[pure-silver] Re: Split printing C41

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Healy" <emjayhealy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2004 12:17 PM
Subject: [pure-silver] Split printing C41


> Ralph, I'm curious to know why you say this. In printing 
> to color papers, yes, split
> printing would seem to be pointless; but b&w papers are 
> dealing with light and dyes -
> blue and green dyes. By split printing (using a color head 
> enlarger, anyhow, with
> magenta and yellow), you capitalize on this by severely 
> narrowing the spectrum of the
> light color so it more or less affects only one of the 
> dyes. Magenta will register the
> shadows, yellow will bring out details.  I can't for the 
> life of me see how film type would
> negate this.
>
> Mind you, I've only ever split printed silver gelatin and 
> HIE. When I printed w/ b&w C-41,
> it was prior to discovering the split method. So maybe 
> there's a distinction here that
> would be obvious to someone who had tried?
>
> Mike
>
> On 30 Sep 2004 at 17:57, DarkroomMagic wrote:
>
>> He is probably referring to split-grade printing, which 
>> is the
>> combination of two separate exposures, one with a soft 
>> and the other
>> with a hard filter. It is a very useful tool when local 
>> dodging or
>> burning is combined with this technique. Otherwise, it is 
>> exactly the
>> same as using a color enlarger and mixing soft and hard 
>> filtration in
>> one exposure.
>>
>> Nevertheless, it has no influence on your problem. It 
>> doesn't help or
>> hurt in printing C41 films.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Regards
>>
>>
>>
>> Ralph W. Lambrecht
>>
   Split printing, that is controlling contrast by printing 
through two filters in successive exposures should have no 
effect whatever on the tonal rendition of the paper. The 
contrast is controlled by the relative amount of exposure 
given the two emulsion components, it doesn't matter if they 
are exposed one at a time through band-pass color filters or 
both at the same time through differential (band stop) 
filters.
   The original system for Varigam, the first VC paper on 
the market, used successive exposures through each of two 
filters for differing relative times. This proved very 
inconvenient plus the image visible through either filter 
was quite dim. So Defender eventually came out with a set of 
variable contrast differential filters, just the same system 
as used now.
   Exposure through multiple filters can be useful for 
printing in different areas of the image with different 
contrast levels but the idea that overall exposure through 
successive filters will produce any different tonal 
rendition (paper curve) than a single exposure is simply not 
true.
   I suspect those who get some visible difference between 
the two methods are not really controlling the relative 
exposures closely enough. It is very common in photgraphy 
(and in hi-fi audio) to attribute differences in results to 
the thing being varied rather than to experimental error 
because the error has never been analysed.

---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 

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