Reading the Negative and Making the Work Print

A negative is a fixed quantity. Whatever you do at the enlarger, the picture can only be assembled out of the densities that are actually on that piece of film, and half the disappointment in printing comes from spending an evening trying to extract something that was never recorded. So the first hour of a printing session is not spent printing. It is spent finding out what this negative holds, and turning that into three things you can write down: a paper, a starting filtration, and a sentence saying what the print is for.

Then one sheet is exposed — not the print, but a work print, made to be written on.

Two ways of looking at a negative, and both are needed

The two readings answer different questions and neither substitutes for the other.

By eye, by transmitted light, with a loupe over a light box. This tells you about detail: whether the focus fell where you intended, whether the grain is crisp or smeared by camera shake, whether the shadow you are counting on has any structure in it at all or is bare film, and what damage the negative carries — scratches, drying marks, dust embedded in the emulsion, a fingerprint, a crimp from a careless reel. None of that is a number, and none of it is visible on a proof sheet.

By measurement. This tells you about range: how far apart, in density, the important dark tone and the important light tone actually sit. That single number is what selects a paper contrast, and it is the only part of reading a negative that transfers to another printer’s darkroom.

The order matters. Do the loupe first, because it can end the session: a negative whose principal subject is unsharp is not a negative worth measuring, and finding that out after two hours at the enlarger is a particular kind of misery. Do the measurement second, because it is the number that survives into the printing map.

Handle the film the way the Library of Congress asks anyone handling photographs and negatives to handle it — hands freshly washed, clean lint-free cotton or inert plastic gloves such as nitrile, and the surface not touched. A negative is the only original in the whole chain. Prints can be made again.

The reading station, seen from above

1. 1Light box panel — even, and the same illumination under negative and wedge; its colour does not matter for a neutral silver image, but it must not change between the two readings
2. 2Card mask with a window — the single cheapest improvement to this reading. A bright surround adapts the eye and destroys the match
3. 3Negative, emulsion up, three frames — gloved hands, edges only
4. 4Important shadow, and important highlight — the darkest and lightest areas of the subject in which you still want texture. On the negative they are the thinnest and the densest of the areas you care about
5. 5Loupe at 8x or 10x — focus, grain, scratches, drying marks and dust — the reading a number cannot give you
6. 621-step transmission wedge — steps of 0.15, which is half a stop each, from 0.05 to 3.05

Drawn in plan, so nothing here depends on ray geometry. The wedge steps are drawn as equal divisions for legibility; on the real piece each step is a different grey and the numbers are the densities, not the widths.

The number that matters, and the number it is not

The measurement is the difference in density between the important shadow and the important highlight, and every word of that is load-bearing.

It is not the negative’s full density range. The full range runs from the clear rebate, which is base plus fog and is not part of any picture, up to whatever the brightest specular glint recorded — a highlight on wet paint, the sun on water, a bare bulb — which is going to be paper white in the print whatever you do. Measure those two and you get a large number that describes the film. Measure the darkest tone you want texture in and the lightest tone you want texture in, and you get a smaller number that describes the print you are trying to make.

Kodak’s sensitometry workbook puts the reason in a sentence: negatives and paper are one system, and negatives are given slopes well below one — typically around 0.45 to 0.65 — precisely so that papers, whose slopes run from about 1.5 to 3.5 depending on grade, can bring the scale back up. The two curves have to be matched at their useful ends, not at their extremes.

Three ways to get the number, and what each costs

With a transmission densitometer, which is what Part XV exists to give you. Read the important shadow, read the important highlight, subtract. This is the most precise route and the fastest once the instrument is built.

By matching against a step wedge on the light box, which is the route with no instrument at all. Lay the negative and a 21-step transmission wedge side by side under one even light, mask everything else off, and find the step whose tone matches your important shadow, then the step that matches your important highlight. Stouffer’s T2115 has 21 steps at a nominal 0.15 in density — half a stop each — running from 0.05 to 3.05, so the step numbers are densities: multiply the difference in step number by 0.15. The cost is stated in the increment. You cannot resolve better than 0.15 this way, because that is the size of one step, and a visual match between two adjacent steps is a coin toss. Half a stop is nevertheless a useful answer when the alternative is no answer.

With a photometer at the baseboard, which is what ILFORD actually recommend. Their sheets say that the ISO range figures “may be helpful to printers who have some means of measuring the effective density range of the image as projected on the enlarger baseboard — such as with a photometer”. Note what they are asking you to measure: not the negative, but the image the negative makes on the baseboard of your enlarger. That distinction is the whole content of the word effective, and it is worth a diagram.

