Darkroom Adventures of an Absolute Beginner

[VF101]

Having promised you to show some wet prints, here we go:



This is from my third darkroom session. The picture has been taken with a Olympus AF10 Super with Tri-X and developed in Rodinal. The print is on Adox EasyPrint 311, developer has been Eukobrom.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Having promised you to show some wet prints, here we go. . . This is from my third darkroom session. The picture has been taken with a Olympus AF10 Super with Tri-X and developed in Rodinal. The print is on Adox EasyPrint 311, developer has been Eukobrom.

GREAT start!

Cheers,

R.

 

[shadowfox]

Having promised you to show some wet prints, here we go:



This is from my third darkroom session. The picture has been taken with a Olympus AF10 Super with Tri-X and developed in Rodinal. The print is on Adox EasyPrint 311, developer has been Eukobrom.

Looks heavenly!
Please post this in this the thread that showcase recent darkroom prints:
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=130772

 

[ZeissFan]

It looks to me like you are doing an excellent job with the enlarger and the wet process. Keep it going!

 

[VF101]

Thank you all for your kind words. I made some progress, yet there are still problems remaining:

Exposure time is too short, especially without using a gradation filter. I will have to buy a bulb with less power.

Dust and spots are my main concern though. I think there are several problems during my film development process working together. Sometimes I forget to rinse with distilled water. Once I left the window open next to my drying film, resulting in a plethora of dust on the film. Scanning the negatives as a replacement for contact prints in my home office is another opportunity for dust settling on the film strip. This all means, I'll have to improve my workflow.

But I'm very confident to get the problems sorted out.

 

[VF101]

I learned today, that the dust I see on my quick scans with the cheap Epson V330 flatbed scanner is not on the negatives, but somewhere in the scanner! The spots move around while scanning. I have three cropped scans attached, that demonstrate the problem. Thus, there is no real dust problem with my negs, it's just the stupid scanner.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Same with my V500. Scans come out with similar "something", but wet prints doesn't have it. Dust reduction doesn't change it a lot.

 

[shadowfox]

Exposure time is too short, especially without using a gradation filter. I will have to buy a bulb with less power.

I almost never print without some kind of filtration.
What aperture do you usually expose with?

 

[VF101]

I almost never print without some kind of filtration.
What aperture do you usually expose with?

For the print of the Millennium Bridge on 30x24cm paper I used f16. Exposure's been six seconds with M2 Foma filter. Test prints on 18x13cm paper without any filtration need about two seconds.

My measures against this problem:

• I always print on larger paper now
• I'll always use some filter
• I got a lamp with less power in the mail today