Infinitely Blissful: B&W Photography

This week on Tuesday (the 9th) we made an actual print of our negatives. It was exciting! I chose to do a print of a negative of a little girl I babysit. The process is essentially the same as making the RC Contact sheets, except the parts with the enlarger. For this process you will need an easel (holds the paper) and wont need the plexiglass/glass.

1. First you need to pick the picture you want to print. Then take that negative and line it up in the negative holder emulsion side down (idk what the official name is) in the head of the enlarger, use Dust Off and spray it with the air, to get dust off. And place it back in the enlarger, and secure it (lifts up and down with turning a knob or lever)

2. Turn the white light off , and after the negative is all set, you put the easel with just a plain white piece of paper in it under the enlarger. This way you can fit the image to the paper, by lifting the head up and down. Then focusing it by look, then using a looking magnifying glass thing (idk what it is) you look through it and make sure the texture you see is like sand paper. (details)

3. Have the timer set at 3 seconds. Then get your paper out, and place it in the easel. The shiny side of the RC Paper is the emulsion side, this should be up.

4. Again, we do a test sheet to find the exposure time that is best (this can be on strips or little squares to conserve paper). The lens is at a 5.6 or 8 fstop to start with. And start with a 2-3.5 contrast filter. The filter ranges from 00-5. 00 being the least contrast in black and white, and 5 being the most. To do the test sheet we cover all but one strip of the paper, expose it for 3 seconds and move to the next. This will give us a sheet to compare exposures with.

5. Just like for the RC Contact sheets, we have to develop the RC Paper. In the dark room there is a large (long) sink that holds 4 tubs. The first one is Developer (that is already mixed for us), the second is Acid Stop Bath, the third is the Fix, and fourth is the wash (running cool water). These all have about a half inch of each liquid.

6. For the RC paper you place the exposed sheet in the Developer tub, and agitate for 2 minutes. We do this by lifting the corners so the developer flows over the sheet constantly.

7. When the 2 minutes are up, you take wood tongs with rubber ends and lift the sheet out and let it drip. and place it in the Acid Stop Bath for 30 seconds.

8. Again, lift the sheet out with a separate pair of tongs, let it drip and place it in the Fix tub for 3 minutes, and agitate. At this point, if you were alone you could turn on a white light and look at it, but since we do this with lots of people we have to go out of the room to see which exposure is right.

9. After the 3 minutes, lift with yet another pair of tongs and place in the wash for 15 minutes. When it's done being washed (with test ones we just rinse them for 30 seconds) you can go out into white light and pick the exposure that is best.

10. When you have picked which exposure is right. ( increments of 5 seconds, 5, 10, 15....) You may have to change the exposure/ fstop/ filter, but after doing a couple test sheets you should be able to pick one. Then you make a final one with the exposure you picked, following the same steps again :)