Making Contacts

Last episode I shared my experience returning to making prints in the darkroom after a couple decades away from that particular form of photographic alchemy. Having my images exist in the world as prints is a huge deal to me as a photographer. Wonderful though the ability to share images across the world online is, the print is the real end product I have in mind throughout the entire process. It's the one thing can truly be called a photograph.

A contact print from a roll of  6x7 negatives. The 8x10 photo paper is a little short on real estate with this format. 

But restoring the capacity to make prints fills in a less obvious hole that I didn't mention in my last post because I think it's important enough to warrant its own post. That hole I'm referring to was my former inability to make proper contact sheets.

Contact sheets are usually thought of simply as a quick cheap way of viewing your negative as positives, a tool for selecting the best images. If that's all there was to it then a quick low resolution scan of each new image, which is what I have been doing,would be a worthy substitute. But a properly made contact sheet is much more than this however because, in a sense, it's the only way to see your negatives as they are.

As it is, or at least has been, I've been evaluating new images on screen that have each been individually adjusted for exposure and contrast by the scanning software. Looking at these I'm able to determine some things about how good my choices have been with respect to exposure and development. Empty shadows or blasted highlights would tell me if the exposure was way off, but black and white film allows a good margin for errors of this kind, and the Fuji Acros I rely on most heavily has possibly the widest latitude of any general purpose film made. But it's one thing to know an exposure falls somewhere within this generous boundary, quite another to know it landed right where you intended and won't reqire drastic measures to print like an extreme contrast grade once it does make it to the enlarger. All I can really tell from a scan is whether a negative is ultimately salvageable. My aspirations are a bit higher than to produce negatives that are salvageable.

Enter the correctly made contact sheet. For those of you who not versed in standard darkroom practice contact sheets are made by laying negatives emulsion (dull) side down on a sheet of photo paper under an enlarger or other light source, laying a sheet of glass over the top to press them hard against the paper then exposing the thusly made photo sandwich under the light source. When the paper is developed you wind up with a sheet of unenlarged positive images of each negative. By correctly made I mean that the contact sheet is made using a standard middle contrast grade and given just enough exposure to render unexposed margins of the film at maximum paper black and no more. These are the conditions under which the images on the contact sheet should appear normal. If by and large they don't it's a sign you need to make some adjustments. If your images are too flat or too contrasty then the time your film spends in the developer should be adjusted accordingly (more time = more contrast). If they are too light or dark then you should adjust the ISO you set next time you are using that film. Since no adjustments are being made to compensate for the shortcomings of individual images the contact sheet is giving you the unaltered truth about your exposure and development routine.

A contact sheet of 35mm negs from decades past. 

My plan going forward is to make contact sheets from all my new work rather than scanning each and every individual negative to keep them stored one and all filed away on my hard drive which has been my practice to date. Having run a few contact sheets from previously shot and scanned rolls I've been reassured that my own exposure and development practices have been close enough to spot on to keep me happy. I have discovered a bit of a sticky problem however, for while twelve 6x6 cm negatives cut into four strips of three negatives fit nicely onto an 8"x10" sheet of photographic paper, ten of the 6x7 cm negatives I get from my weapon of choice the RB67 cut into two strips of two images and two strips of three images do not. Even the much less common 8.5"x11" size is a bit too narrow. The situation is no better when I shoot 35mm. Consider the contact sheet above, one I made many a year ago when I cut negatives into strips of five. As you can see seven strips of five images fit just perfectly on an 8"x10" sheet, but a quick bit of math and you'll realize the problem when you're shooting rolls of 36 exposures. These days I cut 35mm film into strips of six, which runs me into the same paper width issue. Looks like I need to get my hands on some 9.5"x12" paper, meaning I'll not only need larger trays but figure out a way to stack them. I'm already at the limit with 8"x10" trays in a darkroom that's dangerously close to qualifying as closet sized. Looks like another project has been added to the list. (SFX: grumbling noises) I'll keep you posted. 

The Darkroom Bears Fruit

The final result of my first foray back into the darkroom after an absence of two decades, warts and all. I'm sure I could do much better with this negative, but not bad for a first go. If nothing else I've learned I need to do a better job dusting.

It's a little depressing for me to think that I haven't been making darkroom prints since three or four years before the kids were born, and my oldest just turned sixteen. As my regular readers will recall (and thanks for your continued support by the way, both of you) last summer I up an old Durst M601 enlarger along with a host of related accessories and materials to set me on my way back to having a functional darkroom. Well, here we are half a year on and not much more has been heard about it. Well, here at last is a photo presented as a newly-made print from that enlarger rather than the usual negative scan.

I've presented it here in all of its glory as a straight scan, dust spots and other flaws included. The image itself isn't new, it was shot in the Autumn of 2013, a few months after I first started with the Mamiya RB67 system.I chose it because I've always liked it and because it looks best cropped square, allowing it to be printed in the Durst's stock carrier which will accommodate negatives up to 6x6. The condensers and bellows are large enough to handle full frame 6x7 negatives but unless I'm mistaken there's no carrier available in this size. I'm also just not keen on the glass sandwich design of the stock carrier. It's clever, with a four bladed mask that can adjust for any film size up to its maximum, but the glass means more surfaces to attract dust, I'll probably have to see what I can come up with on my own.This enlarger may be the subject of several DIY projects before I'm through.

Having been away from it for nearly twenty years I didn't head in to the darkroom expecting to produce anything gallery worthy. It was more a shakedown run where I hoped to find out whether I had lost much over the years or if darkroom skills were more like the proverbial ability to ride a bike. The result, I'd say, is not bad but I don't feel what I've achieved could in any way be considered the definitive print from this negative. I'm sure I'll return to it again and I'll do better next time.

The reasons this all has been so long in coming are several, though I must admit a fair share of the blame lies with the fact I've been comfortable with the groove of scanning all my negatives and doing all my "darkroom" work in Photoshop for presentation here an elsewhere on the web. Though everything I do when I work this way has its equivalent in the darkroom - exposure and contrast adjustments, dodging and burning, toning and spotting - I've also been anxious about my ability to achieve the same level of fine control under the enlarger. There is no undo button in the darkroom. The other thing that's been keeping me from diving right in is the fact that my equipment haul did not include everything I consider a necessity, and it was only last week with the arrival of a simple but serviceable enlarger timer that I finally had the last must-have crossed off the check list.

That's the check list for a basic level of function, but you can bet that's not the end of it. My next priority will be getting back to printing on fiber based paper followed eventually, I hope, by carbon transfer printing (not to be confused with carbon inkjet printing). That will probably be a long way off. For now I just want to get comfortable working under the enlarger and see how things go from there. As always I'll keep you posted.