Maximilian5930
Hello,
I still have an old but very good black-and-white enlarger and would now like to use multigrade paper.
The enlarger doesn’t have a filter drawer. There are now multigrade filters available with a special filter holder mounted beneath the lens.
However, I can’t imagine that this would work without compromising the optical quality.
Who can give me an objective, expert answer on this?
Maximilian
Gast
If you use Ilford’s 00-5 multigrade filters with a holder in 0.5-stop increments, you’ll achieve good quality without any loss. Caution is still important, as scratching the filter will reduce the quality.
Ultimately, a solution using a VC head is of course better, simpler and more user-friendly, but everything naturally comes at a price.
Kind regards,
Fotohuis RoVo
Robert Vonk
Roman
Hello!
My Opemus 6 has a filter drawer, but when I occasionally want to use ‘manual split-grade’ on ‘difficult’ negatives (i.e. partial exposures with grades 0 and 5 in succession), I hold the filters in front of the lens (because the Opemus wobbles slightly when you change the filters in the drawer). My Ilford filters are a bit old and no longer in top condition, but I’ve never noticed any negative effects. The filters aren’t in the focal plane, so any flaws shouldn’t be too obvious. Nevertheless, the filters should of course be kept clean and free of scratches...
Gast
I’ve never tried it myself, but I imagine that when holding the filters in your hand, you should keep them straight and steady. Reason: they act as a plane-parallel plate in the beam path and therefore deflect the rays by a tiny amount. And this deflection should then be the same for both exposures, i.e. not tilted to the right with M and to the left with Y, for example. Otherwise, the two exposures will no longer line up exactly.
Regards
cb
