Wet printing - not really easy?

[RichL]

Good wet printing requires years of daily practice.

Unless of course you start your printing career by printing several hundred test prints a day. 🙂

 

[maddoc]

A contact print will match a projection print from a diffusion enlarge.

The projection from a condenser enlarger will have more contrast than a contact from the same machine. If you have a condenser, then make the contact with #3 filter, print with #2.

It is an almost perfect exposure tool if you put the enlarger head in the proper position to make the final print first, then make the contact at that height also.

Thanks a lot ! That was what I wanted to know. 🙂

My intention is less to save paper but time and also trying to achieve some - personal - standards to simplify things.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Thanks for the replies so far ! 🙂

My idea was to eliminate the height / lens / flare factor initially to only test for the correct paper graduation and then to adapt exposure for correct height of the enlarger, chosen aperture etc ...

Yes, but look at it this way.

The flare factor will ALWAYS reduce the contrast of the projected image, so you need a harder paper for a projected image than for a contact print (no loss of contrast via projection).

If the flare factor is close enough to 1, this will be trivial. The higher the flare factor, the greater the difference between the contrast you will get on the contact print and the contrast you will get in a projected image, i.e. the harder the paper you need for the projection print.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Steve M.]

Congratulations btqc on your move to analog prints. I made the decision last night that scanning was something I really hated, along w/ inkjet printers and their assorted papers and inks. So it's off to look for another enlarger, and I'm selling all my scanner & camera gear. With thousands of developed negs around here, all I really need is an olde folder for the odd shots, and my digital P&S to make my ads up with.

It must be rewarding to you now that you have taken charge of your images, and not simply farmed them out to a lab. As for the learning curve, you'll get it. I can draw quite well, but if I don't do it for a while it looks like stick figures. But give me half a day and it gets going in the right direction.

 

[maddoc]

Roger,

thanks for pointing that out again. Now my idea is, given everything constant - enlarger, height (enlarging factor), used lens - then the flare factor should be constant and not change from print to print.

 

[gns]

No it isn't. But if you've spent 3 or 4 decades making them and then decide to try making ink jet prints, that's not the easiest thing either.

Cheers,
Gary

 

[ChrisPlatt]

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

 

[shadowfox]

Spend some time in the darkroom and you will be making acceptable prints in no time.

I'm glad it's that simple for you.
For me, it took a lot of time consuming trial and error with absolutely dull beginner prints as the result, reading lots of books, talking to printers, slowly picking up methods, tips, and tricks, starting to get it, then nice prints with absolutely boring content.

Then one day an experienced printer said, "hey, now we're being serious."

No, it's not easy. That's why it's a worthy craft.

 

[Fawley]

I'm glad it's that simple for you.
For me, it took a lot of time consuming trial and error with absolutely dull beginner prints as the result, reading lots of books, talking to printers, slowly picking up methods, tips, and tricks, starting to get it, then nice prints with absolutely boring content.

Then one day an experienced printer said, "hey, now we're being serious."

No, it's not easy. That's why it's a worthy craft.

I find this comment, and one made earlier by Chris Crawford very discourageing to beginning printers (which I count myself among). It all depends on your expectations. To produce exhibition prints of the quality that I expect Chris can produce (given the quality of photos I have seen him post), yes I certainly agree takes a lot of practise. But I do not and did not find it difficult to produce what I consider good quality "viewing" prints, good enough that friends and acquaintances were happy to hang on their walls. My reasons for wet printing, in addtion to enjoying it and wanting to eventually produce exhibition prints, is that I much prefer holding my pictures in my hand rather than viewing them on a computer screen. To achieve a print that satisfies this end usually requires the minimum of dodging and burning for most negatives. David Vestal says in one of his books, " a good negative is one that prints easily". Sure almost all images can be improved by expert printing employing the right darkroom techniques, but it isn't always necessary to get a good print.