Why ILFORD say effective: three things happen between the negative and the baseboard

1. 1The negative, read diffuse — what a densitometer of the geometry Part XV recommends for a diffusion enlarger gives you
2. 2Scattering, under a condenser — the Callier effect. ILFORD state the practical size as about an extra grade of contrast with most negatives, depending on how much silver is left in the negative
3. 3Enlarger flare — stray light inside lens and bellows, which lands on the shadow end and shortens the range. Part XVI measures yours
4. 4The effective range at the baseboard — what ILFORD ask you to match to an ISO range figure

Bar lengths are illustrative and are not a measurement of any negative or any enlarger. The direction of each effect is what the drawing asserts; its size is yours to measure.

The scattering effect is the Callier effect, and Part XV sets out both the physics and the honest position: the course prints no value for the Callier coefficient, because nothing in its corpus establishes one. What it does have is ILFORD’s practical statement, which is about the printed result rather than about the coefficient — with most negatives a condenser enlarger gives about an extra grade of contrast compared with a diffusion enlarger, and the size of the difference depends on how much silver is left in the negative. Read against ILFORD’s own range table, one grade near the middle of the scale is a step of about 0.15 to 0.20 in range depending on the paper, so a condenser enlarger effectively lengthens what the paper sees by roughly that much, and the practical instruction is to start about a grade softer than the table says. That last conversion is the course’s own arithmetic on ILFORD’s published table, not a figure ILFORD state.

Flare runs the other way. Stray light bouncing inside the lens and bellows falls on the whole baseboard, and adding a constant to every part of a projected image raises the darkest part proportionally most, which compresses the range at the shadow end. Part XVI’s commissioning procedure hunts for yours and records it on the enlarger certificate.

!What the manufacturers do not define, and what this page does instead

ILFORD publish a method but not a definition. Four of their paper sheets carry the same instruction — take the effective negative density range, multiply by 100, choose the nearest range figure — and none of them says which two densities on the negative the range runs between. The standard they attribute the figures to, ISO 6846:1992, is a standard for measuring the paper; it is not in this course’s corpus and the course quotes nothing from it. So the shadow-to-highlight definition used on this page is the course’s, chosen because it is the one that makes the arithmetic do what ILFORD’s own worked examples do, and it is stated as a convention rather than as a manufacturer’s rule.

The practical consequence: two printers who both follow ILFORD’s instruction can arrive at different range figures for one negative, because they chose different tones as important. That is not an error in the method. It is the method asking you to decide what the picture is about before it will tell you anything.

From the number to a paper and a starting filtration

ILFORD’s arithmetic is one line, and the whole of it is theirs:

Range figure to look up = effective negative density range × 100

ILFORD's grade-matching instruction

Then find the nearest published range figure for the paper you are using, and print at the filter or grade against it. Their own worked example takes an effective density range of 1.32 log exposure units to the figure 130.

In stops — which is the unit the rest of this part works in — 1.32 divided by 0.301 is 4.39 stops of subject the print has to hold. That conversion is the course’s, and it is worth carrying, because a burn is quoted in stops and a range figure is not.

Now the part that catches everybody. Look up 130 on five ILFORD papers:

Paper	Where 130 sits	Filter or grade to start at
MULTIGRADE RC DELUXE (current)	130 is the tabulated figure at filter 0	0
MULTIGRADE IV RC DELUXE (superseded)	130 is the tabulated figure at filter 1	1
MULTIGRADE FB CLASSIC	nearest tabulated figure is 140	0
MULTIGRADE FB WARMTONE	130 is the tabulated figure at filter 1	1 — and ILFORD’s sheet says so in as many words
ILFOBROM GALERIE FB (graded)	130 is the tabulated figure at grade 1	1

One negative, one measurement, and the dial does not read the same on all five. The sharpest case is the first two rows: ILFORD’s current MULTIGRADE RC DELUXE and the MULTIGRADE IV it superseded are the same maker’s paper under nearly the same name, and this negative starts a grade apart on them — because, as ILFORD’s own comparison sheet says, the redesign offset the low to mid grades up to one grade harder. Nothing about the negative changed. The product did.

That is why the RC sheet’s worked example stops at the range figure and then says to use “the corresponding MULTIGRADE filter for your paper type” rather than naming a filter. ILFORD know the answer depends on the box. A measured range figure travels between darkrooms; a grade number does not.

