over 20 kg

[Pherdinand]

Scr.. digital, I just bought BW paper of over 20 kg, second hand of course🙂

I have found a similarly weird colleague interested in this outdated business of black and white analog photography. We got almost all necessary toys to start a darkroom together in his bathroom. A Durst m300 and an LPL7700, and both seem to work fine (the lpl is a monster!) and the small bits and pieces are here already. Now i found a good offern on photo paper, mostly agfa multigrade, some 6-700 sheets, some of them even very large up to 50x60cm (don't know what to do with that, lol, maybe we will just cut them into pieces, no way we can develop/fix those monsters)
i hope properly kept 5 years old paper is still okay
so only the chemicals are missing and we're all set!

Next weekend:my very first printing session 🙂 wish me luck!
Is there any trick i should b aware of?

 

[Roger Hicks]

Yes, 5-y-o paper should be fine.

The single most important thing is this: ALWAYS DEVELOP PAPER TO COMPLETION. If you hae to 'snatch' the print after a few seconds because it's going too dark, too fast, it's over-exposed. Re-make it with less exposure. 'Completion' at 20C or above should be 2-3 minutes.

Have fun!

Cheers,

R.

 

[rxmd]

Sounds like a good deal. Agfa MCP hasn't been made in a while but as a paper it's absolutely fine and rather forgiving, a good thing to start with.

Keep the big sheets as they are. Sometimes you want to make big prints, you know, and big prints are the best part of darkroom work. 🙂 For developing & fixing them, you can get a tank (something like a Jobodrum 4550, they go for a song on eBay, I got mine for 1 EUR plus shipping). Or you can use a big, flat plastic box that you get at places like Blokker, the kind that people use to put bedsheets and the like underneath their beds. It's sufficient to get one tray, just pour the chemicals in and out in sequence. Timing is uncritical anyway with paper if you always develop it to the end, as Roger suggested.

 

[Pherdinand]

thanks guys🙂
yeah i'm also willing to be patient with the large sheets, especially that there is plenty of small ones, but i just quickly made the math and to process a 50x60 sheet one needs at least 5 litres of chemicals! (assuming only 1cm deep "bath" for it and a 70x70-ish tray)
so i'll look into the tank thing.
We also got a paper dev tank with the small things but it's fitting max 20x30.
We go small first, anyway.

There's also a bunch of baryta paper in the deal, curious to see how that is. I think i've never seen a print on baryta, or maybe in a museum i did. Didn't TOUCH any, for sure😀
I got a 60mm f/4 rodagon for the LPL enlarger, i've understood it's a very good lens (the original included was a rogonar) so no excuses if we mess it up. Although i thought it's the wide angle rodagon that does 6x6 too 🙂) and it's not 🙂) so, no 6x6 for now, and i'm in for more shoppin'

i'm excited, haha

 

[FrankS]

Have fun, Pherdinand! Darkroom printing is very rewarding.

 

[maddoc]

Is it possible to develop B&W prints in a Jobodrum 4550 tank ? How does that work, with some kind of agitation ? Just asking because I had to stop wet-printing because of the smell and possible splashes (especially from fixing solution) just before our son was born. (A baby-bath and open developer trays in the same small bath-room are no good solution ... 😱)

What I can recommend from my small experience is a very good grain microscope (magnifier ?) to adjust focus.

 

[rxmd]

Is it possible to develop B&W prints in a Jobodrum 4550 tank ? How does that work, with some kind of agitation ?

Well, prints is what the 4500 series tanks were made for, I think 🙂 Normally you'd put those on a motor base, such as the Ilford roller base made for Ilfochrome/Cibachrome, or the Durst Comot. Those also go for a song nowadays - I got two and I paid under 10 EUR each, including shipping. They're quite neat pieces of equipment, with a motor, a couple of rubber-covered wheels for spinning the drum, and a switch that gets activated when you place a drum on the motor base. They're very handy for B&W film processing as well - for the fixing stage especially, put the drum on the base, have it rotate, come back after five minutes).

 

[nikon_sam]

Concerning the 5 year old paper...you might want to develop an unexposed sheet before trying to print a neg just to check it out... I bought a bunch of used paper (not too sure of age nor how it was kept but I did buy it from a photo store so I thought it would be okay...it wasn't) try this before you do any real printing...
Have fun, take your time don't rush it...that's when you make big mistakes..

 

[crawdiddy]

Darkroom printing of B&W is sort of a completely different obsession than photography itself. It's very addictive. It's a lot of fun. Slightly different in that you get immediate gratification, unlike with exposing film. Seeing the image develop before you (under Kodak OC Safelight illumination) is pure magic. Have fun.

 

[Pherdinand]

well, we did it yesterday, as my avatar picture shows🙂
It was a lot of fun, so much that we stopped at 3 in the night which rendered me half useless for today 🙂

It was easier than I thought. What I was surprised of, was that exposure times were in the 7-10 seconds range only, at f/16 (!) , for normal negative frames and 13x18cm paper. Probably because we sued the 6x7 enlarger with a huge column, i can imagine a strong 100watt halogen lamp helps for large film/large magnification to reduce times.

Anyway, we even used the color mixing head for some contrast manipulation, even that proved to be doable.

 

[MartinP]

🙂
What a fun start to the week ! I recognise the idea with all the clothes-pegs , haha. Sounds like the lamp is efficient, which is very good when you go a bit bigger. There is a guide to what magenta and yellow colours will give what grade, on the Ilford site and probably lots of other places too (including in the packets of paper?).

 

[oftheherd]

Is it possible to develop B&W prints in a Jobodrum 4550 tank ? How does that work, with some kind of agitation ? Just asking because I had to stop wet-printing because of the smell and possible splashes (especially from fixing solution) just before our son was born. (A baby-bath and open developer trays in the same small bath-room are no good solution ... 😱)

What I can recommend from my small experience is a very good grain microscope (magnifier ?) to adjust focus.

I never tried it but used to read about making narrow trough like tanks that didn't hold so much chemical. You would hold both ends of the paper sort of doubled together, and emerse the entire sheet from one end to the other. Sounded quite doable. It was really for sheets about 3 to 5 feet or so, but you might try something like it if you can't find the drums or large trays, or just want to save on chemicals.