Dark Room Development Process and Contact Sheet Process - 07.10.22
Seeing that I shoot a lot of film, the perfect process to learn was to try and develop my own black-and-white film and also make a contact sheet to determine if the shots that I took were the right exposure. To get me started with this, the lecturer of this unit went through the process with me and then I tried to write up the process with what I learnt within the roll that we developed together.
Developing Black and White Film
To develop black and white film, you would need;
A take-up spool
Light Tight Paterson Tank
Developer Mix (I used Ilford ID-11 for this)
Fixer (I used Ilford Rapid fixer for this)
Last but not least, some film to develop!
Make sure that the developer and fixer are both compatible with the roll of film that you have shot with, otherwise, it might not develop properly and can ruin the roll. Also make sure to read how long the film is needed to be submerged in the developer otherwise it can be overexposed or underexposed, depending on how long you leave it in the developer for.
Make sure to pre-heat the drying rack as this can take a while to heat up to temperature.
The steps are outlined below;
Step 1) Try and get the tip of the film out of the film canister, not too much as this could overexpose the first image of the roll
Step 2) After taking out the tip of the film, make sure that the tip of the film is attached to the take-up spool
Step 3) In the dark (as the film will be exposed and any light will damage the shots on the film) remove the canister by pulling all of the film out and tearing out the canister from the end.
Step 4) Carefully twist the take-up spool so that all of the film is snug within the spool itself. It should not move from this spool.
Step 5) Put this inside of the Paterson tank and make sure the lid of the tank is locked and light tight.
Step 6) Pour in just the right amount of developer into the Paterson tank and time it for how long it needs to be agitated. Put a plastic lid on the tank to make sure that the developer does not spill out of the tank. Agitating means tipping the tank to 160 degrees and back twice per minute and tapping it gently on a table to make sure that each roll of film has had enough time to develop in the solution. Doing too much agitating can cause streaks from the sprocket holes due to the developer being on the film for too much and not tapping it might develop bubbles between the developer and film and can cause weird bubble shapes to be on the film.
Step 7) Pour the developer back into the developing tank and wash it with a lot of water. Two full tanks and pours will do.
Step 8) Pour some fixer into the Patersons Tank and time for at least 3-5 minutes (from a fresh batch of chemicals) to sometimes longer (due to the fixer breaking down from repeated use)
Step 9) Time for at least 3-5 minutes and agitate, but agitate and tap less due to the fixer being a little bit more viscous than the developer.
Step 10) After the fixer has been drained into the fixer tank and sealed, submerge the film into the water and wait at least 5-10 minutes to make sure that most of the fixer has been cleaned off
Step 11) To get rid of the water from the film, use your index finger and middle finger with a little bit of water and gently squeeze the water from the film. With a pulling motion from top to bottom, squeegee the water from the film
Step 12) Let the film dry on the drying rack for at least 10 minutes
Making a Contact Sheet from the Negatives
A contact sheet whilst different exposure intervals are used so that we can determine how long we should let the resin-coated paper be exposed when creating a contact sheet. This is also used to easily see which photos are in focus and quickly choose which one we can use as a print. Prints are also used from resin-coated paper as well.
For this, we can use red lamps as the paper is not sensitive to red lamps at all. On the enlarger, there are separate colours for separate use cases, but we are only interested in using magenta as this will control the amount of contrast we have on the contact sheets. Make sure that the glass on the Enlarger is clean. The thicker, long lines on the enlarger indicate the seconds, whilst the smaller, thinner ones indicate the half seconds. We can be really precise with the timing to produce very accurate and very precise prints and contact sheets if we wanted.
Step 1) Grab your negatives and make sure that they are in a protective plastic sheet
Step 2) Make sure that the room is in red lamp mode
Step 3) Adjust the light settings on the Magenta channel to make sure that the settings are right for the contact sheet. Someone might have changed it and could overexpose the photographic paper.
Step 4) Grab some resin-coated paper from the box. They usually have a black bag full of paper due to it being sensitive to light.
Step 5) Make sure that the enlarger has the paper on the bottom, the negatives in the middle and the glass on top to secure things.
Step 6) Turn on the enlarger by pressing the button on the dial for the exposure settings
Step 7) Cover half of the frames with some card and do another exposure for the rest of the negatives and photographic paper
Step 8) Keep doing this until you reach the end and then put this in the developing machine
Step 9) Look at the contact sheet and work out how long to expose for by looking at how the photos change in contrast in each pass of the enlarger.
Step 10) Expose another piece of photographic paper and then process this with the development machine
The photos below show the contact sheets for each exposure testing and the correct exposure f another contact sheet. Unfortunately, one of the rolls of film was incorrectly exposed and will come out as overexposed, which can be shown in that contact sheet as well.