🧮What to do when the number falls between two figures

ILFORD’s ILFOBROM GALERIE FB sheet works an example that lands awkwardly, and it is instructive. A negative of effective density range 1.22 gives 122. The tabulated figures for that paper are 130, 110, 90 and 70. The sheet prints the intermediate figure as “120” and then recommends grade 1, whose tabulated range is 130 — the longer of the two neighbours.

The course reads that as the sensible rule and adopts it, as an inference from ILFORD’s own worked example rather than as a stated instruction: when the measurement falls between two figures, start with the longer range, which is the softer grade. The reason is asymmetric damage. A paper whose exposure scale is a little longer than the negative’s density range prints slightly flat — every tone is still on the paper, and a burn or a half-grade change recovers it. A paper whose scale is a little shorter clips one end or both, and nothing recovers what fell off. Print soft and firm it up; do not print hard and hope.

Why this is a starting point and not a verdict

Three reasons. The first two are the manufacturers’ own, printed on the sheets the table came from; the third is the course’s, and it is the one that makes this a craft rather than a lookup.

The published figures are conditional. ILFORD attach the same sentence to every table: the values “are representative of those obtained when dish/tray processing the paper to ILFORD Photo recommendations”. Your developer, your dilution, your development time and your temperature are part of the number. Change them and the table drifts.

The measurement has an error bar you chose. A step-wedge match is good to 0.15. A densitometer reading is better, but it is a reading of the negative rather than of the projected image, so it carries the two corrections of the last section.

The picture gets a vote. A range figure answers “what grade renders this negative’s full scale on this paper’s full scale”. It does not answer “what grade makes this picture”. Those coincide more often than not, which is why the method is worth having, but a portrait may want the negative’s full scale compressed and a flat landscape may want two of its tones prised apart at the cost of the ends. The next lesson in this part, on contrast filtration and split-grade printing, is about choosing the grade a second time, from the picture, and that second choice is allowed to overrule the table.

Kodak’s consumer sheet takes the other road entirely and it is worth knowing as the alternative: make the test strip first, and if it “looks flat or muddy” use a higher-numbered filter, if it looks “harsh, contrasty” use a lower one. That is a perfectly sound feedback loop and it needs no instrument at all. Its cost is that it converges by trial, one sheet at a time, and it gives you nothing you can write down about the negative. The two methods are complements: measure to get close, then judge.

Choosing the paper before choosing the grade

Kodak list the ways papers differ in one sentence — sizes, speeds, contrasts, surface textures, image tones, stock tints and weights — and only one item on that list is adjustable after the box is open. On a variable-contrast paper, contrast is a filter you can change between one sheet and the next. Everything else arrives with the packet and stays.

That is the whole argument for the order. Part XVIII’s structure lesson carries the mechanisms, and this page uses rather than repeats them, but the four decisions are worth naming as decisions about the object:

Surface. Glossy, pearl, satin, semi-matt, matt. This is not taste alone: a matt surface scatters light off its own texture and cannot reach the black a glossy sheet reaches from identical silver, so surface sets the maximum black available to you before any chemistry is chosen. A print destined for a frame behind glass and one destined to be held in the hand want different answers.

Base tint. The white of the sheet is the print’s white, and no exposure decision changes it. A cream or warm base and a bright white base give two different pictures from one negative.

Image tone. Neutral, warm or cool, and it is a property of the emulsion and its developer rather than of a toner — Part XVIII’s emulsion lesson is the mechanism.

Weight and base type. Fibre or resin-coated, single or double weight. This decides the wash, the drying, the flattening and the mounting, all of which are two labs away, and it decides them now.

Kodak’s own advice to a beginner is to start on resin-coated paper for both contact prints and enlargements, and to try other papers once printing and enlarging are more familiar. Part XVIII gives the same advice with its reason — learn on RC, finish on fibre, because fast feedback is worth more to a learner than a beautiful base. Both are sound, and the consequence lands two sections further on, where the work print has to be made on the paper the finished print will use.

From the edited proof sheet to the selection

This part begins with a proof sheet it did not make; Part XVI’s contact printing frame made it, exposed to the convention that the clear rebate just reaches maximum black so that every frame is read against one fixed reference rather than against your mood on the day.

What a proof can tell you. Kodak put its purpose in two clauses: it helps you choose the best negatives to enlarge, and it makes a record to file with the negatives. Their selection criterion is composition and exposure level, “neither too dark nor too light”. Because the sheet was exposed to the rebate, the relative densities across the roll are honest: a frame that prints dark on the proof is a thin negative, and it will be thin next year too. You can also read framing, sequence and the rough crop, and you can put a soft pencil on the back and say what nearly works and why.

What a proof cannot tell you, and this is where the frame that looked strong at contact size stops holding.

