[Leica] Split printing

[leica@olemiss.edu]

>My own personal and perhaps not common take on this might be the fact

>that I've gotten really enamored with this whole split printing

>approach... two consecutive exposures, one for the highest contrast,
one

>for the lowest. With the Aristo it is a blue softlight for the high
and

>the green for the low; you just flip a switch.


>I would have thought this split printing thing would have
revolutionize the

>black and white darkroom world by know and I read it's easier to teach
as

>students have trouble with the concept of contrast. But such is
probably

>not the case. For a while we'll have an edge. 


     Printing, without dodging or burning in two exposures at a
different contrast levels, will only give you a contrast  # something
in between the two. Each VC filter allows green and blue light to pass
through in varying amounts. It really doesn't  matter whether the blue
light arrives in one exposure, and then the green, or the blue/green
light is delivered all at once.  The end result would be the same. I
don't think the two exposure printing  without masking can achieve
tonal distributions that aren't achievable with a single exposure under
the appropriate filtration. Of course, burning and dodging with
different filters is a very powerful method of modifying images, but,
there is no magic can be worked by  simple split filtering. Such a
result would have to come from changing the curvature of the
characteristic of the emulsion and that is fixed by the emulsion
itself.

     I truly belive that mostly split printing  proponents see
something  there for their efforts. Like so many Leica things, it's
just an issue of personal preference, on which reasonable minds can and
do disagree.

     For further reading, I recommend the article "Variable Contrast
Papers Revealed",  by Phil Davis in Photo Techniques, Sept-Oct 1994.  


KT