Originally posted by asahijock I am unsure why a 6x7 neg is easier to handle in an enlarger for wet printing. Yes it is larger but a 645 neg isn't exactly small in terms of handling. I have never used 6x7 negs but have wet printed 35, 645 and 6x6 negs and can't say that 6x6 negs were any easier to set up or focus in my enlarger. If truth be told I haven't found 35 mm negs any more or less difficult to handle than either 645 or 6x6 negs.
The crucial difference is in what size of an enlargement each is capable of. A 645 neg is capable of being enlarged to what I'd regard as a very large size, say 16x20, before grain becomes an issue. Resolution and grain is largely proportional to film speed but with D400 or TMY-2 film resolution is still very good
16 x20 might become an issue with D3200 but lower speed such as 400 then a 645 neg is fine.
Unless you need to do very big enlargements beyond 16x20 on a regular basis then 645 negs are fine in my experience.
asahijock
The 645 neg in an enlarger is always a portrait orientation, or you are working with single negatives. Neither is especially desirable. Single negs are a bear to work with, and while I haven’t been in a darkroom for nearly 2 decades, I doubt if easels are any different now than they were then, and they were not handy for vertical oriented oriented negs as the easel needed to be turned 90 degrees, putting the hinge on the side rather than the back. I never found this to be good.
One could get around this by using an 11x14 easel for printing 8x10s, a 16x20 easel for 11x14s, or a 20x24 easel for 16x20s, but that has certain amount of unhappiness as well.
I never had curling problems with 6x7 negs. I did have one of those Zone VI 4x5 carriers that pulled the sheet flat, though even that was, for me, a solution to a problem that had never bothered me.