interesting thing happened on my contact sheet.

[ibcrewin]

I accidently put two strips of negatives on top of each other and when I was making a contact sheet. I exposed the paper and developed. The frames that were only one film deep came out too dark, the ones that were stacked two deep were perfect.

(I was tooling around with some expired papers so I was getting sloppy)

 

[FrankS]

Makes sense. If negs did not get enough camera exposure, they'd be thin, and the contact print image would be dark. (Or if the enlarger exposure is too long) If there are 2 layers, negative density would increase, and same enlarger exposure would result in less dark contact print image.

 

[ibcrewin]

Thanks Frank! I did try to expose it for less time but the contrast was crap. I'm guessing the combination of using expired film and expired paper has at least something to do with it. Either way printing is fun!

 

[FrankS]

I recently used up some (badly) expired paper and needed to use the highest/strongest contrast filter (5) in order to obtain a normal looking contrast in the print. This was with a normal neg that I previously printed with a #2 1/2 contrast filter on fresh paper.

 

[ibcrewin]

yeah, i've got a lot of expired paper and some behave better than others. Sometimes I have to pull out the big guns! I printed this on 15year old ilford multigrade IV RC paper! I think I ended up using a #4 filter but I don't remember. I usually start with 3 and it was too flat.

I desaturated it here.. But it's close to what it looks like in hand.