Rant: My printing abilities suck

[cmdrzed]

I am so frustrated with my printing abilities. I don't even know how to describe the problems but I know I'm never satisfied with the outcome. My biggest complaint is that I can't seem to get a consistent look. Maybe the problems are with my negatives which would mean the development process is the culprit. Better yet, it could be the metering. Arrrggghhh. So many variables. :bang:

I'm just venting. Does anyone else feel this way? Maybe I would have better luck abandoning the darkroom and just scan my negatives. Suggestions?

 

[Al Kaplan]

No no no. Tens of thousands of photographers before you managed to learn. It IS possible. Start out by taking pictures in controlled circumstances. Use just one camera, meter, and lens. Only change one variable at a time. That means just ONE film, ONE developer. Once you learn you'll be glad that you did.

 

[rya]

Suggestion:

Spend a long amount of time printing only a few negatives that you like to look at but are very different. Possibly use one dense, one neutral and one thin negative. Experiment with filters and times, your workflow and printing skills (e.g. dodging, burning and the like) until you feel in command of your output.

 

[cmdrzed]

Thanks for the encouragement Al. My setup consists of my IIIc with 50mm lens, Gossen Digisix meter, Fomapan 100, and Rodinal. I know practice makes perfect but it gets frustrating in the darkroom, especially when I turn on the lights 🙂 I will definitely start using controlled circumstances and expand my horizons when I am satisfied with the results.

 

[dof]

cmdrzed,

I totally understand that particular frunstration. Fortunately there are many fine books available on the subject of how to achieve consistent results in film processing. I highly recommend Chris Johnson's The Practical Zone System. While many associate the Zone System purely with large format photography and its unique ability to process one negative at a time, the methods Johnson outlines are applicable to all formats.

I've found it invaluable in my own work.

All the best,

 

[David William White]

The trouble is that B&W film has roughly 12 stops of latitude, whereas paper has about 5, so your negatives can be all over the friggen place, but there is a solution.

Besides following Al's advice above, the single most important thing you are probably not doing is making proper contact sheets consistently. There is a standard methodology to it (maximum black through the film rebate) and it helps you get your exposure and development optimized so you can repeatedly achieve printable negatives of similar contrast and tonality. Otherwise, every negative is a completely new beast that must be wrestled into a print.

Even if you don't undertake the photography end in a systematic manner, then still make the contact sheets (properly), and then you can quickly *select* the negatives that will yield the easy prints, especially if you bracket your critical shots.

 

[Al Kaplan]

You might also try incident metering, where you're measuring the light illuminating the subject rather than the light reflected off of the subject. That's one less variable to deal with.

Do you know a nearby photographer who does darkroom work? Sometimes just watching another person work can be a learning experience.

 

[cmdrzed]

dof: thanks for the book suggestion. I have been eyeing it but not sure if it would be beneficial. I will go ahead and get a copy.

David: what is the proper way to make a contact sheet? Is there a standard exposure time? This is not something I usually do. I have been trying to *eyeball* them after the negatives are dry.

 

[cmdrzed]

Al: I have thought of that but I don't know anyone local that does darkroom work. I will ask the next time I am in the photo store but I do know all of the guys who work there have gone digital.

 

[Al Kaplan]

Are there any nearby schools offering courses, either high school or college level? Here in the Miami,FL area the photo courses all seem to cover some darkroom.

 

[glchua]

My printing abilities suck too!

I had probably went through 800 over pieces of 8R Ilford MGIV already and I'm still learning every time I step into the darkroom to print. It usually takes me about 2-5 prints to get an acceptable one. Last week, I went thru' 30 prints just to get the look I want from a single frame. And it is still not good enough!

Sounds like torture but the entire analog workflow is why I enjoy photography nowadays.

I did a lot of film scanning and Photoshop prior to starting darkroom printing in 2004. But it wasn't enjoyable at all.

With digital workflow, or send-to-minilabs-and-forget-about-it workflows, the pleasure ends at pressing the shutter.

When I discovered darkroom work, the pleasure is extended to the entire image making process.

Don't get frustrated! Enjoy the entire learning process.

As David William White pointed out, good and consistently done contact sheets can give you good starting values for contrast settings and exposure times. Someone also taught me split contrast printing which I'm still learning on top of all the dodging and burning skills. All these help to make better prints.

There are many many variables to making a good print and that is probably what makes each print unique and beautiful in its own right.

 

[Roger Hicks]

"You go on making the same print, again and again, trying to make it better each time, until you realize that the last one you made was not as good as the one before"

Bob Carlos Clarke

There is no substitute for looking hard at a print; trying to work out what is wrong; and then reprinting it to try to remedy that problem.

My wife Frances Schultz is an excellent printer -- take a look at the two black-and-whites in http://www.rogerandfrances.com/subscription/ps ignore gurus.html -- and she often makes work prints; leaves them for a few days; and then examines them critically to see how she can make them better. And she almost never makes contact sheets: doesn't feel the need.

