As soon as I got the film developed from my
woodland photography I wanted to print some of it. I started out with one of the 4x5 negatives. All of these negatives however are big enough to need my ‘
Beast’ enlarger.
Birch and Grass
The Beast is on the third floor (American reference) (second floor British reference) with my conventional wet darkroom on the 1st/Ground floor. The process is involved as I run my print on the upper floor and then stuff the print in a light tight tube and troop it downstairs for developing and fixing.
I chose to print this on Ilford MGIV RC 12x16” paper. I have been printing a lot this year on Ilford MG ART 300 12x16 paper. I really like this paper however it is very expensive and being fiber-based takes a long time to fix, wash, and dry. So I took the expedient route. Once I have printed something I like I can translate to the better paper those prints I think hold the most promise.
I ran my new darkroom process based off
Les McClean’s process. I established the base soft filter exposure at 32 seconds after a test strip and one other test print at 48 seconds.
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| Kodak Print Scale |
On the Beast I don't have any of the automation that I have on my 6x6 enlarger. So I use a Kodak print scale I bought second hand. The enlarger came with a simple Paterson enlarger timer that basically switches the enlarger on and off for a preset time. With the Kodak print scale you simply place it on the paper and expose for 60 seconds then read off the time on the wedge that looks best.
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| First print #0 32 seconds |
The first thing to note is the bright upper third has glare from the sky and so lacks the same contrast and sharpness as the rest of the image. I checked to make sure the negative was well masked in the enlarger as this can be caused by light leaking directly around the edge of the negative and bouncing around inside the enlarger below the negative. This was fine.
Next I made a flash test strip and found the optimal flash was 2-3 seconds. From here on I pre-flashed the remaining prints to help bring up the bright areas more. It helped but not enough so I ignored this for now and made a hard filter test strip across a 32 second soft exposed paper.
The hard exposure test showed immediate darkening in the grass at 8 seconds. This combined with the two soft filter test prints showed I was dealing with a pretty high contrast negative. (This I need to puzzle out later as it seems at odds with the conditions of the day. Likely the over-exposure combined with something I did in developing. )
So I moved to fixing the bright glary upper section. I knew I needed a lot of burn as the difference in the are between 32 and 48 seconds was minimal. I decided at least one full stop and so burned at soft filter 32 seconds exposing most of the time in the upper third then transitioning the last 12 seconds to the lower part of the image. Eventually I settled on 48 seconds only on the upper third moving the mask I was using to make sure no sharp transition was present. I then added 6 seconds of hard filter to add a little contrast without darkening the image too much.
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| Final print #0 32 sec burn upper 3rd 48 sec #5 6 sec |
This was what I settled on as my best print. In this state I can appreciate the difficult lighting. The foreground is diffusely and dimly lit through the canopy. The sky is thin gray cloud so bright diffuse light. The large grass blades face up to the sky and so appear extra bright.
Overall I like the photo but, as discussed in a previous post, what I imagined was a somewhat wider scene in terms of composition. This print confirms my dissatisfaction in the composition. I think I will return to the location with my 90mm lens at hand.
Down the Path
The next image I wanted to print was a toss-up between two similar images one taken with 150mm the other with 210mm. My first look indicated I liked the one taken with the 150mm but now contemplating making a print I like the one taken with the 210mm lens.
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| Down the Path 1 (210mm) |
The 210mm version balances the path leading the eye to the right with the interest of the fissured birch trunk on the left. What I like about the 150mm version is more of the path is included which leads the eye better.
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| Down the Path 2 (150mm) |
Since these were taken with the SINAR 6x12 (Zoom) film back I still need to use the Beast. I will have to fashion a mask however to keep glare in the enlarger down.
Down the Path 1: The Print
The following is the progression of the print. First establish the base exposure on the soft #00 filter I tried 16 seconds then 32 seconds.
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| Test print #0 16 sec |
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| Test print #0 32 sec |
From here I learned I like the high key 16 second version, this keeps the trunks very white. I also see the the right and bottom of the image will need some burning in. From the previous session I determined I would flash the paper 2 seconds.
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| Burn plan |
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| Test print #0 16 sec. burn right and bottom 16 sec. |
Next I ran a hard filter (#) test strip. I decided based on this that 16 seconds would work and got this final print.
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| Final Print |
My favorite so far.
Birch Peninsula
Finally I printed the Birch Peninsula photo. Probably the most challenging. What I have come to understand in these prints is they would have benefited from being shot with a gradient neutral density filter where sky is present. I end up burning the sky area a great deal to equalize the exposure and contrast. It seems that the diffuse light of the day gave the upper part of tree trunks more exposure where they were exposed to more of the sky light. Lower down on the trunks it is more affected by reflection of light from the ground and so seems to get less exposure. Getting it right ‘in-camera’ would make printing easier. On to the print.
I got to 54 seconds on the soft 00 filter and 22 seconds on the hard 5 filter. I used a 4 second flash treatment. Then I used the burn plan below. This got to an acceptable print but I was not completely happy with the corners needed more burn and the upper left corner where the birch trunk was much more underexposed than the scan indicated. This makes me think I should review my enlarger setup to see that I have the right condenser/lens combination and that the lamp is placed optimally.
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| Burn Plan |
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| Final Print |
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