravitated to using minimum numbers of everything: two
films (Tmax 400 and P3200), one camera, two papers, and usually one of
three enlargement sizes, so I have a better idea where a print will end
up before I start printing. This minimalization is something
professionals can't indulge in as easily!

Recently I started using split printing - Mark Rabiner sold me on it,
and after making one print I was hooked. Amazing control of the
tonalities. It is very helpful to keep a few excellent prints in the
darkroom, sort of like a tuning fork for the musician.

Jesse