Winter Darkroom

This post will be picking up where my first darkroom post left off. That was mid January, and if you need to remind yourself of where we are, you can find it here. 

The cSpace exhibit went really well! A ton of people showed up during our gala night. Several people said it was the most people they'd seen at an opening at cSpace. I think the reason for that is that for most artists, a gallery opening will attract their family and friends, plus the people who somehow follow their work. For most of us, that's not a particularly big crowd. Here's an iPhone photo of that night.

But for our exhibit, there were 30 photos, so we got that group times 30 or so, plus the people going out to Exposure Festival events in general, plus people interested in darkroom printing. Even the other times I went, I wasn't alone. I baby sat the SAIT darkroom video on a Saturday afternoon. I was a bit surprised there was a steady stream of people wandering through. Here's a link to the documentary about the SAIT darkroom, 50 years of operation and counting, here. I appear in it, very very briefly.

Yes, I know those who couldn't attend in person, or haven't been following along here or here, want to know which photo I put into the exhibit.

That second photo illustrates the problem of taking photos of a photograph. The paper itself is somewhat reflective, as is the glass if it's framed. So the photo of my image has a faint selfie to add another layer. 

There's been a few negative images that I've digitized and then later printed in the darkroom. Often I prefer the print. For some I've then tried to digitize the print with the thought of sharing an image of the print itself. So far this has not been entirely satisfactory.

Those that have been following along know that on my other blog I do an image of the month and an image of the year. The selection process is somewhat erratic, and involves a lot of dithering and second thoughts. And third, and so on. The same was true for this, trying to come up with a nice print from a film photo. I had done many prints of Linda sitting in the chair with Celina, (it's in the first blog link above) trying to get it right. I'm pretty pleased with it, but in the end I went with the reflection photo above. 

I got sidetracked with other things for a while, but I was back in the dark room last week, working on some prints from an Elbow Falls ramble with Sean. I spent lots of time looking at the little falls I talk about here, and exposed a roll of Delta 100 in my medium format GW690. These falls are quite the challenge to capture, given the dark rocks, deep shadows, and the bright water highlights, all in a long exposure photo. And then translating that onto paper. I was quite disappointed that the negative of some water texture that I particularly like has a faint hair embedded in the film. I'll have another go using a different crop and see what I think.

But the one I was most interested was from a very short walk in Carburn park during the brutally cold weather earlier this year. I was coming back from a visit with a buddy and stopped to see what the mist coming off the Bow River was like, even though I wasn't really dressed for it. That didn't work out, and I was heading back to the car at a brisk walk. There's a little bridge that I quite like. The reflections from it can be quite lovely, and I've used the bridge to pose people. Even though I was freezing my butt off, and everything else, the light on the bridge was was amazing. I didn't take long to compose and click.

You're going to see several version of that print. Here's the zoomed out view, propped up against some lovely flowers given to us by some friends over for an evening. I might try taking photos of prints using this idea, but with a piece of black mat board as the support. Hmmm. 

I love this print, and want to work with it more. I didn't do anything for this, just a 1.5 second exposure. I'm thinking about doing the same print with a series of contrast filters, starting from 00 and working up to 5. I haven't done much work with contrast filters, and don't have a sense of how the look of the image will change from filter to filter. I might put in an ND filter to increase the exposure time, and do some dodging and burning. That could be a whole other blog post, if I get a good way of digitizing the results.

Pay attention now, through this digression. In addition to film, I also like doing macro photos. The tiny  details that become visible can be fascinating. I'd never known that ants had hairy butts, for example. I started with using some extension tubes on a 100mmm macro lens. (here, if you're interested.) then a buddy sold me the Canon MP-E 65mm f2.8 Macro lens. (Inaugural tryout here.) And yes, as a digression within a digression, I've thought about putting that lens on my 35mm film camera. The main  problem will be finding focus, and then clicking the shutter without moving anything. The difficulties are formidable.

