Show me your latest darkroom prints

...in the company of trees...

Adox Silvermax, a film new to me and developed along the instruction sheet in Xtol. It came out MUCH too thin. The Heiland (engl.: saviour) read out a density of just 0,42 across the frame, except for the sky in the upper left corner. And without any paper wasted, the Heiland delivered me this print.
Adox Variotone FB in Moersch Meritol.
The paper is wonderful, giving a lovely warm tone and a rich variety of midtones.

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Yes, Jean-bob, I was refering to you. Very good style in photography. And for sure what we see here on the screen, well I have a half screen (iPad now), is not half what it can be in reality.

About Xtol (Ascorbic Acid type developer) you have to watch out not keeping the stock too long.(4-6 months).

Silvermax = Agfa Scala (Agfa Gevaert, Belgium) copy. Also very suitable for inverse processing to get B&W slides.

Other good films for this: All Rollei Retro (S) series: Retro 80S (E.I. 50), Retro 400(S) (E.I. 125) = (S)uperpan 200. Aviphot 80/200 films from Agfa Gevaert. And of course Fomapan R100 (but only in 35mm available like Silvermax).
 
A Split Grade can do a lot but for high quality prints you must be in the range 0,85-1,25 (log D) depending a bit of the type enlarger and paper you have.

Without this fabulous Heiland machine I probably would have wasted a couple of sheets and then would have given up.
But with the Splitgrade module the first try was to my liking, and the quality of the print is good, at least high enough for me. "High quality" is, like so many other things, subjective, and not necessarily tied to the technically best possible.
I´m no Fine Printer, anyway. In many cases I override the Heiland proposal for the perfect print to get more "bite".

cheers,
smp.
 
Haven't been printing for a long time. Here are some of my prints on my favorite paper (Agfa Brovira grade 5 hard cream glossy paper from 1978)




Wow!
The paper is from 1978 and you just print it today??
Incredible that it still produce such good prints.
 
Wow!
The paper is from 1978 and you just print it today??
Incredible that it still produce such good prints.

Yep, bought 9 kg of expired paper on German eBay for 20 euro, mainly 1978 and 1983 years. Agfa barita paper grade 3-5 is still very good to print without additional chemistry, low contrast paper is fogged so i use benzotriazole. Resin Coated Agfa and all ilford and tura paper is strongly fogged.
 
Hey, KoFe, that´s a really nice print! Light from the window is king for portraits.
How do you do the split exposure?

cheers,
smp
 
Winter. A time to work on last year´s negs. Every weekend I retreat into the darkroom, with me a hot cup of tea and a blues cd. Every week I produce a set of 4 prints, 12 x 16, fb paper. Enlarger time is about one hour, the rest about two hours.

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Cron 35 asph., Tmax100 in Rodinal, paper Foma Variotone in Moersch Meritol.
 
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