Sharpness and grain are invisible at 1×. Petzval’s viewing criterion — the eye resolves about one minute of arc — turns into a length as soon as you fix a distance. Held at 300 mm, one minute of arc is 300 × (1/60) × (π/180) ≈ 0.087 mm. So a defect 0.09 mm across on a 35 mm negative sits exactly at the limit of what the naked eye can see on a proof sheet, and vanishes below it. Print that negative to fill the long side of an 8 × 10 in sheet and the enlargement is 254 ÷ 36 ≈ 7×: the same defect is now 0.6 mm, and at a 400 mm viewing distance, where the eye resolves about 0.12 mm, it is five times over the threshold. A proof sheet systematically hides exactly the faults that an enlargement systematically reveals. That arithmetic is the course’s, built on Petzval’s criterion and on nothing else.

Tonal separation is not visible in a 24 × 36 mm image. Two mid-tones a tenth of a log unit apart occupy adjacent millimetres on a proof and are read as one tone. At print size they are two areas, and whether they separate is most of what the grade decision is about.

Dust, scratches and drying marks are the same size on the proof as on the negative, and seven times larger on the print.

The single exposure is a compromise. One exposure for the whole sheet is what makes the proof comparable, and it is also what makes every frame on it slightly wrong. A dense negative prints pale and a thin one prints dark, and both may print beautifully once each is given its own exposure.

Composition reads differently at size. A small image is taken in at a glance; a large one is scanned, and the eye travels. Edges that were decoration at contact size become structure at print size, and a bright corner that nobody noticed on the proof will pull the eye out of the picture on the wall.

The practical instruction that falls out of all five: mark the proof with a loupe and a pencil, then treat the marks as a shortlist rather than a decision. Some of the frames you marked will not survive the work print, and that is the work print doing its job rather than the proof having lied.

Say what the print is for, in words, before anything is exposed

Write two sentences. What is the print of, and what should a viewer notice first. Keep them where you will see them at the end of the session.

This looks like a soft instruction in a technical lesson, and it is the hardest-working habit in the part, for a reason that is entirely practical. Every decision from here on is a trade: a burn that darkens a sky compresses its separation as soon as its tones start to reach the paper’s ceiling; a harder grade that separates two mid-tones also empties a shadow; a dodge that opens a face also greys it. A trade cannot be evaluated without a criterion, and if the criterion is not written down it becomes whatever you happen to feel at eleven at night on the fourth sheet. That is the mechanism by which a printer makes a different print every session and calls the variation taste.

The course’s critique method turns these two sentences back on you at the end of the part, so write them so they can fail. “A portrait of my father” cannot fail. “A portrait of my father in which the eyes are the first thing seen and the room around him is present but subordinate” can — and if the finished print puts the window first, you know something.

The exposure log already asks for this, in the field it words as intention — what a viewer should notice, and what you expect the medium to do to it. The printing map uses the same wording so that the two records read as one.

Deciding this print’s black point and white point

A print has two anchors, and choosing them is a decision about the picture, not a setting.

The black point is the answer to: which tone in this picture is going to reach maximum black? Look at the negative and pick it — the inside of a doorway, a coat, a shadow under a car. Once it is chosen, at the base exposure everything on the negative thinner than that is also maximum black and its detail is gone.

The white point is the answer to: which tone is going to be base white? Once that is chosen, at the base exposure everything on the negative denser than it prints as bare paper: place the white on a textured cloud and the sun on the water goes with it.

Both sentences carry the same qualifier, and it is the qualifier that makes them decisions rather than sentences of doom. Local work moves either end — a dodge lifts a shadow back off the black, a burn pulls a blown highlight back onto the paper — and the local-control lab later in this part is about doing either convincingly. What local work cannot do is do it for free. A dodge buys shadow detail at the price of local flatness, and a burn that recovers the sun also darkens everything else inside the burned area, so both are paid for in the tones next door.

That is why the two anchors are chosen deliberately and early. They decide where the base exposure sits; the grade then decides the spacing of everything between them, which is what the range figure was for; and whatever the pair of them cannot accommodate becomes the list of local moves, with its cost known in advance rather than discovered on the fourth sheet.

📷A convention, stated as a convention

The received rule is that a full-scale print contains at least a small area of true maximum black and at least a small area of clean paper white, on the argument that without both the print has no reference and looks grey. That is photographic convention rather than a measured requirement, and this course marks it as such: no manufacturer sheet in its corpus states it.

