Picture Post, Planes

For me making images of aircraft is heaven. It is the combination of two loves. As you can see these are not the bog standard images you see, they are about the poetry of flight.

Antonov

Hercules 

Hurricane 

Huey 

Tornado

Trident

Technical Data: Camera Nikon FM, Film Agfa APX iso 100, Printed on Ilford multigrade RC gloss, Developed in Multigrade.

Pictures for sale

Enlarging lens revisited

Recently black and white photography magazine has been celebrating it's two hundredth edition which gave me impetus to rediscover what was in some of those back issues. While thumbing through one issue, an article about enlarging lenses caught my eye, reminding me that I have been meaning to revisit the subject.

I have written a couple of small articles: Enlarging lens and which aperture  I re-read both before writing this one so as not to repeat myself. But that is not going to be easy as the main issue with enlarging lenses is quality. The rule of thumb is to choose a lens of six or more elements. The Componon-s and Rodagon are two modern designs that work very well - they are two quality makes of the few still available new.

Looking down a focus finder at F5.6- F8

In the 1970s Nikon special optics division set about producing a darkroom lens second to none ( Apo-EL-Nikkors ). It was done in a one off batch, releasing a number to the market over a ten year period until they were all gone. It has been said that at the end of this period they did consider doing another run but stopped doing so because they would have had to sell the lenses for £12,000 each. I do not know if this figure is true or not. If it is, it will have made the original runs price in the thousands and therefore out of the reach for most of us.

The enlarging lens has one job to do and that is to project the the image from the negative to the paper perfectly. The one hindrance to good enlargement method and creativity is poorly maintained or ignorantly used enlarging lens practice. It is not good enough to think if you close the lens right down, like you would a camera lens, that you will increase the sharpness of the image. The rule again is to close the lens down by two F numbers. In a lot of cases this produces the optimum sharpness. One stop more may result in a softening of the grain structure. This does not mean that you will notice a softening of sharpness with the mark one eye ball as the image is projected onto the paper. Like a lot of things in photography the kit is made to a greater quality than can be seen in normal life.

Focus finder

Enlarging lenses should not be treated as second class citizens as they are several time better in quality than the camera mounted counterparts. They do their best work in a very narrow range of magnifications. For 35mm negatives the lens is optimized to 10x its size which equates to an enlargement of 10x8. As you go up the format scale this decreases 6x6cm lenses 6x and 5x4in 4x magnification. As you push past the optimal point it increases the possibility's of grainy photographs. This is not to say you should not push beyond this point as experience has shown. You can negate this by using ultrafine film developers.

Grain at f11

How do you see which is the best apertures to use? You need to complement your lens with a good focus finder. This magnifies the grain of the negative so you can see it. The best way to use the finder is to have the enlarging lens fully open. Place the finder in the middle of the baseboard. While looking down it at the grain, adjusting the bellows until it separates into little defined specks. This will mean that you now have fine focus.

While still looking down the finder shut the lens down a stop at a time. There will be a point where the look of the grain go's slightly soft and becomes softer the more you close it down. You should remember that you are still at optimum focus. To test this you can try to adjust the sharpness in most cases it will get worse and become to difficult to regain any sharpness until you go back to the optimum aperture.

Grain at F16 looking down the focus finder.

What has been described above is my experience with one of my 35mm enlarging lens. I will point out that it is not a well known make. It is one I use often. The softening of the grain in the focus finder is not transferred to a softer looking image on the baseboard that can be detected with the naked eye but you will start to question whether it is affecting the quality of your images. The only way you will know is to borrow or buy a better quality lens and do a comparison.

When considering buying a lens you should spend as much as possible to ensure that you get a good to very good lens. Knowledge that the lens is not what you expected will impact on your photography subconsciously.  

Picture Post Eukobrom AC Developed photographs

Paper Kentmere RC gloss.

The images that appear in this gallery have been processed using Tetenals Eukobrom AC developer on a number of different papers.

I would like to thank Tetenal for there interest in and re-blogging of the first look post. It was a big surprise when they got intouch.

There is a new post on Eukobrom to be published not all good news.

Paper Fomatone  Chamois 542-11 matt

Paper Ilford FB gloss

Paper Fotospeed RC gloss

Paper Kentmere RC gloss

Paper Fomatone Chamois 542-11 matt

Technical Data:

Camera Bronica SQAi, lens 80mm, Film ilford FP4+ iso 125, Fomapan 100 iso 100, Negative size 120 6x6, Developed in Studional.

Scanned from paper size 9.5 x 12, paper used listed with each image.

Double grade printing.

From time to time I find it strange the way events come together! for instance, I was in the darkroom working on some prints that I could not get the sky to burn in properly. There was nothing unusual in me burning in the sky, most of the photographs I produce have had the skies enhanced in some way. But this time I could not get it the way I wanted it.

The strangeness in this case was that a few days before, I was reading a thread on my favourite forum about how to deal with whited out skies when printing. I took part giving an account of my method of dealing with it. One of the other contributors suggested split grade printing. But when he described the process it is more akin to double grade printing - this is where you use another grade to bring out part of the image that will not burn in at the grade you are using.

All the circled images needed double grade printing.

The process:

The contact print in this case suggested that the stone work of the building and sky were under exposed when compared to the reflection. The segmented test print (grade 2) proved this by indicating that it may need to be burned in for an extra twenty seconds above base exposure of thirty seven seconds. Even with the extra light it did not make the difference. After a further print and forty seconds burn in, it still was not right. I decided to see if changing to a harder grade when burning in would make the difference.

With the discussion still fresh in my mind I opted to use the double grade method to see if it would solve the problem I was having. I normally would have used pre flashed paper but that would mean starting all over again with a pre-flashed test strip. I chose the simpler route of dialing in a harder grade, in this case 4, before burning in the sky and face of the building.

The red area indicates the over lap area of the mask.

Something to consider:

When using this method certain negatives can produce a grainier look to the picture which may not be to your liking and you need to be careful not to knock the masking frame when changing the settings and using the mask.

The burning in method:

It takes practice to get this method to look natural, which is easy to master when you have a nice defined area without things like buildings poking up above the horizon. A piece of card is needed to use as a mask. You do not need to use black card but if you have some all well and good. Otherwise any card will do, if one side is brighter than the other you should always make that side face the lens to reflect the light back. In my opinion you should make the mask smaller than the site that needs covering. Because the card is kept moving it will make up for the under size when used with an up and down motion. If you don't you can end up with a lighter shaded area a bit like an out line you would get if it was still. When you get it right it is very satisfying.

 Result:

I used forty seconds at grade four to burn in the building and sky. How did I know it would work? I further considered the segmented test print, took a calculated risk and listened to the little voice in the back of my head. In other words I went with the creative flow.

 

Basic outline for split grade printing.