Hi all,

I know not many of us use film and darkroom techniques any more but it's a process that I still enjoy.  Want to see how it's done?

We start with the negative (above).  I have isolated the negative that I want from a strip of six.  You can see the others hanging out on the right.The print will be of a very foggy Schuylkill river in Philadelphia.

Now you can see the negative holder being installed in the 1970s era enlarger.  In the background (under my hand) you can see the adjustable easel which is used to crop the image.

Lume shot!  Here I have the safelight turned on and the chemistry mixed.  Left to right are trays for the developer, the stop bath, and the fixer.  There is a fourth tray with water in it for rinsing the prints.

Above we can see paper has been installed in the easel, but the enlarger has yet to be turned on to expose the paper.

Ah, there we are, one 75 watt bulb is all the energy we need to make a print.  (And no blasted computers, hallelujah) The enlarger lens is set to f5.8 and the exposure is 32 seconds.

Above we see a test print in the rinse.

When I have a print that I like I usually tone it with this poison.  It's good stuff that makes the silver archival and also deepens contrast.

And now we're air drying the results.  

I hope you have enjoyed this little tour!  I skipped over the exposing and developing of the film, but perhaps I can revisit that some time soon.  And for brevity's sake I also skipped over dodging, burning, contrast adjustment and loads of other esoteric stuff but I hope you get the gist of it.  It's pretty simple really; in a half hour you can go from a negative to a decent archival print, and enjoy the solitude too.

Music, darkroom, art.  Three of my favorite things.

Jeff