I'd like to see as many people wet printing as possible. Given the very low price of enlargers, there aren't enough. I think the most important thing for a beginning printer is to keep their enthusiasm up. One way to do this is to be able to print reasonably well but also reasonably quickly. I like to see a few decent prints in my hand at the end of a printing session. I start my sessions by trying to see what I can do to improve one of my images. If I,m not successful, I don't continue to beat my head against a wall. I move onto to something easier so I have something to show for my efforts.

 

[Tim Gray]

Maybe I'm naturally gifted 😀, but I don't think making acceptable prints to be that difficult. I'm definitely no master printer, but a straight print with no dodging or burning with good blacks and whites should be reasonably easy to dial in. Of course, this assumes that you have negatives that are properly exposed and developed. I think that's a sticking for a lot of people.

If you are used to scanning and working on them in Lightroom, it's quite possible you don't have negatives that are easily printed in the darkroom. You might be compensating for overdevelopment in post, etc.

For a darkroom beginner, I'd say start over with film like HP5+ or Tri-X, expose a standard scene somewhere between 200-400 (NO PUSHING!), develop it in a normal developer like XTOL or D-76, or something else with reasonable development times (5+ mins), and go from there. In the darkroom, start with VC paper and grade 2 in your enlarger. Adjust the exposure until you get a good black where there should be a good black. And your whites and midtones should fall roughly into place. If they haven't, it's very possible that your exposure or development of your negatives are off.

And do yourself a favor. Pick up a book like Horenstein and work through it. I also think David Vestal's 'The Craft of Photography' is an excellent book for a beginner. It's available EXTREMELY cheaply on the used market.

 

[RichL]

My son has spent perhaps a hundred hours total in a dark room. His prints could never been mistaken for Weston but hang nicely on a living room wall with no embarrassment whatsoever. The bottom line for him however is that he enjoys doing the whole process from taking the picture to making the final print.

 

[shadowfox]

I find this comment, and one made earlier by Chris Crawford very discourageing to beginning printers (which I count myself among).

I apologize if that's what people take from my comment.

On the contrary, I said what I said because I want beginners not to get discouraged when they experienced what I described.

It has nothing to do with expectations, which will grow with the time you spend in the darkroom and seeing a lot of good prints by others.

It also has nothing to do with being happy with your prints to the point of hanging on your own wall. We are all entitled to that.

There is nothing that would make me happier than for darkroom- printing to gain (or regain) the appreciation that it deserves from as many people as possible.

 

[Tom A]

Having been a wet-printer for 40+years - nothing beats the feeling off pulling a print out of the wash and looking at it - nor does the magic of watching a white piece of paper suddenly show an image!!!
This said, it is probably one of the hardest things to get really, really good at! Printing is probably 1/3 skill, 1/3 intuition and 1/3 luck (if you are an occasional printer). There are 1000's of great photographers out there - but very few are master printers as well ( I am talking exhibition quality final prints here).
To get good, you have to learn how to read a negative. Which grade to use (or which filter), exposure, developer choice (this can affect the image to some extent - trick is to adapt to what you use) and paper. Most of us will struggle with some prints (paper has less of a latitude than film and you are trying to squeeze it all in).
Ansel Adams stated : The negative is the score, the print is the performance.
I suggest you pick a negative that you know is pretty good (exposure and processing), Try to print it as well as you can straight and then start burning and dodging.
Someone said earlier in the post "always let the print develop fully". It is tempting to pull early if it is too dark, or leave it in for longer time if it is too light. This does not a good print make! This is also why one of the most important tools in the darkroom is a garbage can.
Even today, after years of having printed - I struggle a bit if I haven't done it for a while. You have to re-learn the process!
But nothing comes close to the satisfaction of getting a good print, no inkjet, no scan will be as satisfying!

 

[Pablito]

One of the things people don't understand about wet printing is how to arrive at the best basic exposure to start with. If you find yourself doing a lot of intricate dodging AND burning you probably are not starting off with the best basic exposure or choice of contrast. Dodging and burning give you tremendous control, but sometimes it's best to reexamine what you are doing and simplify.

