Part XIX Overview: Fine Printing

Every printer has had the good sheet: the one that came out of the fixer better than the four before it, for reasons nobody wrote down. A month later the negative is back in the carrier and the print will not come again. This part is about the difference between that sheet and a print you can make twice.

The course’s position, and it is a position rather than a chemical fact, is that a fine print is a repeatable object. Not repeatable because printing is mechanical — the decisions in it are interpretive, and two printers will make two different prints from one negative and both may be right — but repeatable because the decisions were written down as they were made. A burn recorded as “a bit more on the sky” is a memory. A burn recorded in the form +2/3 stop over the upper third through the grade 4 filter, on a base of 12.6 s at f/8 at 3.1× magnification is an instruction — those figures are an illustration of the notation, not a recommendation, and yours will be your own. The printing map that carries those instructions is the first of this part’s two deliverables, and the test it has to pass is stated in the assignment at the end: three weeks later, from the map alone, make the print again.

The route, in seven decisions

From an edited proof to a mounted print

1. 1Read the negativeWhat this negative can actually give — its density range measured rather than guessed, and a paper and a starting filtration chosen from the published ISO(R) table
2. 2Anchor the exposureA base exposure fixed by f-stop test strips against the paper’s own maximum black, then corrected for the dry-down you measured in Part XVIII
3. 3Set the contrastOne grade, or a hard and a soft exposure on the same sheet — chosen a second time from what the picture needs, which is allowed to overrule what the negative measured
4. 4Work locallyDodging, burning, edge work and local contrast, every move expressed in stops so that it still means the same thing at a different enlargement
5. 5Develop consistentlyA fixed time at a fixed temperature, to completion, with a session ordered so that the fortieth sheet still matches the first
6. 6Finish the objectWashed by a sequence you can defend and prove, dried, flattened, spotted, and mounted on board that will not attack the print
7. 7Judge itThree passes in a fixed order — technical, structural, intention — against the ring-around and against the two sentences you wrote before you started

Steps three and four are closer to one idea than two, and the reason is in the material. ILFORD’s contrast-control sheet describes a variable-contrast emulsion as a mixture of three emulsions that share one inherent contrast and one speed to blue light, and differ only in how much green sensitising dye each carries. To blue light the three respond as one, and their curves add to a narrow, steep, high-contrast whole; to green light they have very different speeds, and the same addition spreads out into a much wider, shallower, low-contrast whole. A filter is therefore not a dial marked “contrast” — it changes the proportion of blue to green in the light and so changes which components are doing the work. That is what makes split-grade printing possible at all, and it is also why a burn given through a hard filter is a local contrast move and not merely a darker patch.

Seven pages carry those seven decisions, and the order is not a preference. You cannot anchor an exposure before you know which tone is going to be the black; you cannot choose a local contrast move before the overall grade is settled; and you cannot judge any of it on a wet print. Each page hands the next one the number it needs.

Page	What it must deliver	Proved by
Reading the negative and the work print	A measured density range, a paper, a starting filtration, and an intention in words	One marked-up work print and an opened printing map
Test strips, base exposure and the black point	A base exposure that survives being written down	A whole sheet at the chosen time, judged dry
Contrast filtration and split-grade printing	What a filter selects, and what two exposures on one sheet actually add	The single-grade equivalent of a split pair, calculated both ways
Dodging, burning, edge work and local contrast	An interpretation, expressed entirely in stops	The repeat print made three weeks later from the map
Print development and session consistency	A tray that behaves the same at sheet forty as at sheet one	A matched set rather than a best sheet
Washing, drying, flattening and mounting	A finished object, and a wash you can prove worked	A residual-thiosulfate test on the print itself
The exhibition print and its critique	A judgement made by method rather than by mood	Both prints, both records, and the written critique

The three numbers Part XVIII hands over

Part XVIII was the chemistry of the material. This part spends it. Three of its numbers are load-bearing here, and all three are properties of one paper with one developer, not of printing in general.

Maximum black is the shortest exposure at which the paper’s deepest black stops getting deeper. It is the anchor the whole exposure hangs from, because a print whose black is not black has no scale to place anything else on. Base white is the density of the sheet the light never reached, which sets the other end of that scale and is the reason the same negative looks different on a bright-white and a cream base. And dry-down is the amount by which a print darkens between the wet sheet you are looking at and the dry sheet you will hang — the one systematic error in fine printing that no amount of careful local work corrects, because it applies to every sheet equally and in the same direction.

