[pure-silver] Re: contrast changes

  • From: "Richard Knoppow" <dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 27 Feb 2010 14:10:38 -0800


----- Original Message ----- From: "Shannon Stoney" <shannonstoney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, February 27, 2010 11:51 AM
Subject: [pure-silver] contrast changes


I've been making "work prints" for the first time: that is, enlarging to a print on 8x10 paper and getting contrast right before bumping up to the more expensive 11x14. Usually this works pretty well. But in my last printing session, it didn't: the big print looked a lot "flatter" than the little print, which looked fine, at the same paper grade.

I guess I could have agitated less, but I made two big prints and made a point of agitating the second one so that this wouldn't be a problem. Could larger paper be subtly different in contrast? Or could a bigger print just "look" flatter?

--shannon

Shannon, I think this is an optical illusion, its fairly well known. One way of proving it is to overlay the small print on the large one and see if there is a visible difference in the shadow densities. The eye is pretty good at matching brightness of adjacent areas so one can make such comparisons visually with good precision. There may be other effects such as a reciprocity failure in the paper but the comparison should helf find if that is happening.

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