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The first stage of making a darkroom print is to determine the exposure time. If you have already created a contact sheet of your negatives, and they appear correctly exposed, then you should have a rough idea of the necessary exposure (provided you haven’t moved the enlarger head or aperture setting after exposing the contact sheet). Note: If you change the degree of enlargement you will also need to adjust the exposure. Some enlargers have scales printed on their columns to make this easier. Another...

Contact sheets are a great way to review and record your images. They allow you to view all the negatives on a roll of film before deciding which ones you want to print and how you may want to crop them. They also provide a permanent record of those negatives for filing purposes. How to make a contact sheet To make a contact sheet we recommend using ILFORD MULTIGRADE RC DELUXE Set the enlarger head to a height that gives a 40cm (16in) wide rectangle of light on the baseboard Put a MULTIGRADE fil...

When photographic material is exposed to light it begins to darken. The more light the material receives, the darker it becomes. This opens up a range of possibilities for making fun, creative and artistic images without a camera. Making a picture without a camera couldn’t be easier and is a fun activity to try with children. However, for many, exploring and experimenting with different effects of light on photographic /blog/the-luminogram-process/materials can become an art form by itself. Where to sta...

Silver halide has been used in photographic film and paper for over 150 years and remains a vital ingredient found in all high-quality products. Silver halide crystals in gelatin form part of an emulsion which is used to coat the paper or film. On exposure to light (i.e. in a camera or darkroom), the crystals react turning into silver and forming the image. Silver halide prints There are many ways to produce black & white prints with options varying in quality. Traditional black & white silver ha...

Filters have long been a popular accessory for photographers and offer a number of different functions or effects. In both analogue and digital photography it is possible to recreate some of these in the darkroom or digital darkroom. However there has always been a benefit to getting it right in camera. In black & white photography, colour filters in particular are useful as they can control how the colours in a scene are reproduced as greys. Normal black & white films are sensitive to all wavele...

A black border often enhances a print and does not involve any sort of mounting or overlay. Ink or tape borders The easiest way to produce narrow black borders is to rule them with a pen directly onto your finished print: an India-ink pen gives the most solid line, but most permanent (all surface) spirit based markers are much less expensive and will do the job. For slightly wider black borders, narrow, self-adhesive strips are available from graphic arts suppliers. Supplied in dispensers, of various w...

Split grade printing The version of split grade printing described here is that taught to me by the ILFORD head printers, Mike Walden and Terry Offord, and is the simplest, fastest way to make good darkroom prints from pretty much any negative. (The exception is really underexposed negatives to print these you usually only need high contrast). This is a very powerful technique that can be used routinely with variable contrast (VC) papers, such as ILFORD MULTIGRADE. It makes use of the differing performa...

Making a silver gelatin print Take a look inside the darkroom of Master Printer Tim Rudman whilst he shares the methods that he employed when making a silver gelatin print for his latest book Iceland, An Uneasy Calm Tim discusses various techniques including negative preparation, dodging and burning and using coloured filters for contrast control. Tim also discusses pre-flashing, toning and bleaching.

What is the luminogram process? The Luminogram process is light, directed onto photo paper in the darkroom. About as basic as ‘photography’ can get. It has been with us for a long while. László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) started using it in 1922, while Gottfried Jäger described it as "the result of pure light design; the rudimentary expression of an interaction of light and photosensitive material… a kind of self-representation of light." And yet it has always seemed to sit on the sideline...

1992 - How I met Masterji Soon after leaving my staff photographer’s position on the local newspaper where I’d been employed for the previous 5 years and with the luxury of in-house film processing no longer a convenient option I began using my local city centre professional colour lab, in Coventry. During the accumulating hours I spent in that lab waiting for my 35mm films to process, watching small colour prints dropping from the conveyor belt from the end of the machine, I very watched a short In...