Darkroom time!
I have just cleaned up after being in my darkroom since, oh, 9 pm last night. I only stopped because the sun came up. To my great pleasure the Beseler 45 works perfectly, and the jury-rigged filter holder I made out of matboard seems to do the job fine. I've got quite a few prints made, although I didn't get quite as many done as I had hoped.
I printed with Polycontrast IV for the first time; it's not a bad paper, all told, although I don't like the fact that Kodak prints its name all over the back of it. Since it's out of production, these boxes are all I'm ever going to have; but it's not that different from the similar Ilford papers, so I don't think it'll be a real problem.
Last time I printed on Forte's Polywarmtone Plus, I noted that Forte appears to have made a bizarre decision to sacrifice midtones for highlight and shadow separation. This was not doing what I wanted on Plus-X, but I tried it with some XP2 negatives today, and the results are just gorgeous. The increased highlight separation makes for a very different print than MGIV, and complements XP2's extreme shoulder very nicely. Considering the XP2 I was printing was from a wedding involving a fair-skinned bride, getting separation between her dress, her skin, and the white walls in the background was paramount. I shall have to get some more of this, for sure. You do have to be careful about faces, though, as if they're just a little dark enough, the paper's bizarre curve will send them way into the shadow values; this is nothing that a little dodging can't fix, though.
The other thing that I'd forgotten about Polywarmtone Plus is how slow it is; some of my exposures, for an 8x10 print of most of a 35mm negative, were in the 150 second range. When I did this on my 23C with MGIV, a comparable exposure would be ten seconds or so. My older 23C enlarger seems to print considerably faster, so perhaps I'll make a point of using it for the Polywarmtone when I can.
For some reason some of my 5x7 paper got fogged. I'm not sure why this is, and I'm not sure how far into the box it goes, but it makes me a little sad. Since 8x10 is my "normal" size it's not much more than an inconvenience, though.
I really really really want a Nova vertical processor; the amount of material I have to move and pour and everything else to set up is just stupid, and it cramps the place severely. There's quite a bit more space with the 45 in, because it has its own table, but not enough to do without my card table unless I'm willing to move the trays onto the table I eat food off of (stupidity) and within splash distance of all the electrical stuff (also stupidity). I can buy one, but I can't figure out how to get it here affordably; the only people who seem to make things like that are Nova themselves, and they don't have a US distributor any more. I did get a quote the other day from one of their employees, telling me it would be almost $200 to ship it.
I'll bring the prints I made to Amorette's birthday party, if anybody wants to see 'em.
I printed with Polycontrast IV for the first time; it's not a bad paper, all told, although I don't like the fact that Kodak prints its name all over the back of it. Since it's out of production, these boxes are all I'm ever going to have; but it's not that different from the similar Ilford papers, so I don't think it'll be a real problem.
Last time I printed on Forte's Polywarmtone Plus, I noted that Forte appears to have made a bizarre decision to sacrifice midtones for highlight and shadow separation. This was not doing what I wanted on Plus-X, but I tried it with some XP2 negatives today, and the results are just gorgeous. The increased highlight separation makes for a very different print than MGIV, and complements XP2's extreme shoulder very nicely. Considering the XP2 I was printing was from a wedding involving a fair-skinned bride, getting separation between her dress, her skin, and the white walls in the background was paramount. I shall have to get some more of this, for sure. You do have to be careful about faces, though, as if they're just a little dark enough, the paper's bizarre curve will send them way into the shadow values; this is nothing that a little dodging can't fix, though.
The other thing that I'd forgotten about Polywarmtone Plus is how slow it is; some of my exposures, for an 8x10 print of most of a 35mm negative, were in the 150 second range. When I did this on my 23C with MGIV, a comparable exposure would be ten seconds or so. My older 23C enlarger seems to print considerably faster, so perhaps I'll make a point of using it for the Polywarmtone when I can.
For some reason some of my 5x7 paper got fogged. I'm not sure why this is, and I'm not sure how far into the box it goes, but it makes me a little sad. Since 8x10 is my "normal" size it's not much more than an inconvenience, though.
I really really really want a Nova vertical processor; the amount of material I have to move and pour and everything else to set up is just stupid, and it cramps the place severely. There's quite a bit more space with the 45 in, because it has its own table, but not enough to do without my card table unless I'm willing to move the trays onto the table I eat food off of (stupidity) and within splash distance of all the electrical stuff (also stupidity). I can buy one, but I can't figure out how to get it here affordably; the only people who seem to make things like that are Nova themselves, and they don't have a US distributor any more. I did get a quote the other day from one of their employees, telling me it would be almost $200 to ship it.
I'll bring the prints I made to Amorette's birthday party, if anybody wants to see 'em.