B&W Photography - RC Contact Sheets

SO, in the last post about my photography class, I went over the process of developing the film. Now, we move on and do more things with it. But before that, I had to make contact sheets of the film, which we did that Thursday (the 4th) . This entails cutting it into 5 frame long strips and putting it in a sleeve made for just that.
Once we did that we were all set to make RC Contact Sheets. For that we use Ilford RC pearl paper. It is light sensitive, you can't expose it to any white light unless you're making a pring, only red or amber. In the darkroom at PSU we have an amber safe-light in the main area, and 2 red lights in the smaller rooms for developing film.
When using the enlarger to make RC Contact Sheets, all you have to do is adjust the height, and fine focus. You only need the white light to make the negatives positive.
 1. First have your Contact sheet ready, and place it below the enlarger and frame it in the light projecting down from the enlarger.
2. Fine focus so the light surrounding the sheet is a hard line, not fuzzy.
 3.Turn the light off, and have the timer set at 5 seconds. Then your paper out, and place it under the contact sheet. The shiny side of the RC  Paper is the emulsion side, this should be up. Also, the film should be placed so that the emulsion side is also down, both emulsion should be facing each other. We also place a piece of plexiglass or glass over the 2 sheets to press the film down (it curls).
4. We do a test sheet to find the exposure time that is best. The lens is at a 5.6 or 8 fstop. To do the test sheet we cover all but one strip on the contact sheet, expose it for 5 seconds and move to the next. this will give us a sheet to compare exposures with. The sprokets of the film should be barely visable on the RC Paper when its developed. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
5. Now 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....) The one that you can barely see the sprocket holes of the film on. Then you make a final one with the exposure you picked, following the same steps again :)

This is what my Final Contact Sheet looks like :) (sorry if it's blurry I took the picture with my phone)

B&W Photography - Darkroom!

Earlier this week, more specifically Tuesday (the 2nd), I had my first darkroom experience. We had to have taken 2 rolls of pictures over the weekend, and have the film in hand in class on Tuesday morning. During class we developed one of the roll of negatives! The process was pretty tedious, and I was glad I found a partner to do it with the first time, or else.....it probably would have gotten messed up!
SO...this is what we had to do (for people that don't know the process behind it)....

1.  First we prepared the chemistry...1:9 of 2 oz of developer and 18 oz of 68* water and combine them. Also we prepared 20ish oz of 68* water.
2. Then we collected the supplies we would need:

• bottle opener
• sissors
• roll of film
• plastic (or metal) canister
• A stem for the canister
• Plastic reel
• Funnel (light safe) lid for the canister
• flexible lid for the canister

    3. We had to set all the supplies out, so that we knew where they were and put the stem into the canister.
    4. Turn out the lights (no light anywhere)
    5. Open the film canister with the bottle opener (fromt he flat side, and push the knob up to get the film out), and cut the L shape off the roll of film with the sissors.
    6. Feed the film onto the reel and twist sides of the reel to wind the film in it.
    7. Once its fed all the way through, cut/tear the tape off the end, and stick the reel onto the stem in the canister, we had partners so there were 2 reels of film in it.
    8. Put the funnel lid on the canister, and twist it on till it locks. And put the flexible lid on.
    9. Now the lights can go back on.
  10. We then took off the lid and poured the developer and water in the canister and agitated (turn the canister over, and back) for the first 30 seconds. Then repeat the agitation every min for 10 seconds for 10 minutes.
  11. Then comes the Water Stop Bath. We had to fill and dump the canister 3-4 times with cool water.
  12. After that, we fixed the film. This takes 5 minutes doing the same agitation for 10 seconds every minute for 5 minutes.
  13. After the film is fixed you pour the fix back in the jug, because it contains silver, and that cannot be put down the drain.
  14. After pouring it back into the jug, you wash the film again, but this time, fill and dump 10 times with cool water.
  15.When it is thoroughly washed, we removed the fix, with fix remover/ permawash. This we agitated for 2 minutes straight.
  16. After the 2 minutes of agitation, we set in a bin with cool running water for 10 minutes.
  17. Once it was washed for 10 minutes in the running water, we had to put it in this stuff called photoflo for 30 seconds. It keeps the film from fogging up.
  18. THEN, after taking the film off the reel, our dark room has a film dryer, and you leave it in there for 20 min or until its dry. You can tell if its dry by the film curling towards the emulsion side.

And there you go! The next step is contact sheets and printing. but that'll be another post :)