It is a good default, and there are deliberate exceptions that are not failures. A high-key print may have no true black at all, and a low-key one no paper white. What is not an exception is arriving at either by accident, which is the case the convention exists to catch. If your print has no black, you should be able to say whether that was a decision or an under-exposure — and the number from Part XVIII is what lets you answer.

The work print

Kodak define the object exactly: a test print is “a sheet of photographic paper exposed and processed to find out if your exposure and contrast estimates are correct”, with the caution not to be disappointed if the first one is not good enough to keep. That is the whole of it. The work print is an instrument, not an attempt.

Make it full size, at the enlargement the final print will use, because every judgement you are about to make is a judgement about areas and their sizes. A quarter-size proof of the interpretation answers a different question.

Make it on the paper the final print will use. This is the point where Part XVIII’s warning bites: maximum black, base white, dry-down, speed, image tone and surface are all properties of a paper-and-developer pair, not of printing in general. A work print on resin-coated paper cannot tell you where the black falls on fibre. The economical compromise, if fibre is dear, is to settle crop, enlargement and composition on cheap sheets, and to make the work print that gets marked up on the final material.

Give it the starting exposure and the starting filtration, and nothing else — no dodging, no burning, no cleverness. ILFORD’s beginner’s sheet is a reasonable place to start if you have no other anchor: an aperture that gives about ten seconds, because shorter times are hard to time accurately and longer ones are tedious, at about f/8 for edge sharpness and even illumination, with filter 2 because it “produces a good range of print tones with an average negative”. The next lab replaces that guess with a measured base exposure from an f-stop test strip; for now it only has to be close enough to see the picture.

Dry it before you read it. A wet sheet under a bright darkroom lamp looks lighter and more open than the same sheet dry, on a wall, in ordinary room light — highlights close up as it dries and the deepest tones separate less, so a print matched wet comes out a shade too dark. Reading a work print wet is therefore the commonest way to arrive at a base exposure that is a fraction of a stop too heavy. The dry-down correction you measured in Part XVIII applies here as it applies everywhere, and if you have not measured it, note on the map that every exposure carries an unknown offset in one known direction.

Marking it up

Read the dry sheet under the light you will judge finished prints under, and put a soft pencil on it — on the back, or on the face if the sheet is genuinely disposable. Four questions, in this order, because the order stops you from fixing a symptom.

1. Where is it too dark, by area? Not “the sky”, but the area you can draw a line around.
2. Where is it too light, by area?
3. Where does the eye actually go first? Look away, look back, and be honest about the answer.
4. Where should it go, from the two sentences you wrote?

Then translate. Every note has to become one of exactly three moves — a burn, a dodge or a change of contrast — or else one of two verdicts that are not moves at all. That constraint is what makes the work print an instrument rather than a diary:

The note on the sheet	What it becomes
An area that is too light, and everything else is right	A burn, in stops, over that area
An area that is too dark, and everything else is right	A dodge, in stops, over that area
Two tones that will not separate, or an overall flatness or harshness	A contrast change — a different filter, or a local one
Everything is too dark, or everything is too light	Not a local move: the base exposure is wrong, and the next lab fixes it
A tone that is empty on the negative	Not a printing move at all: it is a note for the next film

The last two rows are the ones that save evenings. A note that will not reduce to a burn, a dodge or a grade is not a note about this print at all: it is a note about the base exposure, which the next lab settles, or a note about the negative, which no amount of paper will answer.

📓Two marks that are worth a private notation

Mark boundaries as well as areas. The line where a burn has to stop is more of the problem than the amount, because a burn with a visible edge is worse than no burn — the next lab is largely about that edge.

Mark what you like, too, and not only what is wrong. The fourth print is not reliably better than the second, and the commonest way to lose a good print is to keep improving one area while quietly degrading another that nobody wrote down.

When the negative cannot give the print you want

Four diagnoses cover almost everything, and all four are visible in the measurement you already made. The right-hand column is the one that compounds: it is a change to the next film, and it is what turns a printing session into an exposure and development decision.