!Your dry-down figure, or none

Part XVIII established that no manufacturer sheet in the course’s corpus publishes a dry-down figure for a developing-out silver gelatin paper, and it refused to invent one. Nothing in this part will give you a percentage either. Every base exposure here is corrected by your measured figure for your paper, developer and drying method, taken from the Part XVIII experiment. If you have not measured it, say so on the map and treat every exposure as carrying an unknown offset.

What Part XVII hands over

One thing, and it is the thing that makes a printing map portable: f-stop timing. Paper answers to ratios of exposure, not to differences, so a set of exposures in equal fractions of a stop steps evenly and a set in equal seconds does not. ILFORD’s own beginner’s sheet builds its test strip at 2, 4, 8 and 16 seconds and describes the result as four strips each one stop darker than the one next to it — a geometric ladder, written as a series of additive seconds.

The consequence for this part is larger than the test strip. A burn written as “+3 s” is only true at one base exposure, one aperture and one magnification; move the head up and it is wrong. A burn written as +1/2 stop is true at all of them. That is why every local move in the local-control lab is recorded as a fraction of a stop, and why the repeat-from-the-map test at the end is possible at all. The arithmetic belongs to Part XVII and is used here without being re-derived.

What this part does not own

ISO(R), paper curves and the matching of a negative’s density range to a grade belong to Part XIII, and the Zone System vocabulary to its tone-reproduction page. Safelight fog, enlarger alignment and illumination uniformity belong to Part XVI: an uneven baseboard produces a gradient that looks exactly like an edge burn, and this part assumes you have already ruled that out. Washing chemistry, the residual-thiosulfate test and the permanence standards belong to Part XII and are applied here to a print rather than re-derived. Toning is Part XX. Where a page here needs one of those, it links it.

What you produce

Two things leave this part. The first is a printing map written so that a stranger could follow it: negative, paper and batch, developer and its age, filter or filters, aperture, magnification, base exposure, and every local move with its area, its increment in stops and the filter it was given through — carrying a version number, because the fourth print is not reliably better than the second and you will want to go back. The stranger test is not rhetorical. It is what forces “a little more on the left” to become an area, a number and a unit, and it is the reason the map survives the walk from the darkroom to next month. The second is one finished print: washed by a stated sequence, tested, dried, flattened, spotted, mounted, and accompanied by a written critique in three passes. The assignment asks for a second copy made from the map alone, and the honest comparison of the two is the part’s real assessment.

Both records live in the lab notebook format the course already uses; the processing sequence is the one in the archival print SOP.

Safety framing

Every practical page in this part is Level A: the same tray chemistry as Part XVIII, at working dilutions and at the paper datasheet’s own temperatures — 20 °C for the developer, 18 to 24 °C for stop and fixer — with nothing heated beyond room temperature and nothing volatile. The controls are the standard ones — gloves, eye protection, tongs, a wet side kept away from a dry side — and they are stated on each page rather than assumed here.

Two pieces of equipment sit slightly above that background, and both are in the finishing lab. The dry-mounting press is the one hot mains appliance the course uses: a certified bought appliance with its own plug, operated closed, whose hazards are a hot platen and a trapping edge rather than anything chemical. The mat cutter or blade is the one cutting tool, and it is used on a self-healing mat with a steel rule, which is the same protective equipment Part I asked for. Neither introduces a new chemical hazard; both introduce a mechanical one, and a print session that is going well is exactly when a blade gets careless.

From the moment it is dry the print is also an object that gets handled, and the Library of Congress guidance the course follows elsewhere applies here too: freshly washed hands, clean lint-free cotton or inert plastic gloves such as nitrile, no contact with the image surface, and an auxiliary support — a sheet of acrylic or rag board — under a print that has to be moved or turned over. A fingerprint in the margin of a print you spent an evening on is the most avoidable defect in this part.

!The one place practice and conservation disagree, stated in both voices

ILFORD’s data sheet for MULTIGRADE FB CLASSIC says the paper “can be mounted using the standard techniques for fibre base papers”, which includes heat mounting. The Image Permanence Institute’s framing guide says that heat mounting, spray adhesives and pressure-sensitive tapes are not recommended for preservation framing, because they cannot easily be undone, and names photo corners of inert polyester and hinges of Japanese tissue with starch paste as the reversible methods. Both statements are Tier 1 and neither is wrong: the maker is describing what the material tolerates, the conservation body what a collection should accept. The course teaches hinging as the default and dry mounting as a choice with a stated cost, and the finishing lab gives both with their sources. Board quality is not a matter of taste either — ISO 18902 asks for a pH between 7.0 and 9.5, an alkaline reserve of at least 2 per cent calcium carbonate, and lignin-free stock.

