MorseBlog

Introduction One problem with cameras that shoot 6x9 negatives come when you find your enlarger is only 6x6. I like my Fuji GSW 690 with a 65mm lens on a wide negative. I do have a 4x5 enlarger but it is so large it sits on the top floor and is inconvenient to use. In the past I have printed 6x9 negatives on my 6x6 enlarger and indeed have printed 6x17 as well. The strategy is two-fold. 1) Crop a smaller (say 6x6) portion from the larger negative, make a diptych or triptych or more with multiple images.  Today I start with two images from a pre-lockdown holiday in North Wales. I will print these on Ilford MG Art 300 paper that is quickly becoming my current favorite paper. The first image was straight-forward because of the way I composed the photo in camera as I didn’t really intend to use the full negative. I wanted to make this image in the style if Michael Kenna. Below is this first image.  Scanned full negative I cropped to the upper 2/3 of the image. It is quite a h...

Reflecting on my original post and my complaint about the thinness of the negative I decided I should  try and intensify the negative. There are many ways to to this including a very old technique of using Mercury Chloride (not a good idea!), Chromium, Sepia toner, ot Selenium toner. Fotospeed makes a Chromium intensifier intended for darkening thin negatives. I have never tried this but this is one way to go.  Andrew Sanderson's excellent blog has instructions on using Sepia toner . This involves bleaching then toning the negative. He does a great show and tell to explain the process.  Finally I use Selenium toner. Why? Mostly because I already have Selenium toner mixed up for my printing use. It is also dead simple. Just dunk the negative into selenium mixed a 1+3.  I give it about 3 minutes. I get anywhere from a 1/2 stop to full stop improvement.  I gave a short write up here but realized though I was satisfied with the improvement I didn't show si...