What the reading shows	The diagnosis	For this negative, now	For the next film
Range longer than the softest grade — for example 2.10 when the softest published figure on your paper is R170, which is 1.70	The negative asks for more scale than any grade has. One end must be sacrificed	Print for the end that matters, use burning to hold the other, and consider a split pair; expect to lose something	Develop less. Part XIII’s N−1 and N−2 are exactly this instruction, expressed as a lower contrast index
Range much shorter than the hardest grade — for example 0.35 against R50, which is 0.50	A flat negative: under-developed, or a flat subject, or flare in the camera	Print at the hardest grade available and accept a short scale, or use the same negative to practise local contrast	Develop more — N+1, N+2 — or find the flare. A flat negative is the cheaper mistake of the two, because there is still something in every tone
The dense area shows no structure under the loupe	A blocked highlight: over-exposure, over-development, or both, driving the highlight onto the film’s shoulder	Nothing prints from it. Place the white below it and let it go	Less exposure or less development, and Part XIII’s four-quadrant chain says which by where the shadow sits
The rebate reads high, and the shadows sit close to it	Raised base plus fog: age, heat, light, or over-development	Printing time goes up, because everything is denser. If the shadows are near the fog level too, they are empty and no grade retrieves them	Fresh film, cooler storage, and a check of the tank and the safelight. Kodak’s workbook is the reference for what D-min is made of

⚗What a fogged negative actually costs, which is not what most people say

Fog is worth doing properly, because the intuitive answer is wrong.

A veil costs exposure, not contrast, and the logarithm is the reason. Density is log₁₀(1 ÷ transmittance). A uniform layer of fog multiplies the transmittance of every part of the negative by the same factor, and multiplying inside a logarithm is adding outside it, so every density on the sheet rises by the same amount:

(D₂ + D_fog) − (D₁ + D_fog) = D₂ − D₁

A uniform veil preserves every difference

The range is untouched. What has changed is that the enlarger must push more light through the whole negative, so the exposure lengthens — and that is the first-order cost, in seconds. Kodak’s workbook is the reference for what that veil is made of: the transparent base, plus a slight chemical fog from crystals that develop although they were never exposed.

Two second-order costs are real, and they are what people are noticing. The first is that a shadow which was only a little above base to begin with is now a small difference sitting on top of a large one, and small differences on large backgrounds are exactly what a measurement and an eye both struggle with — the tone was nearly absent before the fog and is indistinguishable after it. The second follows from the diagram earlier on this page: flare contributes a roughly fixed amount of stray light across the baseboard, so lengthening the exposure to punch through a denser negative makes that fixed contribution a larger fraction of the light arriving in the projected shadows, and the effective range at the paper compresses. That second argument is the course’s own reasoning from the flare mechanism, not a manufacturer’s statement, and it is testable with Part XVI’s flare procedure.

Test which case you have, on the negative, before you blame the paper. Read the rebate, then read the thinnest part of the picture you care about. A comfortable margin between them means a veil, and the answer is a longer exposure. Almost no margin means the shadow was filled in during development and there is nothing there for any grade to retrieve. The course’s characteristic-curve page is the same point from the other side: past a certain development, extra time adds base-plus-fog faster than it adds separation.

Opening the printing map

The printing map is opened now, half-filled, before the first measured test strip exists. What goes on it at this stage is everything that would otherwise be remembered, and the field wordings are taken from the lab notebook and exposure log so that the three records read as one document.

Field	What goes in it
Map id, and version	Negative identifier plus a version number, incremented on every change, because the fourth print is not reliably better than the second
Date, and who did the work	As LN-1
Negative, and where it is filed	Frame or sheet identifier, film and developer, and the proof sheet it came off
Purpose, in one sentence	The first of the two sentences
Intention — what a viewer should notice, and what you expect the medium to do to it	The second, worded as the exposure log words it
Effective density range, and how it was measured	The number, the instrument or method, and the geometry — “step wedge, visual, ±0.15” is a complete and honest answer
Black point, and white point	Which tone in the picture is which
Paper, batch or expiry, surface and weight	As LN-1 words it for any material
Developer, dilution as used, temperature and time	As LN-2 words it
Enlarger, lens, aperture and magnification	Referred to the enlarger certificate from Part XVI, not re-derived
Filter or filters, and the source of the starting figure	“R130 nearest, from the paper’s published table” or “filter 2, ILFORD’s average-negative default”
Base exposure	Left blank at this stage. The next lab fills it, in seconds and in stops
Local moves	Left blank. Each row will carry an area, an increment in stops, and the filter it was given through
Dry-down correction applied	The measured fraction of a stop, or the explicit note that it is unmeasured
Known limitations	Everything above that is a guess, written out

Two things the map is not. It is not a diary: “a bit more on the sky” is a memory and does not belong on it, because the map’s only test is whether a stranger could follow it. And it is not a record of the successful print alone — the versions that failed are what stop you from walking the same wrong road twice, so number them and keep them.

Alternative route

Everything up to the work print needs no darkroom at all. Reading a negative by loupe and light box, matching it against a step wedge, converting the result to a range figure, looking that figure up in the manufacturer’s published table, choosing a paper, editing a proof sheet and writing the intention are all daylight work at a kitchen table, and they are the part of this page that carries the most.

