120 contact prints w/white borders

[mh2000]

Anyone know how they used to make fast contact prints from 120 negs at the drug stores? They had perfect white boarders and were able to do it quickly. If I use a standard contact printing frame, getting white boarders is a real pain! Looking to make some 6x9 contact prints from a Clack. Thanks!

 

[robert blu]

I have no suggestion sorry but any answer would be appreciated by me as well.

 

[charjohncarter]

I've thought about this too. My contact printers are a piece of glass hinged to a board and there is some soft material the the paper and negatives rest on. Only only thing I've can think of is to make a mask and somehow attach the negative to it then pre-cut paper (oversized) put in the printer and try to line the up then trim the excess by hand: pain is right. I haven't tried it, but hopefully their is someone that has a better idea.

My dad had some wooden frames that had a mask attached to the glass and you had to cut the paper to the exact size.

 

[David Hughes]

Westbury and, I'm fairly certain, Paterson used to make a contact printer but I've not seen one for about 60 years. They doubled as safelights, you put the negative and paper in a slot at the front and pushed a lever/big button and the safelight on one side lifted up and the white (ish) light came through and exposed them. You were counting the seconds whilst holding the button down.

Hope that helps a little.

Regards, David

 

[Scrambler]

Use a mask for the white.

 

[mh2000]

Use a mask for the white.

How to make it easy and repeatable? If in Walgreens across the country were cranking out hundreds of contact prints a day with borders, they had to have a system that held things in place.

 

[Scrambler]

Easy and repeatable. Probably glass below film with mask painted on, glass over film.

The equivalent stores here in Australia wouldn't do 120. My local developing shop does everything with scans. That is the other possibility: your drug store may have scanned and digitally printed.

 

[mh2000]

Easy and repeatable. Probably glass below film with mask painted on, glass over film.

The equivalent stores here in Australia wouldn't do 120. My local developing shop does everything with scans. That is the other possibility: your drug store may have scanned and digitally printed.

Haha! I meant back when I was a kid collecting and fixing crappy box cameras and such! They made contact prints in the back room of the drug store, often in less than an hr or two. I think they had to have some kind of gizmo to streamline the process. The problem was that with my old cameras, I often shot on odd-ball size roll films that were being discontinued! And little 127 contact prints were kind of too small to be worthwhile!

There's gotta be some old timer who knew how they did it back then!

 

[mh2000]

I saw a little antique Ilford frame that would do this exactly, but it costs ~$60 shipped from UK. I'd pay $25, but this seems too much for me. Plus, I can just go with the sloppy film label black borders for an arty look for free. I'm just having a hard time figuring out a clever DIY solution that would be easy. An from google, it looks like a problem that no one has a good DIY solution for. 🙁

 

[mh2000]

The real problem is dealing with the film being roll film. If it was all just cut film, a simple picture frame could probably be used.

 

[Mos6502]

This is an old thread, but just recently I tried using an old Kodak contact printer with Adox Lupex (any other paper is too sensitive). The printer came with a set of transparent red plastic masks. The negative goes down first, against the glass, the mask goes over the negative, since it's transparent you can line things up before you clamp down one half of the platen (if you can call it that?) this will hold the mask in place, and if you're gentle the mask should hold the negative in place. Then the paper is placed on top, the other half of the platen is closed, and the exposure is made. It should be pretty simple, but I found out a number of ways to screw this up, and it took some trial and error to get it all working.

Try Try Again by Berang Berang, on Flickr

 

[x-ray]

The contact printers had movable blades. The printers ranged from a simple metal box with a light source, diffusion glass, movable masking blades and platen to hold the film in place all the way up to automated machines.

Vintage "AIREQUIPT JUNIOR" PHOTO CONTACT PRINTER | eBay

My dad built a really nice one that I used for years. There were a lot of articles and books in the day on how to build your own darkroom equipment.

Here’s another variation.
Albert Specialty Co 4” x 5” Contact Printer Red Light WORKS Darkroom Vintage | eBay

A company I worked for had a very elaborate one for up to 11x14 negs. It had around 30 small light sources in the bottom that could be switched on and off so as to dodge and burn while printing. There was also a drawer over the lights you could put diffusion material in to further dodge and burn.

Google Arkay speed dodge

 

[Rob-F]

One of those oughta do ya, mh2000! Personally I like the Airequipt better, if it's big enough for your negatives. It's cheaper and cleaner and looks easy to use.