The days of film photography pt.2 - Printing - by Glenn Pierce

Well folks we have developed our film and are ready to make B&W prints 1-3 days later after shooting our images --- No! We now have to make contact sheets of the negatives to see the actual images. These contact sheets are much like a grid view of your images in Lightroom.

1. In the darkroom under a safe light, low wattage yellow light, you take a sheet of photo paper and placed it on the base of the enlarger with your film strips on top under a piece of glass.

2. Adjusted the enlarger for wide open F-stop (yes enlargers had F-stop adjustments same has cameras).

3. Turn on enlarger light for approx. 5 seconds.

4. Take photo paper into developer, stop, fixer, and wash bath.

5. Repeat process until you've made contact sheets of all your film from that day of shooting.

6. Hang these contact sheets up to dry and wait a day to examine them for best photos.

                                           Mind Over Matter - Glenn Pierce

The next day after examining all your images take notes on the images you like for density in the shadows & highlights for this will give you a clue as to the exposure time you will need in the printing exposure process. Remember the image you will be looking at is a negative of the actual image. The dark areas are the highlights and the light areas are the shadows areas. Burning & dodging tools were simple pieces of cardboard attached to thin wire waved between the light of the enlarger and photo paper.