TV wrote: >You probably need to play around with exposure and contrast. > >Take a neg and make a decent print, noting the time (X)...make another >print at .65X, then one more at 1.5X. The .65x should look too light, >the 1.5x one should be too dark. OTOH, you may decide your first one >sucked and 1.4X is the way to go. > >Then dial in about 50 units of magenta and print one at 1.3X. This one >should look contrasty. > >Dial out the magenta and dial in 50 units of yellow. Print that at >1.3X. This one should look flat. > >Don't do test strips here...look at the whole print, and don't be >afraid to waste a little paper. If you're feeling adventurous, try >developing the prints at 30, 60 and 120 seconds and see if those make >any differences. > >That should give you an idea of what your head can do and how the >various controls work. > >To figure out what a good print looks like, you need to go look at >some decent prints.
I've found that "practicing" with black and white scans on a computer is very helpful. Most Photoshop books tell you to avoid the brightness and contrast adjustments and use the histogram and curves tools, but the brightness and contrast adjustments corespond closely with the exposure and contrast filter changes you have available in the darkroom. Even freeware image editors will have these adjustments. Make some black and white scans (even using a flatbed scanner on prints) and play around with them on the computer. You don't have to print anything; just observe the effects of the changes you make. You learn pretty quickly what changing contrast looks like and how it interacts with exposure changes. It isn't a perect simulation but after doing this for some time I found I was much quicker at zeroing in on the right exposure time and contrast filter in the darkroom. -- Mark Roberts www.robertstech.com - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