One of the reasons people buy cameras with ever more pixels packed into the sensor is to better resolve fine details. My digital camera has 6240 x 4160 pixels, and the newer mirrorless can double that, or more. Film is a different beast. Because of the nature of the silver halide crystals on film, you can't quite talk about resolution the same way. Then when printing in a darkroom there is the quality of the lens and the characteristics of the paper. We use a special magnifying glass to see the grain in the film so we know our print will be in focus.

I got to wondering what my macro lens would see if I took a photo of a print. Remembering previous difficulties in lighting subjects under a macro lens, I had the thought of shining a light through the print via the light source I use for digitizing negatives. Of course I realize that the light will be scattered somewhat by the paper. I'll deal with lighting from above the print another time. 

Here's another view of that print. Keep in mind the light source is about 6.25 x 8.5 inches, so the full print is not illuminated.

Here's what a tiny fraction of that image looks like under 5x macro.

When I say tiny, I'm not kidding. That photo is capturing an area about 5 mm wide by 3mm high, out of an 8x10 inch print. 

As it turns out, it seems that the MP-E lens isn't quite strong enough to see the grain. Just to go the fully Monty, so to speak, here's the same part of the image adding in 68mm of extension tubes. I've never figured out what the total magnification factor is for this combination of lens and tubes is on this camera. I suppose if I wanted to really get carried away I could use the older T6i and add in the crop factor. But I'm not going to. Just eyeballing it, I'm guessing this image is capturing an area about 2.5 by 1.5 mm. 

Here's an image of the negative, taken with 5x macro and all the extension tubes. 

Here's another trio of images, same idea, with Delta 100. These are some rocks just below the high tide line near Port Saunders, Newfoundland. I zoomed in on the rock in the lower left.

This is 1x.

This is 5x.

And yet another trio of photos. This is Acros II in 35mm format. Again, these are done by shining light through the paper. The first is with a 24-105mm lens. This is much more contrasty than the print, which shows a much smoother transition of tones. Such are the difficulties of comparing paper to a digital image. I wanted to see if I could see that transition under magnification. I generally think that film handles gradual transitions better than digital because of the slightly random structure of the silver halide crystals.

With the MP-E at 1x.

And at 5x.

Even if I were to crop in, it's pretty clear I'm not going to see the grain structure. I think that's because the grain that is so clear and sharp on the negative runs up against whatever limitations the paper itself has, plus my shining the light through the paper which would scatter the light a little, plus the possibility the enlarger was ever so slightly out of focus, plus for the bridge photo the limitations of that camera lens being hand held on a brutally cold day. The camera was on a tripod for the rocks long exposure, which leads to the possibility that it could have moved ever so slightly.

I don't think I'll try to find grain on paper again. It was fun and gave me a good idea of how much detail the paper can capture, assuming that every step along the way is done right. There's lots of ways to go wrong, but that's the challenge. When you try something difficult, you can take pride in the accomplishment. Even if it's not what you had hoped for, it's still yours, and you almost certainly learned something along the way.

I'm going to continue making prints, experimenting with different techniques, and enjoying how they come out. Not a lot of people will hold the print in their hands, or see it up on a wall, but that doesn't really matter. I'm doing this for me.

If you're new to the blog and don't want to miss the next one, just leave a comment asking to be added to the blog notification list. Or email me at keith at nucleus.com.

Dark room news

This post got started a while ago, then got set aside. Then got added to, with some edits along the way. Just so you know. It's medium long, maybe go pour your favourite tipple.

Let's start out with a bit of a forehead slap. As a reminder, there are potentially two audiences for this blog. Some readers have been following me for a while and are at least somewhat interested in the back story to the photos I create and what I'm up to. Some are photographers and some are not. The other audience, at least potentially, are experienced photographers or dark room printers that are following a link. For some of them what I'm saying might be trivially obvious. Or maybe I'll induce a forehead slap in them as well.

Onwards.

Quick back story is I'm setting up a basement darkroom. The only real hitch was the easel. This is what holds the paper flat, and a good one lets you set all four margins. Here's what it looks like without any paper, showing three of the paper alignment slots, 5x7, 8x10 and 11x14. The 16x20 is hidden by the top arm. 

