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Re: [OM] Developing B+W -- how many shots actually see enlargement?

Subject: Re: [OM] Developing B+W -- how many shots actually see enlargement?
From: T.Clausen@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 11:59:58 +0200 (CEST)
On Fri, 26 Apr 2002, Daniel J. Mitchell wrote:

> > Most of my photos are B+W and I use ilford Multi - Grade 
> > paper + filters.
> 
>  So now I've got a darkroom set up, I'm torn.. I _can_ take lots of photos
> now so I can experiment with things, and it theoretically won't cost me
> much, because I can just do contact prints -- but I find that I'm barely
> making any enlargements from the contact sheets because of the time it'll
> take.

hmm....Either you have very cumbersome conditions in your darkroom, or you
just need to make a truckload of print to get into a "machine habit" of
working. I rarely print all frames from a film, but if doing so it's less
than one hours work (the time in the chemicals and the rinsing being the
constraining factor)

> 
>  This means that while I can make guesses as to how well composed the shots
> are based on the contact prints, and general exposure, I can't do much
> beyond that.
> 
>  But taking the time to print up 36 4x5 prints is a pretty imposing
> proposition -- what do people out there who have darkrooms do in this sort
> of situation? Do you just do contact sheets then enlarge the "good" ones to
> 8x10? All of them to 4x5 and pick through them there? Something in the
> middle?  Do you just get an 'eye' for the ones that're worth enlarging,
> because at the moment I can certainly tell the duds at 1:1 size, but there's
> a lot of others that might be worth blowing up, but there's still a lot of
> them to make up intermediate sizes of before I go the whole way. 
> 

I guess you'll get the combined answer of "yes" here. There are probably
as many ways of working in a darkroom as there are people.....

I usually do contact sheets on the same day (well...night) as I do the
films. Then, equipped with a thick pen (I find that red or green works
best) and a magnifying glass, I look at all the negatives and mark those
to print and those not to print, along with some information (mostly
contrast). 

This works well as long as I make sure that my exposure is quite
consistant across all frames - which is probably a good thing to stirve
for anyways.

Depending on what I've been photographing, it's then possible to go make
"supermarket-quality" prints, almost like a machine, of the entire
strip. Or to have a starting point for working on a large enlargement of
"the perfect frame".

I also find that a darkroom light-meter helps. It's much less intuitive to
use than a light-meter for exposing the film, but it still helps a lot at
determining exposure.

That's just my way of working in the bw darkroom. I'm sure that there are
a million better ways out there ;)

--thomas

-- 

-------------------------------------------
  Thomas Heide Clausen
  Civilingeniør i Datateknik (cand.polyt)
  M.Sc in Computer Engineering

  E-Mail: T.Clausen@xxxxxxxxxxxx
  WWW:    http://www.cs.auc.dk/~voop
-------------------------------------------


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