This works for her. It may not work for you. Never trust anone who tells you that there is only one way to do things. If you read the text that goes with the abovementioned pictures, you'll see that it's a warning against gurus.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Merkin]

a few tips-

some chemicals are more forgiving than others. most schools these days use sprint chemicals, which are basically slightly less toxic versions of kodak chemicals. they are pretty forgiving.

if all else fails, use a higher grade of variable contrast filter. 2.5 is 'neutral,' i tend to always use a '3' as my baseline.

try not to crop too much out of your negatives. for now, stick with either printing the full frame, or printing full bleed on 8x10.

if you are using fiber based paper, switch to resin coated paper for now. it is a lot easier to learn with.

make test strips. lots of test strips. put a strip of paper down in the area of the most interesting part of the shot, and make a 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 (or four through twelve) second test strip. when printing either full bleed or full frame on a sheet of 8x10 RC with a number 3 contrast filter and a correctly exposed negative, i have found that eight seconds is usually in the ballpark. (i also start with eight seconds for contact sheets.) after that, be sure you develop for the correct amount of time, stop for at least thirty seconds, and then fix for two minutes. after two minutes, take it out, go outside and evaluate the print or test strip in full light. if you like it, put it back in the fixer for another ten or fifteen minutes, if you don't, rinse it and throw it away. a good rule of thumb for printing a properly exposed negative is to try to make a print that has some white, some black, and a good range of greys. of course, some negs dont have dark shadows, or white highlights, but choosing a negative that does is a good way to learn.

taking a class at a community college is a FANTASTIC way to learn, because of the one on one interaction with the professor and other students, but if that is not an option for you, call your state university's library, and ask them what the textbook for the intro to film photography course is. you can get a copy of it online for a lot less than you can buy it from them, but it would most likely be a very good resource for sorting out your issues, particularly with evaluating negatives and prints.

what are your prints looking like? are they looking kind of washed out and sort of all dull middle grey?

 

[David William White]

David: what is the proper way to make a contact sheet? Is there a standard exposure time? This is not something I usually do. I have been trying to *eyeball* them after the negatives are dry.

Yes, in a nutshell, here is the process (yell at me if it's unclear):

Set up your enlarger height to project white light to cover much more than 8x10 (to avoid light drop-off at the edges). Put paper down in the middle and lay your negatives in rows and cover with a sheet of glass (from a picture frame or whatever). Slide #2 contrast filter into the tray, set mid-aperture, and do the step wedge thingy across the whole area. You want 10 steps of 3 seconds (or whatever).

Develop. Look at the clear base of the film (rebate aka sprocket holes) and note the time (number of steps) it takes to get to black and won't get any blacker. That is your ideal exposure time for contact sheets for that film on that paper. Write that down. Ignore your pictures; it's the minimum time for maximum black through clear film base that we are after.

Make a straight contact sheet of that set of negatives. You should not be able (or only barely able) to distinguish the film from the sprocket holes. Lock or mark the head height and aperture. All of your contact sheets with that film brand and paper will be done from that aperture at that height for that time -- from now on. You won't be 'fiddling' to get a decent contact sheet.

You might notice a couple of things right away:

1) Your pictures are too dark to see. That means you are underexposing and your negatives are too thin.

2) Your pictures are too light -- no deep tones. That means you are overexposing and your negatives are too dense.

3) Exposure looks good but pictures are flat. That means you are underdeveloping.

4) Exposure looks good but pictures are really contrasty. That means you are overdeveloping.

5) Some combination.

Don't be at all surprised by 1 or 2. It's shocking but quite common. A 'maximum black film base' contact sheet has just told you the single most important thing in the world about how you take pictures.

If 3 or 4, you will need to fiddle with your development time, temperature, or dilution, but save that for later -- you can use contrast filters for now until you get exposure nailed.

I hope that is of some help. I know it sounds like a lot, but it isn't really, and if your contact sheets improve, it will make everything else SO much easier. For instance, when you go to print, once you have one print from a roll (aperture, time, filter), you can knock off all the others in the roll in rapid fire. You won't be jumping through hoops with each bloody frame.

When I took photography in college, we were briefly taught how to make contact sheets, but not why. Shameful, because it turns out that contact sheets are diagnostic tools! Once I made it standard practice, my exposure got better and my printing got a lot better.

 

[Merkin]

david is absolutely spot on with that tutorial, but there are a couple of things that are more matters of taste than anything else that i feel i should mention in the interest of arming you with WAY more knowledge than you need 😉

photo classes teach new students to either use a 2.5 contrast filter or no contrast filter (essentially the same thing) when doing contact sheets, at least at first. i personally prefer a 3 (i tend to prefer more contrast than a number of folks around here, but it is, again, personal preference), david prefers a 2. as time goes by, and you learn your style and your equipment, you may find that you want to switch to either a 2 or a 3.

I personally believe in timing the development of contact sheets, it is an easier way to ensure complete development without overdevelopment, especially for beginners.

again, fantastic tutorial, david!

