Kategorie: Wetprinting

Today it was pretty rainy, at last.
The trees are getting brown, loosing leaves, the grass is yellow. So we are happy with the rain.
So I decided to enlarge some negatives.
At first mixing the developer, stopbath and fixer. I used 1 l of each, a little more would be better next time. Dusting the enlarger, wiping all surfaces, putting my lighttight lids on the window.
Than using a antistatic brush on the negative, putting it in the enlarger try (I used one of my 6*6), emulsion side down.
Than I put the paper box ( in this case a pretty old one) on the base plate, adjusting the enlarger to the overall size. Put the box aside, here came the grain loupe, adjusting and adjusting the focus, than stopping down the lens 3 stops.
OK, lights out and red light on.
I took one of a rather old pack of sheets, testprinting with 4,8,12,16,20 seconds. Developed till the image showed, than times ten (15 sec to first image, 2.15 min dev time), short stop bath, 3 min fixing, best result with 8+ seconds, so I used 10 seconds.
New sheet, 10 sec., chemistry cycle, came out too dark.
Nice pic with 8.5 sec, but I left the paper about 8 min in the fixer and that was too long. I got some stipes I otherwise can´t explain.
But – my about 20 year overdue paper (I got it with the enlarger for free, package from 1968 ) seemed to be good.

Your print exposure time is determined by highlight value.
Once your brightest areas of your picture are satisfactory to you, that is your exposure time. 

Shadows are determined by filter number.
(If the highlights need a shorter time, the contrast is to low. If the shadows need the shorter time, contrast is to high.)
Filter or split tone printing or other paper to change the contrast would be the next step.



Than I just for fun took an old x-ray film, put the enlarger to 0.2 sec – and got a nice print. But due to both sides emulsion the x-ray film is extreme sensitive to scratches. Nevertheless – it is really sharp.

But now, after a quick check on time,  I had to clean and tidy up, thats always quite a job.



Have fun !

Most photographers tell me to keep a contact sheet for every film I shoot to better evaluate the negatives.
I am on my way.


For contact sheets always have your enlarger at the same place.
For example, move the head all the way up.
Or only illuminate the full baseboard. You want the head to be in a place where you can easily place it any time in the future.

Turn off all regular lights and only have a safelight on. Turn on the enlarger bulb. Open the enlarging lens all the way. Have an empty film carrier in place, focus it so the edges are sharp. (The goal is to have a wide evenly illuminated work area.) Turn off the enlarger bulb. Set your enlarging lens aperture to a medium setting such as f/11. Place 1 sheet of enlarging paper on the baseboard face up. Close your enlarging paper box or envelope securely. Place some negatives that you know are properly exposed on the paper. Place a clean sheet of glass over the negatives and paper so all is flat. Place a black card over most of the paper. Make an exposure with your enlarger timer. Move the card. Make a second exposure of the same duration. Repeat until you have a series of exposed areas (strips).

Develop the paper – Lights on
Examine the strips. You want the first one that is black, not dark grey. Note the exposure time.
Now you have a repeatable standard for your darkroom to use any time you want to make contact sheets. When you use the same paper and fresh developer.
Modified from the original on facebook from  Terry Thomas… the photographer
Atlanta, Georgia USA
And another comment :
In a proper proof, the clear, unexposed edges of the negatives are as black as the areas of print paper between the strips of film. And those areas should be as black as the paper ever gets.
This principle is called „maximum black,“ and it’s extremely important.  If you underexpose your proof sheets, the clear film surrounding your images will appear on the proof as a very dark gray, not a true black.  For a proper proof, the clear film must be printed down to the paper’s maximum black.  An overexposed proof sheet is more difficult to spot, but the vast majority of people err on the side of underexposure.
From :
http://www.halfhill.com/proof.html

This here is a good source of information :

http://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/AntiqueP/antiquep.html


And a few opinions :

R O: Multigrade developer will work with RC & FB paper. The FB paper will take longer to develop.

T K: The Brovira is worth it’s weight in gold to passionate lith printer! for tips on conventional printing with old papers, see lower part of Unblinking Eye article. I’ve also tried Caffenol with good success…..using Caffenol C-L with lower alkali content.

M K: Can also depend a little on which paper developer, Multigrade is a phenidone based developer and will likely work better with benzotriazole that with potassium bromide.

J M: Potassium Bromide works great for me, I have several boxes of stuff that’s older than I am and it’s got a good look.

M K: It should also be noted that BZT Benzotriazole cools off print color and potassium bromide can warm it up but that the KBr warm tone can be a little greenish depending on paper.

T P: try processing the paper in dectol developer

• Start with a test strip at grade 2.5, right in the middle of the contrast range.
• The test strip is then exposed in a series of steps.
• Choose a step on the test strip that has some black areas as well as some detail in the light parts of your image. It’s usually best to go slighter darker if in doubt as to which step to choose.
• Take the time for the selected step and divide by 2, for example if the 30 second step looks about right this will give you 15 seconds.
• Do another test strip using this 15 seconds at grade 0 and 15 seconds at grade 5. 
• In simple terms, the grade 0 low contrast exposure gives you control of the light grey areas in your print. To add more detail in these ‘highlights’ increase the grade 0 exposure time. 
• To increase the overall print contrast increase the grade to 0.5, 1, 1.5 or 2. Be careful to avoid having white patches with no detail in your print. If this happens reduce the contrast again. Obviously if your print looks dull and without any bright areas (assuming it should have bright areas!) then decrease the exposure times until you see some.
• The high contrast exposure gives you control of the blacks and shadows. Increase this time until you see good blacks or decrease it until you can see some details in the shadows without completely losing your blacks. Be careful not to reduce your blacks to dark grey or your print will look low contrast! I always use grade 5 for the high contrast exposure.
  

For each exposure you can change the time and grade used giving you an almost infinite variety of possibilities. You can also dodge (selectively reduce the exposure of) parts of the image during each of these 2 basic exposures:

• To increase shadow detail and separation of the tones in these darker areas dodge these areas during the low contrast exposure.
• Another way to increase shadow detail is to reduce the grade 5 exposure.

• To give highlights subtle detail when they appear slightly over printed then dodge these during the low contrast exposure.
• If highlight (lightest) areas appear flat this is because the contrast is too low or the exposure is too long. Increase the grade or reduce the exposure used for the low contrast exposure.
• If it is difficult to put detail into the highlights using burning-in then reduce the grade used towards 0 for the basic low contrast exposure and maybe increase the time as well. Be careful not to reduce the overall impact of the print as you do this.
• If the print needs more contrast increase the grade 5 exposure time, reduce the low contrast time or increase the low contrast grade.

 I also quite often make the foreground more contrasty by dodging the low contrast exposure for this area. I don’t want the viewer of my images to just look straight beyond the foreground to the main centre of interest. The whole picture sits on the foreground and increasing the contrast here gives it a prominent position in the final print.