The Print pt.1 1/21/5

Today I made my very first prints in the darkroom. It's a very crazy science to say that least. Messing with the times and testing whether it is too much or too light light exposure is one of the most tedious but time consuming things for me. For Andrew, he always used the 11,11,11 trick but for some of my pictures the lighting was not right and the images come out way too dark. But before I get ahead of myself let me tell you how I started out. The very first thing that you do is make a contact sheet which is a print of the negatives using a one to 1:1 printing method. By that, I mean the size of the pictures on the negatives is the same on the print. The purpose of making this print is to help you evaluate which photos are good to make prints of and which aren't.

But before I could make the sheet I made sure that the developer solution was working properly. When I walked into the dark room I looked at the trays and realized that the entire tub of developer was a dark purple-y, black color. I guessed that the chemicals had been exhausted but wanted to double check with a test strip that I exposed to florescent light. Sure enough, when I dipped the paper in, it remained white, a clear sign that the solution was no longer usable. So I went into the cabinet and mixed a new solution with a 1:9 ration of chemical:water. I was worried that it wouldn't work but luckily for me I did it right!

Having to hold these up to the night and squint and imagine what the printed version might look like is always a pain. 

So you make this...

And this...

By looking at these contact sheets I knew which photos were worth printing and which ones I shouldn't even bother with. To make these prints I set height of the enlarger to 11 inches, f11, and the light timer to 11 seconds and with a small amount of twiddling I got these.

F-number, also known as the f-stop, is the size of the hole that lets light onto the negative. The common numbers are: f/1.4,  f/2,  f/2.8,  f/4,  f/5.6,  f/8,  f/11,  f/16, and f/22. I believe that the enlarger that I am using, the Bessler 23CII has a range of 2-16. The larger the number the smaller the opening. From this, you know that the smaller the opening the longer amount of time you need to have the light shining on the negative to make a crisp print.

The next step was to make the prints.