Advanced Black and White Printing
Contents
Care For Your Negatives:
From the moment you load your film you should handle negatives with extreme care, only touching them by the edges. Any marks, scratches or fingerprints are often impossible to remove and will show up on your prints. After processing place your negatives straight into a protective negative sleeve and keep these sleeves in a hard ring binder or folder as they are easily damaged.
Keep Negatives Clean, Dry & Dust Free
When you come to use your negs, use a blower brush to ensure there is no dust on them, any other marks can be carefully wiped with a lint free or anti-‐static cloth but only on the shiny side. Avoid wiping the duller emulsion side as this side scratches easily. If your negs get dirty you could rewash them in water with some anti-static solution and re‐dry them.
Contact Printing:
This can be done easily using the contact sheet printing boxes at the bottom right hand side of the darkroom. These are equipped with normal white bulbs inside with a grade 3 ½ filter to give a moderate amount of contrast, however, you will want to experiment with the filter grades when you come to make enlargements.
To use the contact sheet boxes place your negatives shiny side down on the glass with a piece of photographic paper emulsion side down on top (the emulsion side is the glossy or matte light reactive side). Close the lid carefully and apply pressure to the lid to form a good contact between the paper and the negs.
Switch the white light on for 5-10 seconds – this is an average time suitable for good evenly exposed negatives. Variations in the exposures of your negs may change the amount of time needed, e.g. overexposed or dark negs will need longer and underexposed or light negs will need less time.
Using The Processor/Print Machine:
This speeds up your printing rate and is very useful for normal printing on resin-coated paper.
THE MACHINE ONLY TAKES RESIN COATED (RC) PAPER. For professional printing for exhibition purposes it is advisable to wet process, or if you are printing on to fibre-based paper you must wet process each print.
Using the machine is simple, and there are a few basic rules to remember –
- Only put your paper through once the two red lights are illuminated on the bottom right, or when you hear the ‘beep’.
- Paper goes emulsion side down and lengthways and must be placed beneath one of the arrow markers.
- The minimum size for test strips is 5×1.5in or 13x4cm. Smaller test strips will get jammed in the rollers and once one piece of paper is stuck other peoples work will jam too. If you think your paper is stuck and it hasn’t come out then don’t be afraid to ask, everyone makes mistakes!
Photographic Papers:
There are two ‘types’ of photographic paper: Resin Coated (RC) and Fibre Based (FB).
Resin coated, which you can put through the processor/print machine, is ideal for getting quick results as you can have a completed and dried print in a couple of minutes.
There are a range of finishes and we stock glossy and fine lustre that you can buy by the sheet from the hatch in room 241. There are many more finishes and sizes available and it is more cost effective to buy a box and we have details of good stockists for you. You don’t need to but you can wet process RC paper and the times are shorter than FB and are printed on the wall in the darkroom.
Fibre based paper lasts longer than RC – history proves its stability, whereas RC is too new to know how long prints will last. FB paper is used for exhibition work and anything, which requires high quality. The emulsions make it far more versatile in printing and easier to retouch or tone at the end.
Remember that they need at least 45 minutes to wash and need carefully hanging to dry, or laying flat on the mesh print dryer, and you will probably have to flatten them later.
FB papers can either be Chloro-‐bromide and give warm tones, or, Bromo-‐chloride to give cooler tones, both of which will give colour shifts if toned with selenium later.
Both RC and FB papers come either fixed grade or variable contrast (VC) and in many finishes, if in doubt please ask.
Paper Grades & Filters:
These are responsible for the tonal range in your prints.
Either buy paper which is already graded at one of these grades (marked on the box) – Grade 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 (you will only get one grade per box), OR buy paper that states that it is Multi-Grade or Variable Contrast, which means that you can achieve any of the above gradations from one box by using filters.
With the former you will have already chosen what contrast you want when you bought the paper and there is no way of altering that. With the latter though you can choose the amount of contrast you want whilst printing by using Multi-Grade filters. These filters alter the contrast of your image.
Most prints should have a good range of tones from black through to white with maximum detail in the highlighted and shadowed areas. Grade 0 is the softest grade and makes the print an overall grey tone; it eliminates clean pure whites and pure blacks. Grade 5 is the hardest grade and will give you very few greys and a lot of black and white with little detail. Grade 2 is often a good starting point and the best grade to use while you establish what you want your finished print to look like.
Toning Prints:
You can tone finished prints to create different effects, including sepia and blue, or you can brush on coloured tones to specific areas of a black and white print or to touch up a colour print. You will have to provide your own toners if this is something you wish to try and we can recommend some stockists to you.
