Enlarger Lenses
The journey through the darkroom continues. My recent upgrade s to make 16"x20" prints has been very satisfying and illuminating. During my first printing work at this scale I became aware that the focus at the edge of the print was not as clear as at the center. Prior to this scale of printing I had not noticed. This is for two reasons 1) My biggest prints were 12x16" prints, 2) I used fast modern papers in this size. When you move up to larger prints you need longer exposures for the same f-stop and my first 16x20" paper was some old Negra Portrene which is a slower emulsion than the modern Ilford paper that I used in the past. Consequently the dual panorama print referenced above was printed at f5.6 at 16" and 32". This lead to the observation of softness at the edge. 16x20" print on Negra Portrene f5.6 | If one zooms into the upper photo at lower right corner and the lower middle, one can easily see the softness expressed at the edge of the ...