My first darkroom session!

[matti]

So, I put up the newly aquired Durst m70 in the kitchen, put black plastic over the windows so the street lights wouldn't shine in too much and printed some really deacent 24 x 30 cm pictures! I even understood how to turn those colour dials to change contrast a bit.

But I really need to work on my standards, doing proper test strips etc but I got too eager today.

I only made these mistakes: Turned the paper upside down, spilled light on a print, pushed the "on" button instead of the timer button and wondered after 20 seconds why my 5 seconds wasn't finished yet, and then I framed one picture so about one fourth was outside the wrong side of the masking frame.

I also bought a Componon-s 4/80 today so I will be able to finally do something with those Iskra negs that is laying around.

/matti

 

[mac_wt]

Congratulations. Only a few weeks ago I made my first prints. It is very addictive. My first session I made the same misstakes you mention and then some (including putting paper under the enlarger without turning it off first!). The next sessions went a lot better. Still, I think I will need a lot more practicing before I get a reasonable number of 'good' prints out of a session. It's much like learning to use a manual camera for the first time.

Wim

 

[Fred]

Keep it up, I'm sure that like the rest of us mortals you'll make some more mistakes. Like leaving your cell phone on the base board and receive a phone call during exposure. Or the more usual and forget to reset the timer after a test strip.

It's a lot of fun and completely addictive even though we make mistakes and can't hit that 'undo' button 🙂

 

[f/stopblues]

I always made (make) the mistake of leaving the aperture wide open after checking the focus. That'll give you some nice black cat in a coal mine prints! It's a lot of fun in there though.. enjoy!

 

[titrisol]

sounds much better than my 1st session!!!

BTW if you expose paper backwards you can get some really funky images. Just have to figure out the factor of overexposure required (Forte RC required 2 stops)