The idea is to slid the paper (in near total darkness with only a dim red or amber light) into the right slot, and over to the left, like below. In an ideal world, the paper is now centred under the head, and you can slide the arms to cover the paper to produce a nice clean margin of nearly whatever size you like. Once the first one is set up, using the back of a piece of photo paper to get the margins and focus right, it's off to the races. It's quick, easy, and best of all, repeatable as you work through iterations of finding the right amount of light, contrast, and dodge or burn adjustments. Don't get me started on dust or cat hair.

In my world before yesterday, doing 8x10 prints from a 35 mm negative, this works well. The paper goes into the slot as shown and life is good. I happen to like doing a 1 inch margin, and usually a bit of the negative does not make it onto the paper. Given me and my camera aiming, that's usually just fine. All this time and there's still a slight tilt to the left.

Except my main purpose in getting this particular enlarger (a Besler 23Cii) is to produce prints from the 6x9 negatives from my GW690. When I set it up for for that, using the 8x10 slot, I found that I needed to move the easel up a bit, and cannot because the stand is in the way. I'm almost ashamed to say I was hung up on this for a while. 

What the above photo makes clear is that I only need to put the paper in the 11x14 slot, and move the easel a little bit. The above photo shows the illuminated area lined up with that slot, and the paper in the 8x10 slot. I don't remember which lens was in the enlarger as I did that photo.

In my defence I can only plead that with the combination of the lens and the margins I wanted, the relationship to the 11x14 slot and the illuminated area was not as clear as the photo indicates.

After several printing sessions, I can say that the tough part for me is remembering to change the lens back to f11 (or whatever is appropriate) after finding focus and making sure the edge of the negative doesn't intrude on the paper. That's easier with the lens wide open so there's lots of light on the easel. That makes for a really short exposure time, or a nearly black page. Which I've done a few times. 

It's all about the process, taking the time to go through the steps and checking everything, every time. I have seriously thought about writing up a big checklist that would show up under red light, and hanging it near the enlarger.

Some prints are harder than others. Starting with a well exposed negative makes life much easier. A negative with some really bright areas and some really dark areas makes it a bit more complicated. The solution can be to subtract a bit of light in the dark areas, and add a bit of light to the bright areas. Yes, I know that sounds counter intuitive, but it's true. Photo paper gets darker the more light it receives.

There are a lot of variables involved, starting with which film is used and how the negative is exposed in the camera via lens aperture and shutter speed. Then there's the development process, where the chemical concentrations and temperature, time in the chemicals, and the amount of agitation can all affect how the negative looks. Then in the darkroom there's many different paper choices. I've been using Ilford Multigrade Pearl or Glossy. There's the enlarger, with different lighting sources, many lens choices, and filters that affect the light on the paper. Then there's basic techniques like dodging and burning to affect the amount of light on specific parts of the paper to produce the desired image. There are more advanced techniques that I think I'm a long way from trying. Then the paper goes through a chemical development process, similar to the film, where the chemical concentration and temperature, and the length of time in the chemicals can affect the print.

Just for fun, to back up a step before all that, there's the process to manufacture the roll of film in the first place. There's an hour long video here, which I found absolutely fascinating. (It's Destin at Smarter Every Day, and it's part 1 of 3 parts.) To say things can go wrong at any step along the way is a massive understatement. I marvel that the process exists at all.

Sometimes there are happy accidents that lead to an image being better than expected. Maybe the time was a little long and the sky went more dramatic than real life, and yet not overdone. I've been surprised how much cloud detail there can be in what appears to be a dark negative.

So far I've been learning the process, and aiming to produce a nice print. After nearly 300 sheets of paper I'm only now beginning to work making the image better and creative, but not going overboard. So for example, this unposed image of Linda reading with Celina. HP5+, digitized via DSLR, nothing special done along the way. It's the first on a roll, when I wasn't sure if I was into unexposed film yet. It's an ok image, but kind of flat. Were this to have been a posed image, I'd have probably used a reflector to balance the light a bit.