 

[Pickett Wilson]

What I've discovered with trying to help a lot of folks with printing over the decades is that ambitions don't fit their life situations. 🙂

It's dead easy to get a print from darkroom printing. It's very difficult to get an outstanding print from a darkroom. Those famous prints you admire in books and gallery walls likely took an expert printer hours, or days, and many attempts to get to look that way. They aren't straight prints. It's kind of like believing those hot movie babes on the front of magazines in their bikinis really look that way!

I'm not saying you can't get decent prints from an hour or two in the darkroom. Just realize that it's not the way you get "great" prints.

 

[rxmd]

I've had my darkroom mothballed for the last nine months or so due to moving, so I'm talking out of experience from the past.

Contact sheets are really the key. There is no "standard" exposure time or way to do them except the standard you set for yourself, but you should only vary exposure time to adapt to the different tones of the film base. For example, with Fomapan, which is a fairly dark bluish gray, I usually gave it 1.5 times as much light as with APX, which is fairly transparent. If you do that for ten films you will know all the settings.

Then there's nothing but printing, printing, printing. Choose an easy and forgiving paper, variable-contrast, resin-coated for a start. Buy packs of 100 in a good size like 8x10 cm and just print a lot. I find that in the beginning one of the most important things is to realize how prints look in different light. In the darkroom you usually judge them under weak artificial lighting (under safelight it's impossible), while outside in daylight or bright artificial light they look completely different. Also they look different when dry. Getting a feeling for these differences makes it easier to get a general idea about a print already in the darkroom and saves you a lot of next-morning disappointments. In the beginning it's really all about the practice.

 

[Turtle]

I dont contact print but with experience have a good idea what is what looking at a neg on lightbox. I can usually get close on exposure and contrast filtration too, but it takes lots of practice. That means time, experimentation and sweat. I am still learning at a hell of a pace and I dont think that ever ends. Hang in there! FWIW when I see truly spectacular prints it still makes me stand in awe. I feel some of my prints are up there with the best I have seen anywhere, but plenty of others are not.

Remember that you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear and not all scenes can deliver a neg that will translate into a wonder-print no matter how good a printer you are. Sometimes the tones of the original scene are poorly separated and that will give you hell in a B&W print when various colours can register the same density on the neg.

My tips:

Go to see exhibitions. lots.
Print thin, super dense, awful looking negs to see what you can do. Sometimes you will e shocked to learn that for certain things underexposure works well, sometimes very dense negs come out beautifully on print with perserverance.

I would say keep a couple of reference papers on hand as some have different tonal curves and simply by switching stock a pig of a print can suddenly fall into place!

It takes a long time to become a real master, hence most masters being twice my age!

Early on you will do some prints well, but most not. You get better, not by producing better prints at the top of the scale so much as pulling up the bottom standard.

 

[Benjamin]

up the contrast.

 

[David R Munson]

Others have already touched on exposure and development and such. I want to recommend a book I found particularly helpful. I used it as my textbook in college when I did an independent study in exhibition b&w printing. The book is "Elements of Black and White Printing" by Carson Graves. Currently $32.88 on Amazon.com, it would be money well-spent.

A few miscellaneous personal observations:

• Proper testing to determine correct personal film speed/exposure index (EI) for your given film/developer combination is absolutely critical
• Stick to one film and one developer for a while until you know the combo inside and out. It's hard to learn anything of much consequence about a particular combo if you only use it twice.
• Good metering technique and resulting on-the-nose exposures go a long way to make life in the darkroom printing far easier. You can make good prints from imperfect negatives, but it's a hell of a lot easier to make excellent prints from excellent negatives.
• Print on fiber-based paper as much as you can. RC is great for contact sheets and quick proof prints, but fiber is much nicer to work with for fine prints, and the difference in quality comes through in the final product as well.
• Stick to one paper/developer combination. Sure, play around here and there to see about image color and whatnot, but find something you can work with and just keep working with it until you understand it innately.
• Don't include toning your prints in your process until you've got a solid handle on everything else.
• Be aware that a lot of people end up overexposing and underdeveloping their prints. If your print is in the developer for 30 seconds and you pull it out to shove it in the stop bath, something's goofy.
• Finally, and this is the single most important and valuable thing I think I have to say, KEEP GOOD RECORDS. Go to a university book store and pick up a bound lab notebook. Keep notes about everything in your printing process. Make notes for every printing session. Keep track of all your variables. In time, you will be able to identify and better control the variables that are at work in your process, whether they be good things or bad. And, if something unexpected happens (again, good or bad), you're a lot more likely to be able to figure out what it is in short order.

Making silver prints is a wonderful activity. It certainly can be frustrating for a while, and the ability to make truly fine prints usually evolves over the course of a couple years at least. Be patient, be diligent, and always try to find the joy in the process. When you get frustrated, go have a beer or something rather than keep printing. The worst thing you can do is channel bad energy into the process, as when you do everything about it is guaranteed to suck.