Wet printing - not really easy?

[ChrisPlatt]

As mentioned most well-exposed negatives will yield good straight prints with a minimum of manipulation.
Perhaps Photoshop has irrationally changed our expectations?

Of course it's a learning process. You can't expect to make exhibition quality prints overnight.
I am an amateur and happy to make good wet prints, acceptable to me.
Your standards may vary.

So far no one has mentioned the "fun factor". For me time flies standing in the darkroom,
but really drags sitting at a computer...

Chris

 

[Fawley]

You can get fantastic looking prints, no doubt, wet printing. However, as a hobbyist with a other life commitments, the time commitment to master it plus the expense ----(

I have never investigated the cost of a fully digital workflow versus wet printing, so if anyone can throw out some numbers I would be interested. Given the money I spend on ink cartridges for my B&W office laser printer, I would have thought it would be a saw off; plus the price of a good quality printer (with a much shorter life span than a virtually free enlarger), and digital paper can't be exactly cheap either. Granted you likely go through more paper doing wet printing, but this is where the digital age really helps. With scanners you no longer have suffer through contact prints and then trying to figure out the good shots from those tiny negatives . I print only my good ones, and there are precious few of those.🙂

As for the hobby aspect, a hobby is by definition something you do in your spare time. Some people have less, some are lucky enough to have more, but it is very much an issue of how you choose to spend that spare time. My only compaint about that aspect of darkroom work, is that it isn't exactly a very social thing, now is it. But then photography in general has that loner aspect to it.

The real problem for most budding wet printers is having the space to do it. I am lucky enough to be able to deidicate a room to a darkroom (not yet plumbed but that's coming). I raise my glass to those people keen it enough to use their apartment bathroom!

 

[graywolf]

Good old graywolf's guide to learning to print in the darkroom

1. Go to a museum or gallery and look at some good prints.

No matter how good the prints in a book look, they are nothing like a real wet print. So, even before you decide to actually do it, go out and find out what you are thinking of making. Most of us have never seen a truly good wet print.

2. Forget about dodging and burning until you can make a good work print. A work print is a straight print that you use to decide what you have to do to make a finished print. Until you can make a perfectly exposed work print, all that other stuff is gilding a hog.

3. 5x7 paper is your best friend. It is cheap. It is big enough to see the image clearly. It is easy to handle. It is what you need to learn the craft of photography.

If you do those three things, I would guess, the average person will be pulling good work prints after about ten one-hour sessions. One-hour sessions, because the prints have to dry before you examine them critically, so there is no use making a lot of prints without taking the time to look at what you are doing. Also because most of us learn better if we do not over do it. And it is easier to maintain a high level of interest if we do not over do it.

OK, back to the lessons:

4. Examine the work print you want to make a fine print from.

Take a grease pencil and mark the areas that are too dark. Those are the areas you want to dodge. In learning it is probably best to make a new work print with just the dodging done, with experience you will most likely wind up dodging and burning in the same session.

5. Take your work print and mark the areas that are too light.

Those are the areas you want to burn in. Once again I suggest at first do as separate work print with just the burning in to learn this skill.

6. Now, do a print with both the dodging and burning.

At this point you have about 20 printing sessions under your belt, and you will be producing prints that expert printers will take seriously. You will begin to get little tips on how to subtly improve your prints. You will also know by then whether you love or hate those short sessions in the darkroom.

Fine photography is a craft. Just like any other craft, say fine woodworking, it takes practice and instruction. If you are the type that wants to improve, you will improve bit by bit over the long term until you may truly be called a master printer.

Don't become discouraged, remember in the trades it takes an apprentice four years to become a jouneyman, and and jouneyman two to four more years to become a master. Of course they are also putting in four or five days of labor for each day of training, so you will progress faster than that doing it as a hobby.

And remember, hobbies are supposed to be enjoyable, if you are not enjoying it, go find a hobby that you do enjoy.

 

[graywolf]

As to it being easier to scan a bad negative, I have a little factual anecdote to relate.

I took a photo of a friend with my Crown Graphic using flashbulbs. Now the Graphic had been mostly sitting in the closet for the past five years, due to a lack of a darkroom. The occasional daylight, or strobe shots I had taken where fine. But I do love flashbulbs, so off I went to take a few shots.