Here's a small version of a few of the prints I've done from this negative. Upper left is the best of what I did at SAIT during the darkroom course. I didn't like how the shadow in the upper left turned out as I was burning down the top right corner, and wanted to see if I could do better. I'm working with smaller margins now, and the photo is cropped in a bit. The top right and bottom left photos show not enough light, and too much light, respectively. Bottom right is what I was looking for. Pity about the spots. The one on the chair above her left elbow is actually a bit of fluff on the chair. Really. Those two tiny spots on her face weren't there in the print before this one. The one above her right elbow has been there all along, even with careful air and brushing. To the good, several other spots have disappeared.

I practiced some spotting on other versions of this print, using the Copic markers. The N4 worked really well. From my perspective, there's nearly an infinite number of spots on any random print if you look closely enough. Trying to invisibly remove them all is a fool's errand. I don't have that much time left in my life. My thinking is to touch them just enough that they're not obvious. Anybody that wants to get on my case because they've pixel peeped the print with a magnifying glass can send their complaint to keith@bitemybutt.com.

I've now caught up on all the printing I wanted from my first pass through looking for images to print. So far, all the negatives have gone into a sleeve in date order. There's lots of them. I'm thinking now that I have 4 different groups, 35mm in both black and white and colour, and medium format in both black and white and colour. For printing, I'm really only looking at the black and white negatives. I've tried printing some colour negatives in black and white just to see what it looks like, and the answer is nothing good. Since the current binder is essentially full, I'm thinking about the best way to organize them going forward.

Then there's the prints. The prints done as I figure out exposure time, and any dodging and burning get dried and go into a box. I've gone back a few times to remind myself of what I was doing or what a specific time looked like. The ones I'm willing to show people go into sleeves in a binder. There are a few that are essentially the second best, typically the one just before the final version, that go into a separate box. They're pretty good, and if someone wanted one for some reason, I'd give it to them.

Just now the major dither is selecting one to go into the Exposure Festival in February. Last fall's darkroom classes were invited to submit a photo. I've got several finalists and I'm trying to choose between them. After all the Image of the Month posts, and 8 years of Image of the Year selections, you'd think would have the selection process nailed down. 

But this is different. A fairly small number of people see the images on my blog, and they're digital. Some unknown but fairly large number of people will see the print up there on the wall, right next to the prints that other people did. I don't mind someone not caring for a photo of mine, or liking someone else's better; that's the nature of the world. Or maybe they wonder why I chose the one I did, when they know my work and think I should have selected a different print. But what I don't want is people looking at mine and saying it's not even in the same league as these others and is bringing down the experience. Such are the risks of a public display of artwork.

I'm not exactly sure what is next. I've got the next roll in the camera and have a couple images, so I guess working through the roll is a good start. I've become much more selective about what I take photos of, in part because I'm thinking about printing them, or using them in a book. As someone said, you don't go into the darkroom and mix chemicals to do just one print. My experience is that if I get 4 or 5 good prints from a session, I'm pretty pleased, and it can take mumble mumble sheets of paper to get there. 

Then again, printing is constantly flirting with the deep rabbit hole of diminishing results. I suspect that once I reach a certain point, I've done as well as I can do now.  The above images were an example of letting several weeks go by, then having another go it, and getting a better result. That might happen again with images that I'm happy with now. Or maybe I'll want to do something different with the same image, trying a different crop, different contrast filters, or different exposures. It's all going to be a fun adventure, and I'm looking forward to it.

As a first plug, the SAIT darkroom class photos will be on display at cSpace, 1721 29th Avenue SW Calgary, starting early February. I'm going to try to get out to lots of the YYC Exposure Fest events. Right now there isn't a lot of info on line about it, but I think that changes next week.

If you're new to the blog and don't want to miss the next one, just leave a comment asking to be added to the blog notification list. Or email me at keith at nucleus.com.