MorseBlog

Introduction It all started with a little trouble dodging shadows in a print I was working on. This lead me to explore masking in an intuitive fashion have never really studied it. I always thought a contact print on film could be used to reduce contrast or lighten shadows depending on the exposure and contrast of the contact print. So I started there. I also started to read more and looked into the problem of registration. There are pin registration systems though they are expensive (on the order of $500). I began to think about making one myself. A little more research and I could see the pieces coming together. The Implementation The core of the system is to produce 2 precisely spaced holes in film or a film carrier. This is simply addressed by a two hole paper punch like follows. Hole Punch This punches 1/4” holes. I had to order this from Amazon as in the UK the hole punches have 6mm holes. The reason becomes apparent when I learned that a company called Ternes-Bur

I have noticed in my printing posts mention of various aspects of setting the base exposure for my prints. It is a mixture of familiar and perhaps not so familiar topics. I have evolved my darkroom practice and equipment with an eye towards steady improvement. I am new to this and have a long way to go. Being new to this I see some value is recording what I have learned in what is hopefully a clear fashion. A lot of this was learned from different forums and reading what the old-timers have to say. There is a lot of good information out there. The Enlarger With respect to my enlarger it has been through a number of changes which I have recorded in this blog over the years. It all started with my humble Meopta 6 enlarger I picked up on eBay for 15 quid and a day out in Norwich. My philosophy when undertaking a new interest or hobby is to start in cheaply and once I see I am sticking with it to invest further. Big Prints At some point I wanted to make bigger prints like 12x16 and

I have been steadily modifying my Meopta enlarger that I bought for £15.00. I started with raising it up to allow larger prints. Then I upgraded the lenses as I saw I was losing sharpness on the edges. Then because I wanted to stop down the lens for better sharpness I changed my 75 watt bulb to 150 watt. More light helped immensely with exposure times with stopped down large prints. On the other hand  smaller prints suddenly became challenging as I could not stop the lens down enough and I kept running into sub-8-second exposures even at f22. Though I have automated my enlarger  and that makes the short exposures accurate, there is not much time for dodging and burning. Finally I decided I could improve the setup using the now unused filter drawer. Since my automation project uses below-the-lens filters the filter drawer is unused. I bought a pair of single stop ND filters (Cokin P Series P152 0.3 ND2 - 1 Stop Neutral Density Filter) and carefully cut them to fit the filter drawe

Recently my wife's workplace was getting rid of some old darkroom equipment and offered it up to anyone who would cart it away. I told her I was interested but someone beat us to it. However for some reason they declined to take it in the end. I suspect it was due to the size of it. I call it 'The Beast'. For the last year I have been in possession of some of my grandfather's (he was called Cushy short for Cushman) 4x5 negatives. He was an avid photographer and made a living from cameras and photography. I remember his interest while I was growing up and still have his Nikon F. He is part of the reason I took an interest in film photography back in 2009.As a result of this I wanted to print some of his negatives but I lacked a 4x5 enlarger. This is where The Beast comes in. So since last summer I have been perusing ebay looking for a 4x5 enlarger. They are not common, often expensive and very big. So finding one cheap less than £50 and close enough to pickup (shippi