Wet Processing

I recently bought a used Meopta Opemus 6 enlarger. I had purchased earlier an Opemus 6x6 a much earlier model however it arrived without a condenser lens and was unusable as such. The seller had a hunt around and could not find where his father who had passed away had put it and so refunded me my money (very nice guy). Rather ship it back to him, he asked me to send a few of the smaller valuable bits to him and I took the rest to the tip.
My present one I got for a very good price and a day in Norwich to pick it up. It was fortunate as it is a much better enlarger with a filter tray and the ability to correct for perspective. The lens was a very nice Nikon however it was 50mm which is iffy for 6x6 medium format and had bad vignetting in the corners. Consequently I replaced it with a 75mm lens from an old folding camera. The only thing I am missing is the detents in the aperture setting.
I have not done printing in over 35 years I would guess. Anyway since I was a kid and my dad showed me and my brother how to make prints using my grandfather's old darkroom setup. I remember it to be fascinating and yet disappointing. The old paper did not yield much contrast and I think because I was young it did not hold my attention. My brother however went on to do some commercial photography and even ran a color lab for a while. Photography became a big part of his life and in large part because of him and in order to connect to him it is now a part of my life.
I had recently bought some paper and chemicals for my ipad enlarger project (elsewhere in my blog) and so now I had all I needed except experience. I started out with the grade 2 Fiber paper I had and made a number of test strips and prints. Here are a couple of examples...

All Hallows Church London Ilford FC grade 2 Paper

Norwich Cathedral Ilford FC grade 2 Paper

These are low resolution scans but are reasonably faithful. Norwich Cathedral I photographed on a Mamiya C220 TLR after we picked up the enlarger. All Hallows was shot with a Yashica MAT-124G TLR.
The FC paper is very traditional graded paper with fixed contrast. Grade 2 is medium contrast and I got a great result with the All Hallows photo as the negative was high contrast. Norwich Cathedral came out well but it is not terribly high contrast. Since I had first printed photos as a child the industry has created variable contrast paper where contrast is controlled by colored filters. This is done with a mix of emulsions sensitive to different wavelengths of light. Now one paper can deliver multiple levels of contrast.
This didn't seem important until I tried printing these birch trees from Anglesey Abbey.

Anglesey Abbey Ilford FC Grade 2 Paper

After multiple printings with different exposure times this was the best I could do. Not bad but it does not convey the bright white of the birch bark very well. So I bought the variable contrast VC paper and a filter set. I cut the filters to fit the tray and then ran test strips with different contrast filters and exposures. I settled on the #4 filter 8"exposure at f8 on Ilford MGIV Deluxe RC paper. This was good but the sky was washed out. So I burned the sky for 3 extra seconds. This is the result...

Anglesey Abbey Ilford MGIV Deluxe RC Paper

Here I think this captures true contrast of the scene. The variable contrast paper puts a lot of control into the process of printing. Interestingly Ansel Adams and other earlier photographers would use a developer called Beer's where they had 3 developer baths and by varying the time in each bath the contrast of the print could be manipulated.
After this I printed a few of my brother's black and white photos. The first 3 are from the Maze District in Canyonlands when we went back packing there. (Subject of earlier blog entry.) The other is one of my favorites and I would love to know the story of how it was taken. It is a biker in Jerome Arizona.

The Maze from the rim. Glenn Morse

The Chocolate Drops. Glenn Morse

Moon over the Maze. Glenn Morse

Biker in Jerome. Glenn Morse