Turns out the synchroniser in the shutter is not working properly. I got negatives so underexposed that they were mostly blank when viewed on the light box. I tried scanning the one of my friend to salvage it. I was able to get an image off the scanner that after some work in Photoshop I was able to get an image that came off the Epson printer as a somewhat low contrast grainy looking print.

That negative would have been totally unprintable in the darkroom. So as some others said, you can truly make a print digitally from a negative that you could not even begin to print in the darkroom. On the other hand, nothing that comes off the digital printer looks anywhere near as good as the stuff from the darkroom.

In other words, arguing darkroom or digital is like two painters arguing oils or watercolors. One is not better than the other they are just two different media to work in.

 

[atlcruiser]

I am not a great printer but I print a lot. My general take on it is that good printing is rather easy; great printing is tough. I hope with enough "good printing" under my belt a few great ones will emerge.

I am a hard believer in getting the negs right. I spent hours and hours screwing with poor negs, both wet and digital, to get any sort of OK result. As my skills in exposure and developing advanced my negs got much better and made the printing process much easier.

 

[nikon_sam]

I've said this before...
Wet printing will teach you how to better your film developing and developing your film will teach you better exposure in camera...did that make sense...???

 

[Haigh]

I have tuned the enlarger (condensor head) to my Tri-x negs. They are flat,on purpose.

You can get a nice print this way on MG RC paper. Any dodging or burning should be minimal.

 

[Keith]

I'd like to learn to wet print but I think the learning process itself would be costly. I get frustrated at botching a print out of my R2400 and doing the mental calculation of the cost of wasted ink and a sheet of say, Ilford Gold Fibre Silk ... probably a couple of dollars per mistake. Seeing that go into the bin really irks me! 😛

Threads like this make me miss Al kaplan! 🙁

 

[katgut@earthlink.net]

<<I've used only graded paper (everything medium) and have variable contrast paper + filters to try, but I don't think that changes this aspect of printing, it will affect contrast of whole frame, I suppose.>>

Yes, but it doesn't have to. Once you acquire some basic skills in burning and dodging, you can change the contrast filter and selectively expose part of a frame.

Darkroom printing is addictive. Scanning is not.

 

[Vics]

...So far no one has mentioned the "fun factor". For me time flies standing in the darkroom,
but really drags sitting at a computer...

Chris

Plus one. Also I think silver gelatin prints look way better than the ink jet prints I've seen.

 

[Vics]

I've said this before...
Wet printing will teach you how to better your film developing and developing your film will teach you better exposure in camera...did that make sense...???

Yes. It does. (is that ten characters?)

 

[Ronald M]

Second what sego says. Test subject, develop film and print. Get the development right, then move on to real subjects.

 

[tlitody]

why don't people using colour film have all these development and exposure problems to overcome? Methinks they just learn to work with standard development and go take pictures when the light is right instead of banging their head against the wall trying to bend everything to fit some non existant target of perfection. :bang:

 

[Vics]

why don't people using colour film have all these development and exposure problems to overcome? Methinks they just learn to work with standard development and go take pictures when the light is right instead of banging their head against the wall trying to bend everything to fit some non existant target of perfection. :bang:

With color slides, it's easy. Expose for the highlights and let the shadows go to hell. With color negative, you still have to expose the film correctly for the lab you're working with. Once you get a feel for what they're doing on their end, you know how to expose (or in my case, over-expose) for the best results.

 

[btgc]

Since my last update I have worked twice in darkroom and I must admit - there's difference between graded and VC paper! I started from filter #2 and went down and up but this requires more work with different negatives to see effect fully. Basic prints came out much better than with graded paper, even made some prints from party to hand them. Still have a lot to try and see what happens.

Adopted test printer - before I used two paper sheets to make test strip, but test printer is easier to use.

What a great place RFF is! Thank you all for keeping this up and running!

 

[jm51]

Spend some time in the darkroom and you will be making acceptable prints in no time.
With experience your skills will grow and you will achieve better and better results.

You will never have complete control to manipulate all elements as in Photoshop.
But IMO that's part of the charm...

Chris

Photoshop could be used to make a dodging and burning mask using digital negative film, which then gets mated to the original neg. The print gets made in the usual way but the exposure is longer because of the mask.