Hmmm. Apparently he has never shot a grey card (or a Photodisk) or used a densitometer. Or he left it behind as "kid stuff" when he became an expert. One card per day per film lot ought to be enough to make consistent, repeatable prints.<p>The grey card is also the key to getting professional negative printing done as well. (And there were several entire industries dependent on professional labs. Portraiture, weddings and forensic photography were almost always done on negs, usually Kodak Vericolor 160 shot at 100 or 125, later split between Portra 160 and Fujicolor Reala; the prints from transparencies were too garish for skin tones.) Think of it as "white balance" for film. One standard 18%-grey exposure with push/pull instructions would do for both souping the negs and printing. Get the grey right, and all of the qualities of the light, including filtration, come in the package (modulo reciprocity failure if you print murals from small or medium format).<p>[Okay, I'll admit it -- as a photographer, I was an immaculate technician but no sort of an artist. It still bugs me that guys like this guy and David Brooks can make a living at the game without knowing any of the voodoo behind what they do. In our world, it's as if Larry Wall <i>really did</i> create Perl accidentally by falling asleep face-first on his keyboard. It ain't right.]