Anthony Farr wrote: "John,
Reflections off the internal surfaces between the negative carrier and the lens will lower the contrast of an enlarging system. Condensor enlargers send their light straight through the neg to the lens and avoid too much spill onto the inner surfaces below the neg carrier (except for Callier Effect scattering in the case of traditional b&w). Diffusion enlargers send a lot of light obliquely through the neg or tranny, and this light can set up reflections, causing flare, if the surfaces inside the image forming area are too smooth or not otherwise adequately light absorbant. As I described in the post you quoted, some enlargers are good in this regard and some are poor. If they are poor they will lose contrast because of flare, and that should be rectified because flaring light carries no useful image information. The quality and cleanliness of the enlarging lens make a difference, too.
regards, Anthony Farr"
I have to hand it to you, Anthony, you made me rush out to my darkroom to see if I can understand what you said.
First off, my enlarger has a fabric bellows below the negative stage. I installed a back-up fabric bellows which I lined the insides of with black velvet. I also lined the top and bottom sides of the negative carrier with black velvet - plus I applied a new coat of Kodak flat black paint to the negative carrier's edges around the image aperture. I also installed black velvet to line the area above the negative carrier inside the enlarger. I also lined the lens carrier's inside-the-enlarger section with black velvet. Last and not least, I gently cleaned my 90mm Schneider Apo-Componon enlarging lens (definitely a superior, better than first-class lens).
Anthony (thanks to you), THERE ARE NOW NO REFLECTIVE SURFACES INSIDE THIS ENLARGER ABOVE AND BELOW THE NEGATIVE STAGE!
Next I made prints. Gosh, Anthony, there's no difference in the prints I made last night from the prints I made a few days ago. Condenser prints have more apparent sharpness and definitely more contrast than diffusion color head prints - when I say "more contrast", if color papers were graded I'd say "more contrast" would equivacate to the black and white paper grades of about one grade more contrast. The color head prints have more hues in the color scale range - especially in the highlights.
To my seeing the Callier Effect is the same for color materials as it is for black and white ones - that is the practical reality in my darkroom. What you've said about color materials not having the same light transmission properties as black and white silver materials may very well be, but my printing efforts suggest the Callier Effect is alive and well for color negatives and positives.
Hope you're having a GREAT photo day in WONDERFUL down-under-land (or is it up-over-land?)!!!
