Introduction

Once you've developed your first black and white film, you'll want to make a print. This document will guide you through the steps to produce a contact print, so you can assess your negatives and decide which ones are the best, and how to make an enlargement of a negative to hang on your wall. To do any printing you will need some processed lack and white negatives and some black and white photographic paper.

Preparation

Pour Paper Developer, Stop Bath and Paper Fixer into trays and place them so that the Fixer is closest to the sink, next the Stop Bath and finally the Developer. This way, the trays are in the correct order to move from the enlarger to the water where the final print will be finished. You do not need to empty the bottles entirely, just enough so that there is about a 1cm depth in the tray.

Switch on the red safelight and switch off the main lights. All printing must be done under the red safelight. Switch on and adjust the enlarger height and focus so that light covers the baseboard. Be careful as some enlargers have locking devices. On the lens of the enlarger there is a collar with numbers on it. Turn the collar so that you have the brightest light falling on the baseboard. Now turn it two clicks dimmer. Finally put a number 3 filter in the filter holder.

Making a Contact Sheet

• If you haven't cut your negative yet, cut them so that there are 6 to a strip. Open the Contact Printer (Hinged piece of plastic with a glass front) and place each strip in the pockets on the glass so the emulsion side (the non-shiny side) is face up, and the shiny side is touching the glass.
• Place the Contact Printer on the baseboard, glass side uppermost. Making sure the enlarger is off, take a piece of photographic paper out from the box/bag. Cut it into strips using the guillotine or scissors. Now place the paper shiny side up under a strip of negatives in the contact printer. Close the printer and make sure the paper box is closed.
• Adjust the enlarger timer so it is set to 5 seconds. Hold your paper box/envelope over the paper so that only (roughly) one negative is uncovered. Switch the enlarger on for 5 seconds so that one negative gets 5 seconds of exposure. Now uncover one more negative and switch the enlarger on for another 5 seconds. Continue in this manner until the entire piece of paper has been uncovered and exposed.
• The last end of the paper to be uncovered has only been exposed for 5 seconds. The section adjacent to it has been exposed for 10 seconds and so on.
• (*)Place the exposed paper in the Developer for 1 minute. Agitate the developer occassionally by lifting one edge of the tray. You should notice the image forming on the paper.
• Pick the paper up with tongs and let it drip over the developer before placing it in the Stop Bath for 30 seconds, agitating occassionally.
• Let it drip over the Stop Bath before placing it in the Fixer for 2 minutes, again with agitation.
• Finally place it in the sink and wash with water. This development process, from developer to wash is standard no matter what you are doing, so it is worth remembering the times.
• After checking that no photographic paper is open (otherwise it will get exposed), switch on the lights and look at the paper. The paper should go from almost white to black, The near white end is where the paper got 5 seconds of light, the darkest when it got 30 seconds (6 negatives times 5 seconds).
• Decide which section has the best tones (this is purely subjective, but it should have some pure white and some pure black in the image). The spaces between the individual negatives in a strip should just be pure black.
• Work out the time that it was exposed for by counting the number of negatives from the lightest end and multiplying by 5. If the teststrip is either far too light or too dark, do another teststrip, opening the lens aperture one click brighter or one click dimmer respectively.
• Now place an entire sheet of paper under the Contact Printer and expose for the amount of time you found above. Put in the developer, stop bath and fixer (see *). Wash the contact print for 6 minutes, then hang it up to dry with a clothes peg.

Making a print

Now we have a positive copy of our negatives from which we can select what to print. Choose the best shot from the Contact Print, and locate the negative (remember to remove the negatives from the contact printer and keep them in negative sheets for safe keeping).

• Take the negative carrier from the enlarger and put the negative in emulsion side down (shiny side up). Carefully put the carrier back into the enlarger.
• Set the enlarging easel (metal contraption with rulers attached) to just under the dimensions of your paper (usually 8x10" or 5x7").
• Place the easel on the baseboard. Adjust the enlarger height and focus so that the negative (or whichever part of the negative you wish to enlarge) is in focus at the right size on the easel. This may take some fiddling as the magnification changes with focussing. Do this part with the lens fully open (ie brightest image you can get by moving the ring on the lens).
• Set the lens two 'clicks' down from brightest, and put a number 3 filter in the holder.
• Now make a teststrip as you did for the contact sheet, exposing a strip of paper one bit at a time on the easel (you don't need the contact printer for this). Develop the paper as in *.
• Once you have developed the piece of paper, look at it under normal light and determine the correct exposure time. If all the sections are too light, open up the lens one click brighter and try again. If too dark, close the lens up one click dimmer.
• Now you are ready to make a complete print. From the test strip you should be able to work out what the correct exposure for the negative is, by counting the sections from the lightest end and multiplying by 5 (or whatever interval you used).
• Place a piece of paper in the easel and expose it for the correct length of time by changing the timer.
• Develop the piece of paper as normal (see *). Leave it under the tap for 10 minutes to wash away all the chemicals.
• Let the print dry and congratulate yourself on your photographic ability.

Moving on

If you aren't happy with the print you can control it by changing the contrast filter. By changing the filter from 3 to 4, the resulting print will have more contrast, more of the print will be near white or near black and less a meduim gey. By changing the filter down to 2, the print will have more grey and less pure black and white. Try both to get a feel for how changing the contrast can affect your image. Remember to do a test print when you change the filter.

Try experimenting by covering some of the paper with you hand during part of the exposure. The areas you cover up for part of the exposure will end up lighter. If you cover up almost all of the image, the effect will be that the bit not covered up is darker.

You don't have to print the entire negative. Instead, try only printing the most interesting part of it, while keeping the print size as large as possible.

Beginners' Guide to The Studio :: Beginners' Guide to Enlargement :: Beginners' Guide to Film :: Beginners' Guide to Exposure :: Beginners' Guide to Lenses :: Beginners' Guide to Wide Angle Lenses

Article provided by: Edinburgh University Photographic Society

Date 01/05/03