Printing Holme Fen and Woodwalton Fen: Continued...

Introduction

I left yesterday's printing with the disappointing revelation that 4 sheets of my Ilford MG Art 300 paper had apparently become fogged. This cost me not only time but money owing to the expense of this cotton rag art paper.

Blog Post Cover Image

I had done pretty well yesterday with 2 good prints only consuming 6 sheets of paper. I was part way through my 3rd print for the day when I noticed the fogging and packed it in. Here is where I got to yesterday. 

Reed Seed Head

I started with a soft filter test strip. The subject is a seed head from a reed that grows in the waterways at Woodwalton Fen. I like their delicate fronds and they are iconic of the Fens as they exist in most waterways and the reeds are used for thatching roofs. I keyed off the previous prints and so kept the enlarger set at f11.

f11 #00 test strip

The test strip did not alert me to any fogging problems. So I set about estimating an exposure at 24 seconds. I want the fronds to standout being very light against the background. It might have helped to open the aperture when taking the photograph but spot metering such a small thing would have been a challenge. 24 seconds seemed to be the point at which tone on the stem was just starting to show up. Too little exposure and the fronds would lack detail and look flat. So now a full print at the #00 24 seconds exposure. 

f11 #00 24 seconds

A number of things are apparent from this print. What I had missed was the fogging. I wasn't looking for it and a wet print seems whiter most of the time. In any case I got the easel setup with unequal margins left and right and I can see I will need to burn the upper third of the image to balance out the tone of the background. 

I then proceed to the hard filter test strip. I adjust the soft filter with a quarter stop more exposure to 27 seconds. 

f11 #00 27 seconds #5 test strip

Still haven't noticed the fogging so I plow on! I settle on 32 seconds for the hard filter and also develop my burn plan as follows. 

Burn Plan

I then execute this print...

f11 #00 27 seconds #5 32 seconds burn upper portion 12-16 seconds

The light areas of the top are more balanced but the corners want more attention. It is only now that I placed these prints outside to dry that I notice the fogging.

The next morning I set about assessing the rest of the paper stock. Ilford paper I have purchased new has never fogged with age so this surprised me. I took a fresh sheet from the same box as those in my paper safe were from and made a quick test print. 

Print to test for fogging of other paper

This was not setup well in the easel as I had forgotten I cleaned some dust from the negative and it moved in the holder the night before. Never-the-less the borders are much whiter. Below is a scan of both papers for comparison. 

Fogged vs unfogged paper

What  a relief. Back on track I went to complete the print. I developed a new burn plan to darken the corners more.  

Second Burn Plan

Here is the result. 

Final Print  f11 #00 26 seconds #5 32 seconds

I was pretty satisfied with this one. Not as good an image I feel as the two earlier ones. I had noticed that there is a lot of space around the reed head and speculated a tighter crop would be more effective. A side-effect would be to remove the areas that need burning at the top. 

I reset the enlarger for the tighter crop. I calculated 1:1.77 area ratio which is almost a full stop. I then printed with the same timings as before but at f8 to compensate for the raised enlarger head and less light falling on the paper. 

Tight crop f8 #00 26 seconds #5 32 seconds

This was just about perfect. I did want to push the image a bit more by lightening the reed head more with less soft filter and then boosting the hard filter to gain some contrast. I settled on #00 19 seconds (-1/4 stop) and #5 38 seconds (+1/4 stop). 

Tight crop f8 #00 19 seconds #5 38 seconds

This is a marginally better image I think.