Oh yeah, and develop your paper fully - just use a standard time and don't vary it EVER. It's easy to pull RC paper from the developer too soon because much of it has developer incorporated into the emulsion so the image pops up right away. Watch the timer, not the print.

 

[Fawley]

I apologize if that's what people take from my comment.

On the contrary, I said what I said because I want beginners not to get discouraged when they experienced what I described.

Thanks for clarification Will. I know from your past posts that you have provided guidance to others on many occasions. Chris Crawford, of course, is well known for his sharing of information and techniques on his website and in this forum.

 

[NickTrop]

Wet printing is an art... In fact, it's a rapidly being lost art. And that's for a reason. It's a 100+ year old technology that is more expensive and offers few benefits over modern techniques. It can be, however, fun to do as a hobby like firing a musket or reenacting the civil war, or yodeling...

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

Wet printing requires better negatives than scanning for digital corrections. When you scan, you're nor really getting what you got on negative, but a new and different digital representation with a new contrast that depends on your scanner's settings: a variable digital photograph of your photograph. When you wet print, even with variable contrast paper and filters, you're clearly in front of your exposure and development in a more direct and visible way... Variable contrast paper is of great help, but appropriate exposure and development depending on the scene's light and contrast are way more relevant than darkroom techniques. The normal procedure is calibrating a film for two ISOs and development times, first for direct sun, and then different ISO and development time for soft light (overcast or shadows on sunny days): paper developer should be used on paper for at least three minutes always, until there's no change on paper. You can print any negative to see how your exposure and development are working: print it with the precise enlarger time required for the frame borders to just reach paper's pure black, and then you'll see your real image and know if any ISO variation is required and if any development time variation is required for that kind of scene's contrast... My normal filter is 2 because my Nikon enlarging lens is of high contrast, but older lenses are commonly used with filter 3. So, you're right, scanning (and getting good results after a few digital adjustments) is a breeze compared to wet printing... But wet printing is indeed easy, and has very few variables, and after controlling film exposure and development depending on scene's contrast, it becomes a fast way to print consistently and beautifully. When you work with time in studio or with incident metering outdoors, it's a fool proof easy system, but it's harder if you're doing street and shoot quickly with little time to meter moving from sun to shadows in the same place... Even the masters and icons of street photography have lots of under/overexposed and under/overdeveloped frames, but we must know how to do it well when there's time to meter in order to make our mistakes be as close as possible to what should have been perfect, so darkroom has room enough for being helpful. Problems are easily found when pushing film, especially, because tonal range limits are too narrow then...

Cheers,

Juan

 

[jtzordon]

I've been wet-printing off and on for the past two years. I'd say that I've learned a lot more about metering and developing from printing than I ever did from just scanning. Consistency is MUCH more important when printing. Early on I was able to get prints that I was happy with, but I've gradually been raising my expectations and my output as I practice and read about printing.

One thing that I've had a difficult time with is accepting that I'm going to run through a few sheets of paper to get and good print. I've off and on considered buying an inkjet printer and just moving towards a digital workflow. Yet, when I look at the cost of a quality printer and paper (and I read that printing digitally you still go through multiple sheets for a good print), I really think enlarging is a cheaper route for me.

Above the financial issues, I find that wet printing is incredibly enjoyable. I feel more connected to my photography and I always have projects to work on. I don't get the same enjoyment from editing on the computer. If feels great when you pull a quality print that you've been working on.

 

[NickTrop]

I should qualify my original statement. 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 (especially papers) is not worth the effort especially with small format 35mm, I concluded after a few years messing around wet printing. You get better at it, true. It's not rocket science, but to be able to "read a negative" and determine precise exposure times... wow. Then to dodge and burn... The time investment (and money on paper) required to me became impractical given there is an easier - albeit less satisfying from a "craft mastery" standpoint" alternative that results in less time, cost, effort, and waist. You'll have "good darkroom sessions" where for whatever reason you're bang on... Then you'll have other sessions where you'll throw out print after print...

 

[Roger Hicks]

Inkjet printing is like watching paint dry.

No, actually, it IS watching paint dry.

Cheers,

R.