Inside the Darkroom

I figured some knowledge of the procedure of creating negatives and prints would be a good topic to cover, since it's something I have to go through every time I want to create something and all of my photos go through this process. There are many different ways to develop film and prints, but I'm just going to explain my process.


The First Part: Developing Film

(From Kip Praslowicz)

The first step is to open the roll of film. Using a bottle cap opener is the easiest way to do this. Then you cut off the leader, the first few inches of the film. The trickiest part to the process is putting the film onto a reel (picture to the left). This reel is plastic, but there are also metal ones. In my opinion, these are much easier than the metal ones.

 All you have to do is slide the film in and twist the sides of the reel and it will feed the negatives onto the reel. That doesn't seem very hard, but doing it in complete darkness makes it a little challenging until you get used to it. You have to do all of this in the dark because the negatives can not be exposed to light. After the film is reeled, you put it in a developing tank and close it, sealing it from the light. At this point you can begin the chemical process.

First is the developer; this brings out the silver halides in the negatives making each image visible. To stop the developing process, stop bath is used to neutralized the developer. The next chemical is fixer; this makes the image permanent by "fixing" the image onto the film. After the fixer, the film can be exposed to light. It goes through a water wash and then usually it is run through a chemical called photo-flo. This is just a soapy coating that protects the film from dust. After this they can be dried and you have your negatives.

The Second Part: Developing Prints

(From Wikipedia)

This is a very basic diagram of an enlarger, the machine that is used to create prints in the darkroom. A small strip of negatives is placed in the film carrier. The film carrier is inserted into the enlarger. The enlarger head houses the light bulb. When you turn the enlarger on, the light comes on and the image from the negative appears on the easel. Usually there is a coarse focusing knob and a fine focusing knob to focus the picture. Picking a contrast filter would be the next step. Contrast filters are almost always needed in order to really make a black and white image look good. They exaggerate, reduce, or eliminate light in order to create different tones in the picture.

Obviously you need photo paper in order to make a picture; there are many different kinds of photo paper, it just depends on the photographers preference. Photo paper is light sensitive which means it can't be exposed to light. However, darkrooms generally have safe lights which are just opaque red light bulbs. The light that is given off by this type of bulb does not expose the paper.

Before making the picture, you need to create a test strip. This is just a strip of photo paper that you expose to the light for different periods of time in order to figure out what time will make the picture look the best. The longer the light-sensitive paper is exposed, the darker the image will be. After making a test strip, you have to put the paper through a chemical process to develop it. It's very similar to the chemical process for developing film. It includes developer, water wash, fixer, water wash, perma-wash, and a final water wash.

Once the photographer decides on a time, they place a piece of photo paper on the easel and set the timer. They turn it on and it should go off automatically. Then they put it through the chemical process and dry it! Then they have a print!

It may seem confusing, especially when you don't know all of the terms and chemicals. However, after experience, it becomes a simple routine. It's a timely process and you need patience, but at the same time, for me it is fun and exciting to do all of this.