Lots of chemicals to mix (its easy like a recipe) and of course you have to agitate the developing image constantly and have a decent digital timer. All of these things added up to the image above. My main problem was I forgot to stop the aperture down after focusing the image in the enlarger and I ended up frying test strips of paper as it had been exposed to too much light. After the first 10 strips it hit me ahh f/8 oh yeah! (f/8 lets in alot less light). Then I was off to the races and it was all fine tuning from there. I can see the focus pretty well, but this is a different kind of focusing and it will take me a while to get good at it. Focusing the enlarger is not as fine control as the camera, (I can see why my friend might have sold this one). Its very good but I bet there must be even better focusing mechanisms. But I'll learn on this. When I finally got the exposure right on the print I did last night and found all this negative dust in the first good print. Must remember to buy canned air! Eventually I printed 4 lovely clean prints of this gatepost.
1 comment:
glad you blogged this! was just tweaking my blog and saw this.... new story still brewing. Same story here too - one has to be in total control when executing one's own creations whether in music, writing or photo. Font-freakism is my soft spot... always have to custom custom or close by. But so. After 10 strips, that is very, very, very good. There are several mechanisms and a lot depends on enlarger lens. As with photo-focusing... all in one story of light. If film is silver (nitrate), printing is gold. From the photo you more than nailed your first print and I am not surprised. You'll find it, of course. And yes it's easy as a pie... Metalflower, well gatepost, is a very beautiful photo and of course only deserves the best. No dust. Four! Great. I hope you will print marshland soon and I'm sure the paper choice will be all integral too. Wonderful work all around.
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