[pure-silver] Re: what causes graininess?
----- Original Message ----- From: "Shannon Stoney" <shannonstoney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, October 20, 2007 11:19 AM
Subject: [pure-silver] what causes graininess?
I was enlarging some negatives today (using the ever-reliable Omega) and the prints look surprisingly grainy. The negatives are medium format and the prints are only 7" square. The ones I enlarged with the Devere before it broke don't seem as grainy. Does a condenser enlarger make things look grainier? What are the other factors? These negatives are HP5+ with DDX 1+4, processed around 11 minutes. (The longer processing time is due to the fact that the diffusion head lengthens the scale on the Ilford Warm Tone paper to about 1.2.)
I don't like grain and I am thinking of switching to FP4+ more, the only problem being that in the Hassie you have to shoot (hand-held) at 1/125 of a second, so there has to be a lot of light for FP4+ to work. I have a flash but I don't much like using it.
I thought that DDX might be the problem, but I tried ID-11 and didn't see any difference. I think DDX is a fairly fine grain developer, but I would be interested in what other people think. 

--shannon
Its possible the condenser is showing more grain than the diffusion head. Normally, this is compensated for by the lower contrast of the paper needed. A partially diffusing condenser system such as used in the Omega will increase appearant contrast by about one paper grade. I have an Arista cold light head for my Omega D2V but seldom use it. I got it orginally because I thought the condenser head was not providing even illumination, in fact it turned out that the enlarger just needed to be aligned. I worked with the diffusion head a bit but went back to the original condenser system. I could see little, if any, difference in the prints made with the two. I use this enlarger for everything from 35mm to 4x5. I suspect it my be that the increased edge sharpness that condensers can give is showing up the grain more. 

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