B&W Darkroom Disasters!
So I've been taking a beginning B&W photography class this fall because I want to learn more about darkroom processes. I figured out how to print successfully relatively quickly, although I wouldn't pretend to be good at it yet. The prints I've made consistently lack that great pop that well-made prints have, that excellently deep and rich contrast. But I feel like I'm getting there, and it's only a matter of time... well, first I have to decide if I really like B&W all that much. We'll see.
The developing side, however, has been an absolute disaster! I have now developed four rolls of film, and all four have been crap. The first one was a series of test shots on 35mm that I didn't roll onto the reel properly, so parts of it didn't develop properly. That's not a surprise, as getting the film onto the reel properly is probably the hardest part of developing film, and almost everyone in class had a problem with that.
The next three rolls I tried developing, though, were even greater disasters! First I mixed a batch of Kodak's D76 developer. Now, the directions tell you to heat the water to 124 degrees F so that everything will dissolve properly. Not a problem, the darkroom has a hot water tap, and the water basically came out at right around that temperature. However, the developing directions then tell you to develop with the developer at 68 degrees F. Hmmm... so I mixed it at 124 degrees, but I have to use it at 68 degrees. Curses!! I tried and tried to get the temperature down to 68F, but the best I could do was 80F.
At this point I had wasted half an hour just trying to get the temperature down, and I only had a limited amount of time in the darkroom, so I just decided to develop the film at 80F. I looked up the stats for the film I was using (Ilford HP5), and it indicated that if I needed to cut my development time almost in half in order at that temperature, so I did that. Little did I know, but at 80 degrees D76 developer is too "active", and it actually started developing film that hadn't been exposed yet! The end result was that the negatives I had were extremely "dense", meaning that they were too dark. When I attempted to print these negatives, so little light was hitting the paper that I had to use exposure times of over 12 minutes!! Unfortunately these negatives contained my assignment for the class, so I couldn't simply throw them out, I had to get prints from them. Suffice it to say, I spent four hours just trying to get a decent print from these negatives. When you're forced to use a 12 min exposure time on paper, you find out all kinds of interesting things. Like enlarger lenses that vignette wide open are a real problem at such a long exposure time, so expect to spend a long time burning in the edges. Or that paper does indeed have reciprocity failure. The ambient light of the darkroom was actually brighter than the light coming from the negative onto the paper, so I had to build a little "shrine" out of towels and paper bags to block out all the ambient light!
Even worse than that, I then decided to develop the B&W rolls that I had shot at my cousin's wedding. I went through all the same steps as I had done with the other rolls, but somehow I apparently got the fixer and the developer mixed up, because when I was done developing the rolls, they had absolutely no information on them. Nothing. It was completely clear plastic, not even the numbers from each frame around the borders was showing up. That normally means that you've put in fixer before developer, so the fixer has completely wiped everything off of the film. But I swear I was very careful about the order of the chemicals, and that couldn't have happened! In any case, I threw out all my developer and fixer and bought all new chemicals so that I could rule out bad chemicals as the cause. I then shot one more roll this past weekend so that I can try again to successfully develop film.
Sigh, what I wouldn't give to just see that nicely developed B&W film, clear on the edges but nicely shaded silver color on the inside. Hopefully I'll figure it out soon, since it's the whole reason I'm taking the class!
The developing side, however, has been an absolute disaster! I have now developed four rolls of film, and all four have been crap. The first one was a series of test shots on 35mm that I didn't roll onto the reel properly, so parts of it didn't develop properly. That's not a surprise, as getting the film onto the reel properly is probably the hardest part of developing film, and almost everyone in class had a problem with that.
The next three rolls I tried developing, though, were even greater disasters! First I mixed a batch of Kodak's D76 developer. Now, the directions tell you to heat the water to 124 degrees F so that everything will dissolve properly. Not a problem, the darkroom has a hot water tap, and the water basically came out at right around that temperature. However, the developing directions then tell you to develop with the developer at 68 degrees F. Hmmm... so I mixed it at 124 degrees, but I have to use it at 68 degrees. Curses!! I tried and tried to get the temperature down to 68F, but the best I could do was 80F.
At this point I had wasted half an hour just trying to get the temperature down, and I only had a limited amount of time in the darkroom, so I just decided to develop the film at 80F. I looked up the stats for the film I was using (Ilford HP5), and it indicated that if I needed to cut my development time almost in half in order at that temperature, so I did that. Little did I know, but at 80 degrees D76 developer is too "active", and it actually started developing film that hadn't been exposed yet! The end result was that the negatives I had were extremely "dense", meaning that they were too dark. When I attempted to print these negatives, so little light was hitting the paper that I had to use exposure times of over 12 minutes!! Unfortunately these negatives contained my assignment for the class, so I couldn't simply throw them out, I had to get prints from them. Suffice it to say, I spent four hours just trying to get a decent print from these negatives. When you're forced to use a 12 min exposure time on paper, you find out all kinds of interesting things. Like enlarger lenses that vignette wide open are a real problem at such a long exposure time, so expect to spend a long time burning in the edges. Or that paper does indeed have reciprocity failure. The ambient light of the darkroom was actually brighter than the light coming from the negative onto the paper, so I had to build a little "shrine" out of towels and paper bags to block out all the ambient light!
Even worse than that, I then decided to develop the B&W rolls that I had shot at my cousin's wedding. I went through all the same steps as I had done with the other rolls, but somehow I apparently got the fixer and the developer mixed up, because when I was done developing the rolls, they had absolutely no information on them. Nothing. It was completely clear plastic, not even the numbers from each frame around the borders was showing up. That normally means that you've put in fixer before developer, so the fixer has completely wiped everything off of the film. But I swear I was very careful about the order of the chemicals, and that couldn't have happened! In any case, I threw out all my developer and fixer and bought all new chemicals so that I could rule out bad chemicals as the cause. I then shot one more roll this past weekend so that I can try again to successfully develop film.
Sigh, what I wouldn't give to just see that nicely developed B&W film, clear on the edges but nicely shaded silver color on the inside. Hopefully I'll figure it out soon, since it's the whole reason I'm taking the class!
posted by Chris at 12:37 AM
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