Back in the Darkroom!
I haven't been in the darkroom for some time. I did a brief stint (2 prints) in November on the Beast my 4x5 enlarger. This lead me to work on some missing negative holders the subject of a post back then.
So this weekend I spent several hours printing and found it enjoyable again. The process has a start, some lessons and a few pleasing results.
Getting Me Started Again (Thanks Wolfgang!)
The beginning of this session I suppose was my visit to British Columbia to see my son last December. We went out walking and he indulged me by letting me take photographs as we talked and caught up. I had decided to try some Foma Retropan 320 to see if I could make it my high speed black and white film. The results made me decide not but I still got some decent photos from the visit.
Later I 'faved' a photo from Wolfgang Moersch. Wolfgang sells his own chemistry for film and paper and I can attest to the quality of his products. I use his paper developer Eco 4812 almost exclusively. If you are inclined towards exploring lith and and toning or alternative processes then he is the man to see. He contributes prolifically on Flickr where I follow him.
The photo I liked was very nice example of blue toning and alternative processing which gave a really good result. Here is a link...
Wolfgang was kind enough to fave a photo from me and he picked one from my BC trip that was a similar theme of tress in a forest. I have a certain look that I want from my photos and while I can't be specific there are ones I immediately like and ones that are kind of 'meh'. However I do pay attention when one of my few followers fave a photo. I t reminds me that I should see more and differently. I try and stay open minded.
In the case of these photos, I was disappointed with the film technically as outlined in the original post and I think this colored my opinion of the photos. I tend to favor technically perfect photos. I don't mess around with expired film or lomography and when I am printing seriously I don't like expired paper unless it performs well. (There is only one example of that Negra Portrene.) Wolfgang's fave and his own work made me re-evaluate the photograph in terms of mood and style.
First Prints and Evaluation
First of all I use split grade printing in the darkroom where I expose the highest contrast filter on variable contrast paper then a low contrast filter. I vary the times for each filter exposure to get the desired contrast. Consequently you will see I refer to a #5 filter (high contrast) time and a #0 filter (low contrast time). The f-stop and the times are all relative to the enlarger, light source, negative, print size and paper type. One can understand and observe differences by making reference to these numbers.
I made my test strips and a few prints. Something looked wrong and the developer was milky. I decided to discard the developer as it was quite old. I really have become more brutal about discarding suspect chemistry. I spend a lot of time in a printing session and the chemicals are not that expensive. I mixed a fresh batch of Moersch Eco 4812 at 1+10. This is higher concentration than the other 1+14 recommendation but it develops faster and offer a little more contrast. (On reflection I think the developer was probably fine. As outlined below the negatives were very low contrast which made me think the developer was not good.)
First of all I should recount the conditions for taking the photos. This was taken at Lynn Canyon a very dense Pacific Northwest temperate rain-forest in winter. These places are very dark. It was also very foggy which made for a great atmosphere. Consequently there was no light and very little contrast. I was using my Rollieflex 2.8F handheld and though I was shooting ASA 320 film at box speed I was typically shooting in the range of f 4.0 or 5.6. Shutter speeds were 1/30th or even 1/15. I relied on the excellent leaf shutter for stability and trying to be as still as possible. The conditions were very challenging as I wanted to stop down enough to get some decent depth of field. Even so I was often underexposing and hoping the film would exhibit enough latitude to print.
Another factor was the development of the negative. This was my first foray into Retropan so I followed the guide on Massive Dev Chart for my developer HC-110. In the end all of these conditions conspired to produce very thin negatives with consequently little contrast.
So a second round of test strips and prints. These are the exposures I determined based on test strips and the previous print. As a rule I don't manipulate these prints in Photoshop except to set the white base and to make them match as best I can, the print in hand. They are also scanned to retain color which will be relevant when I perform some toning. (These initial prints are 8x10 on Kentmere VC Select RC paper).
 |
| f16 #5 32 sec #0 8 sec |
The lack of contrast is apparent with the bias towards the hard (#5) filter. This I thought too dark. Not enough detail on the bark of the nearer trees. So I took down the soft filter 1 stop and added some hard filter (+1/4 stop).
 |
| f16 #5 38 sec #0 4 sec |
 |
| f16 #5 16 sec #0 16 sec |
Another criticism is these images have lots of dust spots on them. I spent some time cleaning dust on the negative and negative holder but was not careful enough. I decided to re-clean more carefully and to change up the composition to include more foreground.
I made 2 images of this composition from the same negative. One at 32 seconds on the hard filter alone and another at 32 seconds for the soft filter alone. I was still deciding between very soft or somewhat more contrast. The low contrast version was very light so I decided to experiment with it and bleached it with 10% potassium ferrocyanide solution. The idea was to bleach some of the highlights to lighten them. Then I toned it with selenium 1+3 to beef up the shadows. This concentration of selenium can give a decided color shift towards purple. Here is that result.
 |
| f16 #5 0 sec #0 32 sec bleach + selenium tone 1+3 |
It is a decidedly warmer tone than I expected. It has alluring quality though has some staining often associated with bleach + tone in my experience.
The next is the higher contrast though in this case I toned it with selenium 1+19 to deepen the blacks a bit.
 |
| f16 #5 32 sec #0 0 sec selenium toned 1+19 |
This one I liked best. This led me to look at a bigger print. My enthusiasm was building! I set up for a 12x16 print by resetting the easel, raising the enlarger and removing an ND filter in the enlarger to allow for the greater area that must be lit.
I dug out a pack of 12x16 Foma Variant 123 FB based paper. I ran test strips which don't look right, it looked fogged. I developed an unexposed strip and it was fogged. I then printed a whole sheet at a reasonable time from the test strips with only #5 filter. Yeech! the borders were all a middle gray. I was shocked as I bought this paper new 4 and half years ago. I pulled sheets from the middle of the pack and had the same results. The whole pack is useless. Use your paper or lose it! Alternatively store it in a freezer.
 |
| Section of badly fogged Foma paper |
Out with the Ilford 12x16 MG FB Classic paper. Fortunately this paper is OK. I did a number of exposures, again only exposing with the hard filter to bring out a little contrast. #5 at 38 seconds, 45 seconds, and 54 seconds. I selenium toned the tow lowest exposures but left the 54 second exposure alone for now as I liked it best. Here is a composite scan of that print.
 |
| 12x16 Ilford MG FB f22 #5 54 sec #0 0 sec No toning |
Finally I have an overlaid scan to show the three exposure differences with toning. Top to bottom #5 38 second w/Selenium 1+19, #5 45 second w/Selenium, #5 54 second wo/Selenium. Note the differences in color. The brown stain is due to insufficient washing of the fixer from the print.
 |
| The three exposures |
This ended the first day's printing. Next I will look at toning the prints in Iron toner for Moersch Photochemie.
Comments