Re: Beer

[Larry Bullis <lbullis@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

>Tell me about your experiences using two-tray treatment. 
>[...]
>-Lennart R

This is not specific to IR exclusively, but since IR presents certain 
challenges in the realm of contrast, it seems appropriate to present this 
here.  Beers offers the ultimate means of fine-tuning contrast.

I started using Beers a long time ago (back in the era of old Portriga 
Rapid, about which we recently concluded a thread).  I also used graded 
papers.  But once I learned to use Beers in two trays, I started using it 
with multigraded papers also.  It helped me get prints that had that very 
specific and illusive quality that looks just great in reproduction.  
That's a quality that is hard to describe and even harder to get, and has 
to be produced from negatives that are all over the board.  Beers was the 
perfect answer.  Also, I like to print on Kodak's Ektalure paper, which 
only comes in one grade.  It requires contrast control using the 
developer.  Again, Beers is the answer.

Probably most persons on this list have at least heard of Beers' 
developer, and many may have tried it.  Of those, I would bet most gave 
it up because it was too inconvenient.  Who wants to have to mix up a 
seperate batch of developer for each crummy print?  What do you do with 
the developer used for the last print when you start on the next one - 
stack the trays up in a pile?  What if you don't get the proportions 
quite right?  Dump and mix again?  That would be expensive and make lots 
of work.  

The basic idea is that there are two solutions that have similar 
properties (speed and image tone) but differ in the degree of contrast 
they produce.  In practice, according to the directions published, the 
two solutions are mixed in various proportions to give different 
contrasts.  Solution A is the softer developer; it contains metol only as 
a reducing agent, and if used alone as a low contrast developer it is 
diluted 1:1 with water.  Solution B contains only hydroquinone as a 
reducing agent; it will not work alone, so for use as the high contrast 
developer it is mixed with a small amount of solution A (1:7 ratio) and 
no water.

My use of Beers consists of two trays.  One contains the solution A 
mixture as described above and the other the 1:7 A:B mix.  A little 
practice will enable one to start in one tray, and after a time, visually 
guage the degree of contrast that is resulting.  If that is not just 
right (and experience is the key to that!) then one can drain the print 
into the tray and place it in the other, finishing the development there. 
 Using this method, I have been able to achieve a very precise control of 
contrast on the fly, with a minimum waste of chemicals.  Far from being 
inconvenient, it is so easy that as a busy freelancer (which I was for 
quite a while) I used it as my everyday developer.  I found it much more 
economical both in chemistry and time, because I could cut my need to 
remake prints to almost nothing.  I would mix each solution in fairly 
large quantities and store them in the boxes that are used to package 
cheap bulk wine here in the US.  They would keep virtually forever.  
Sure, it's harder than mixing a liquid, but with a magnetic mixer to do 
the work, it's not bad.  And yes, eventually both trays will mix from 
carryover and approach an average between the two.  However, I think 
that's more a theoretical objection than a practical one; it has never 
been a problem for me.

Using this setup with multigraded papers, I could usually print without 
filters and get the overall contrast just right with the developer alone. 
 Then, I could use a 30 blue cc filter on the end of a wire to hold out 
the shadows if the negative is a little underexposed and use a 30 or 40 Y 
filter in a hole in a card to burn raw highlights which had landed a 
little down into the straight line part of the curve and could use a bit 
of softening.  It's better to have great negatives, of course, but when 
you work on the run in stressful situations, it frequently turns out that 
you don't and then you need all the help you can get.  This method 
sometimes enabled quite adequate prints from negatives which otherwise 
would produce marginal ones.

My infrared images have always gone through my darkroom just like any 
other and I handle them the same.  I have been using Beers more or less 
exclusively (except when I am seeking a particular image tone; Beers 
tends to produce a distinctly neutral tone on the papers I use) and so I 
can't give any specific comparison information for IR films in 
particular.  However, I wouldn't dream of printing them in anything else 
unless there were a good reason.  For my IR work I always use film 
developers that are effective in handling contrast; usually Windisch 
pyrocatechin.  The other side of this is the ability to control the 
contrast of the print.  My eye is a tyrant; it absolutely requires that 
my whites are clean but fully detailed, the mid-tones progress according 
to a particular logic and the blacks are assertive but with a sense of 
grace.  This is possible, thanks to Dr. Roland F. Beers, who, in 1940, 
published his formula in the _American Annual of Photography_.  I don't 
think he knew it could be used in two trays.   

Larry Bullis
Skagit Valley College


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End of Infrared-Digest V0 #255
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