The work print itself needs the paper to be in the dark from the moment the packet is opened until it is fixed, and there is no substitute for that. There are, however, two ways to get it.

Without a permanent darkroom. ILFORD are encouraging about how little is required: print-making needs “just a room that can be blacked out”, and no running water, because the washing stage happens in daylight. Part XVI’s reversible blackout and a safelight are enough, and the trays can come out of a cupboard for the evening and go back.

Without an enlarger. Make the work print by contact, at negative size, using Part XVI’s frame. Everything on this page survives the change except the enlargement itself: you still choose a paper, still start from a range figure, still fix a black point and a white point, still mark the sheet up and still open the map. What you lose is the very thing the proof-sheet section warns about — at 1× you cannot judge sharpness, grain or fine tonal separation, so the contact work print tells you about tone and about composition and stays silent about the rest. Say so on the map rather than letting the silence read as a pass.

Without any darkened space whatever, the honest answer is that the work print cannot be made, and the substitute is not a smaller version of it. It is to do the reading and the arithmetic in full — the loupe, the wedge, the range figure, the paper choice, the intention, the black and white points, the whole opened map — and to leave the exposure fields blank until a space exists. A map with a measured negative and no exposure is a real document. A map with an estimated exposure in it is worse than a blank one, because a later reader cannot tell which numbers were measured.

Recap

• Read the negative twice. A loupe on a light box tells you about focus, grain and damage, and can end the session; a measurement tells you about range, and is the only part that transfers to another darkroom.
• The number is the density difference between the important shadow and the important highlight, not the negative’s full range from rebate to specular glint.
• ILFORD’s method is theirs and the definition is not. Multiply the effective density range by 100 and match the nearest published range figure. They say to measure the image projected on the baseboard, with a photometer; they do not say which densities the range runs between, and this page says so.
• “Effective” means at the baseboard, which is the negative plus the enlarger: a condenser lengthens the range by scattering — ILFORD put it at about an extra grade — and flare shortens it. The two act in opposite directions and only a measurement at the paper settles the total.
• A range figure travels; a grade number does not. The same 130 starts at filter 0 on two of five ILFORD papers and at filter 1 on the other three, one of which is the paper’s own predecessor.
• When the reading falls between two figures, take the longer range, which is ILFORD’s own choice in the ILFOBROM worked example and the safer failure: a slightly flat print can be firmed up, a clipped one cannot be unclipped.
• Choose the paper before the grade, because contrast is the only one of surface, base tint, image tone, weight and base type that a filter can change after the box is open.
• A proof sheet hides what an enlargement reveals. At 1× the eye cannot see a defect that will be five times over its threshold at 7×.
• Write the intention before you expose anything, because every printing decision is a trade and a trade needs a criterion.
• The work print is an instrument. Full size, on the final paper, at the starting exposure and filtration, dried before it is read, and marked up into the three moves — burn, dodge, contrast — with the two notes that are not printing moves at all, “the base exposure is wrong” and “this is a note about the negative”, kept separate.
• Open the map now, half empty, with the measurement and its method in it, and number the version.

Check your understanding

Question 1. A negative is read on a transmission densitometer. The clear rebate reads 0.12, the darkest area in which you want texture reads 0.38, the lightest area in which you want texture reads 1.44, and a specular glint on wet stone reads 1.96. Which subtraction gives the number ILFORD ask you to multiply by 100?

• 1.96 − 0.12 = 1.84, the negative’s full density range
• 1.44 − 0.38 = 1.06, the important highlight minus the important shadow
• 1.96 − 0.38 = 1.58, the glint minus the important shadow
• 1.44 − 0.12 = 1.32, the important highlight minus the rebate

Show the answer and why

Answer: 1.44 − 0.38 = 1.06, the important highlight minus the important shadow

The range that has to fit the paper is the range of the tones you want rendered with texture. The rebate is base plus fog and appears in no picture; the specular glint is going to be paper white whatever grade you choose, and including it inflates the number and sends you to a paper softer than the picture needs. 1.06 × 100 = 106, so on MULTIGRADE RC DELUXE the nearest tabulated figure is 110 and the start is filter 1. Note that ILFORD publish this method but do not define which two densities to use: the shadow-to-highlight convention is the course’s, and two printers who choose different important tones will honestly get different answers.

Question 2. The same negative, measured at 1.06, is printed by two people: one on a diffusion enlarger, one on a condenser. Both start from filter 1. What should happen, and why?

