Type in the exposure you think the print needs, how big a step to take between patches,
and how many patches. The map then has a row for each patch: its seconds, large, and under
them how many stops it is from the base.
Your guess is the base. It starts on the middle patch, so the others bracket it; tap a
patch, its figure or its strip, to make that one the base instead — on the first, the strip
only goes up from there.
Every patch has two figures: what it has had in all, and what it adds to the one before.
The switch over them, Totals or Additions, says which a run gives, and that column is in
ink: totals for a strip moved along in a holder, each patch exposed on its own; additions
for a strip covered as it goes, the next patch covered at each figure. With a timer, that
is all there is to it.
The strip beside each figure shows roughly what that patch prints as, in the zones of the
Zone System: 0 is full black, V middle grey and X paper white, on the paper and at the
filter set under the map. The strips share one axis, the exposure in stops, with a scale
of it under the map, zero at the base's middle grey: the base's strip shows the paper's
zones each as wide as the exposure it spans at that filter, and every other strip is the
same, shifted by its patch's exposure. Your prints may differ.
To see what a tone does in the other patches, find it in the base's strip, the boxed one,
and look straight up or down: a place across the map is one part of the picture.
To follow one tone closely, slide a finger sideways along any strip, or drag with the
mouse: every strip then shows that part of the picture in full, and the zone it is nearest
to. Sliding picks nothing; the line stays where you leave it.
To see what another filter would do, open "Compare with another filter" and set it. Every
row gets a second strip under its first: the same seconds through that filter. Follow a tone
from the base's upper strip straight down as before, and the patch whose lower strip has it
right gives the seconds for that filter. This goes by Ilford's speeds for the paper:
filters 4 and 5 need a stop more light than 00 to 3 on Multigrade IV and Art 300, and an
eighth of a stop more on FB Classic and Multigrade RC Deluxe. Your enlarger may differ.
The page can keep the time itself, sounding every moment you have to act on: press "Run
in Darkroom Mode" at the foot of the screen. If you would rather count on a metronome, tick
"Use a metronome instead" and the figures turn into counts. Both ways have a fold at the
end of this list.
The darkroom view is large red type on black, to read at the enlarger. It shows only what
your hands need, the plan and the Start button, and nothing that can be set. Escape, or
Close, brings the page back.
Red only is safer than white, not safe. The screen is still a light source, and Multigrade
paper is most sensitive to the green and blue in it. Turn the phone's brightness right down
and keep it away from the paper.
Test your own phone before you trust it: leave a scrap of paper face up beside the phone
showing the view for five minutes, then develop it.
Turn on airplane mode, or Do Not Disturb, before you start. A notification or a call
lights the whole screen.
Open the page once while online, and after that it works in airplane mode.
To keep it to hand, add it to the home screen: on iPhone from Share → Add to Home Screen,
on Android from the browser menu → Install app, or Add to home screen. On an iPhone that is
the only way to be rid of the browser's own bars in the darkroom view.
Everything is calculated in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere.
In the darkroom
Press "Run in Darkroom Mode", then Start. The plan is the map's figures with a bar
beside each, as long as that exposure, and one above them for the count-in: the seconds
the page waits before the lamp goes on, set under Configuration and remembered. Make it
as long as you need to get a hand to the switch.
A run gives every patch exactly the figure beside it, in turn: with Additions what it
adds, the next patch covered at each mark; with Totals its whole exposure, one after the
other, the strip moved along at each mark.
The count-in counts three beats in, one a second, the last of them a second before the
lamp. On the lamp a drone comes in and holds for as long as the exposure runs. Over it a
tone climbs, and arrives an octave higher exactly on each mark, where a short beat lands,
louder and an octave above the ones that counted you in: one for each patch, and the
last is the lamp off. Silence means it is done. As the run goes, the bar of the exposure
it is on fills, and the figures stay the brightest thing on the screen.
There are two ways to start it. Start keeps the red type on screen as the run goes.
Start dark gives the screen up altogether: there is nothing to read once you are going by
ear. It stays black after the run ends, too, rather than lighting the room while the paper
is still out.
On that black screen the whole of it is the one control. A tap starts a run, and stops
one that is going; a hold gives the screen back and ends the run with it.
Started the lit way, a press on the button stops the run at once: there is a screen to
see it on, and the hold belongs to the dark. If a call or another app takes the page
away, the run stops and the view says so.
With "Stop between exposures" ticked, Start runs one patch at a time. It says which
first — one short blip for the first patch, two for the second — then counts in, gives
the patch its figure, and the lamp goes off. The view then waits, and Resume, or a tap on
the black screen, runs the next; Reset goes back to the first patch. A patch stopped part
way starts again from its blips.
On a phone with an LCD screen — the iPhone SE, XR and 11, and most cheaper Android
phones — black is not dark: the backlight glows through it. Lock the screen instead. A
run plays on with the screen off, and the lock screen's play and pause, or the button on
a pair of plain wired earbuds or a Bluetooth remote, start and stop it as the buttons
here do. A run stopped from anywhere starts again from its count-in.
On an iPhone this may pause music playing from another app. Bluetooth speakers and
headphones delay every sound by the same amount, which does no harm when you go by ear.
With "Use a metronome instead" ticked, Start runs a metronome at the tempo shown rather
than the strip, for as long as you let it, the beat you count struck an octave above the
rest; Start dark, the tap and the hold work as they do for a run.
Your own metronome
Tick "Use a metronome instead". The page then says what tempo to set and which beats to
count, and every figure is a count, chosen to land as close to the f-stop time as a tempo
allows. A count of 1⅔ is the second beat after the first counted one.
Set any metronome, a physical one or an app, to that tempo. If it can accent beats, let
it accent the one you count. Or let the page keep it: in the darkroom view, Start runs a
metronome at that tempo.
Start the exposure on the count of zero, and cover the next patch at each count on the
map. Additions start the count again from zero at every patch; Totals keep one count
running from the start of the strip.
When a patch lands more than a tenth of a step from its target, the map says how far
beside its stops.
If your metronome lacks the tempo shown, press "My metronome can't do …". The next best
tempo appears, and the choice is remembered on this device, so after a few sessions the
page knows your metronome. A tempo skipped by mistake is brought back by pressing it
under "Skipping", and "Forget all skipped tempos" under Configuration starts over.
Configuration also holds the tempos to search between, and "Count every", normally
chosen so that you count about once a second.
This way of working exists for the accuracy a steady beat gives, and finding the tempo is
the whole trick; the metronome the page runs is that beat and nothing more. If you would
rather the page did the timing, that is what it does with the box left unticked, and if
what you want is a proper f-stop timer, something like
GoTimer's enlarger
timer is a better fit.