What you need first

A working enlarger, aligned and with its illumination mapped, from Part XVI, and a timer that can generate a geometric series from Part XVII. A paper and a developer whose maximum black, base white and dry-down you have measured yourself. An edited proof sheet — this part starts from a proof it did not make, because Part XVI’s contact printing frame makes it, exposed so that the clear rebate just reaches maximum black. And at least one negative worth several evenings, since the part deliberately spends a whole session on a single frame.

Cost, and what the shopping data cannot yet tell you

The planner prices what the written parts require, and it still cannot price this one in full. Its stage 4 is marked undetermined. The paper this part finishes in has a dated figure — a box of fibre-base variable-contrast paper, glossy, 8 × 10 in, at £47.04 for 25 sheets to £150.28 for 100 — but everything else this part consumes that no earlier part does, which is conservation-quality mount board, hinging tissue and paste, spotting dyes, and the hire or purchase of a dry-mounting press, has no record in the course’s price file at all. Rather than put a figure there that no listing supports, this page states what is still missing in the same terms the price file uses for the gaps it already names:

• What is missing. UK listings, dated, for mat board and backing board meeting ISO 18902; Japanese tissue and starch paste or gummed linen hinges; spotting dyes; and a dry-mounting press, bought and hired. Fibre-base paper in the warmtone, cooltone and matt surfaces, and in sizes above 8 × 10 in, is also unrecorded: those are separate products at separate prices.
• What would settle it. A conservation supplier’s listing that names ISO 18902 or the Photographic Activity Test explicitly rather than saying “acid-free”, one hire quotation with its day rate, and a photographic retailer’s listing for the other fibre surfaces and sizes stating box size and sheet count.
• What can be said meanwhile. Fibre costs about half as much again per sheet as the resin-coated paper recorded beside it, which is the comparison this part actually turns on, and the wash it needs is longer. The presentation materials remain unpriced, so each practical page reports its consumables as a floor rather than a total, and says so.

Alternative route

The three labs and the assignment need a room that can be made dark. ILFORD’s own beginner’s sheet is encouraging about how little that has to be: print-making needs “just a room that can be blacked out”, and no running water, “because the washing stage of print-making takes place in daylight”. Part XVI’s reversible blackout is enough, and the wash can be done in a bathroom afterwards in the light.

What has no substitute is the enlarger. A reader without one can still work the whole of this part at contact size using Part XVI’s frame: test strips, the black-point anchor, contrast filtration and split-grade exposures, development consistency, washing, drying, flattening, mounting and the full critique method all apply unchanged to a print the size of the negative. Two things genuinely shrink. Dodging and burning at negative size are possible but clumsy, because the tools are larger than the areas; and edge softness, which depends on the distance between the tool and the paper, has almost no room to work in. Those parts of the local-control lab are the ones to come back to rather than to fake.

For a reader who cannot use a darkroom at all, three of the seven pages are reading and arithmetic from end to end — reading a negative, contrast filtration and its exposure factors, and print development and session consistency — and the critique method the assignment sets out is deliberately practised on other people’s prints before it is turned on your own. The finishing lab’s mounting half needs no darkroom either, and its conservation-preferred route needs no press, no heat and no mains: hinges, corners, board and a blade. That is the cheapest route in this part and also the one a conservator would recognise.

✦The one habit to start before the first sheet

Write two sentences saying what the print is for before you expose anything, and keep them where you will see them at the end. The critique method’s third pass reads them back to you. A printer who cannot say what a print is for makes a different print every session, and calls the variation taste.

The pages of this part

Part19 of 28Level2 — PractitionerPages7Estimated time14.5 hoursHighest safety levelLevel A

✱7 of 7 pages in this part need a darkroom, a UV source or mains-powered equipment, marked below. Each says what can be improvised and, where one exists, gives an alternative route.

0 / 7 lessons in this part completed

• LessonReading the Negative and Making the Work Print✱ Darkroom45 min
• LabLab: Test Strips, Base Exposure and the Print's Black PointA✱ Darkroom · Mains120 min
• LessonContrast Filtration and Split-Grade Printing✱ Darkroom60 min
• LabLab: Dodging, Burning, Edge Work and Local ContrastA✱ Darkroom · Mains180 min
• LessonDeveloping the Print Consistently and Running a Printing Session✱ Darkroom45 min
• LabLab: Washing, Drying, Flattening and Mounting the PrintA✱ Darkroom · Mains180 min
• AssignmentAssignment: The Exhibition Print and Its CritiqueA✱ Darkroom240 min