• Nothing differs — the negative’s density range is a property of the negative
• The condenser print will look flatter, because a condenser loses light
• The condenser print will look about a grade harder, because the negative’s highlights scatter light out of the lens’s cone, so the projected range is longer than the measured one
• The condenser print will need a longer exposure, but the contrast will match

Show the answer and why

Answer: The condenser print will look about a grade harder, because the negative’s highlights scatter light out of the lens’s cone, so the projected range is longer than the measured one

A silver image scatters as well as absorbs, and the denser parts scatter more. A condenser delivers a directional beam into a lens that accepts a limited cone, so scattered light is lost and the dense areas read denser still; the range the paper actually receives is longer than the range a diffuse densitometer reading reported. ILFORD state the practical size as about an extra grade of contrast with most negatives, adding that it depends on how much silver is left in the negative. Part XV is candid that the course has no verified value for the Callier coefficient itself, so the direction is asserted and the size is yours to measure. The remedy is arithmetic rather than mystery: the table is read the same way, and the filter chosen from it is then moved one step towards the soft end before the first sheet is exposed.

Question 3. A frame looks excellent on the proof sheet. Enlarged to 8 × 10 in it is disappointing, and the disappointment is not exposure. What is the most likely explanation, in terms of what a proof sheet can physically show?

• The proof sheet developer was exhausted
• A proof is a contact print at 1×, so unsharpness, grain and fine tonal separation are all below the eye’s resolution at normal viewing distance and simply are not in evidence
• Proof sheets are always printed at the wrong grade
• The negative changed between the two printings

Show the answer and why

Answer: A proof is a contact print at 1×, so unsharpness, grain and fine tonal separation are all below the eye’s resolution at normal viewing distance and simply are not in evidence

Take Petzval’s one-minute-of-arc viewing criterion: at 300 mm that is about 0.087 mm, so a defect around 0.09 mm across on a 35 mm negative sits right at the limit of the unaided eye on a contact print. Enlarge 24 × 36 mm to fill the long side of an 8 × 10 in sheet and the factor is 254 ÷ 36 ≈ 7, making the same defect 0.6 mm — five times over the threshold at a 400 mm viewing distance. The arithmetic is the course’s own; the criterion is Petzval’s. This is why a proof is a shortlist and a work print is the decision, and why the loupe pass on the negative comes before any paper is exposed.

Question 4. A work print is read wet, straight out of the fixer, and judged perfect. What is the predictable error, and what is the correct control for it?

• None; a wet print and a dry print differ only in surface sheen
• It will dry lighter, so add exposure — but only after the print is dry
• It will dry darker, so the print judged perfect when wet is over-exposed once dry; the control is the dry-down figure measured in Part XVIII for that paper, developer and drying method
• It will dry darker, so the correct control is to develop for less time

Show the answer and why

Answer: It will dry darker, so the print judged perfect when wet is over-exposed once dry; the control is the dry-down figure measured in Part XVIII for that paper, developer and drying method

A wet print reflects light differently and shows more apparent brilliance than the same print dry, so a sheet that looks right wet is normally a little dark once dried. The control is a measured correction applied as a fraction of a stop, and Part XVIII establishes both the measurement and the honest position that no manufacturer sheet in this course’s corpus publishes a dry-down figure — which is why the course prints no percentage and asks you to measure your own pair. Shortening development is the wrong control for a different reason as well: a print is developed to completion at a fixed time, and pulling it early gives an uneven, cold, weak image rather than a lighter one.

Question 5. You measure an effective density range of 2.05. The softest figure your paper publishes is R170. What does the printing map say?

• Start at the softest grade and burn the highlights; the map records the range, the shortfall in stops, and the development change for the next film
• Nothing is wrong; the softest grade holds any negative
• Use a harder grade, because hard grades hold longer ranges
• Reprint the proof sheet at a different exposure

Show the answer and why

Answer: Start at the softest grade and burn the highlights; the map records the range, the shortfall in stops, and the development change for the next film

R170 is a paper exposure scale of 1.70 log units; the negative is asking for 2.05, so 0.35 of the scale — about 1.2 stops — has nowhere to go even at the softest grade. That is not a printing problem with a printing solution: one end has to be sacrificed deliberately, and local work can only hold, not create, what is missing. The half of the answer that compounds is the right-hand column of the diagnosis table: this is Part XIII’s N−1 or N−2, a lower contrast index on the next film of that subject, and it is the sort of thing that is only ever learned if the range was written on a map. Note also that harder grades have shorter exposure scales, not longer ones — a grade is a length of exposure axis, and the numbers run the other way from the intuition.

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