Darkroom notes from March 29
Progress! Finally!
Thanks to The Ultimate Film & Darkroom Workbook by Rachel at Little Vintage Photography for the push in the right direction. I’d been resistant to taking any notes about what I was trying in the darkroom. I just wanted to work at a decent pace and try to nail at least one exposure by the end of the night. But you can’t always even accomplish one good print in a night. Sometimes you get close and need to pick up where you left off again in a week, and doing that from memory doesn’t work. It’s hard to remember what filter you used even two prints ago on the same night. This workbook’s tables give just enough of a prompt for details to make it worth doing. After taking good notes this past Wednesday night, I’m a convert. Can’t imagine going back to trying to keep what worked/didn’t in my head. Here’s what I learned.
- Don’t put your negative in the carrier right side up. Put it with the top of the image on the bottom, so that when you project onto the paper, you’re not looking at an upside down image. (This only took me about 6 weeks to internalize.)
- Use a clean grain focuser that magnifies a lot. It makes everything easier and faster. I just bought a used Bestwell Minisight grain focuser which I suppose is only a 10x magnifier, but it’s much better than the one we had in class that was too dirty to use.
- If you have to cover the lens with your hand to get accurate times, don’t cup your hand right over the lens because you’ll fog it up. It’s enough to hold your hand a couple of inches below the lens at the point where you can see the whole image in your hand and none of it hits the paper.
- After changing filters, resist the urge to guess at the exposure time and make a new straight print. It’s going to be different than what it was with the last filter. Just accept that you have to make a new giant test strip to see what you have.
- Fully fix and wash your test strips and keep them, and log their details along with the full prints. On the back of the prints, I use ballpoint pen to gently write the date and “T1” and “P1” for the first test strip and first full print. You can refer to these later to see what different filters and times will do.
- After you’ve picked a target exposure time from that strip, make a straight working print from that, without dodging or burning. Just do it and see what that does to the highlights and shadows in your image.
- Take the time to log your details while your prints are fixing and washing. You can do this with a dark pen and the light from your safelight. It takes only a couple of minutes and it pays off.
Only problem now is that it’s our instructor’s spring break and we don’t have class this week.
Darkroom notes from March 22
Last night in darkroom class I was again at Station A, using the Beseler 23C-II enlarger. I made three decent and nearly identical prints of inside FireWorks (above, taken with the Leica M2 and Voigtlander 35mm Ultron f/2, and the photo of the print taken in RAW mode on the iPhone). I started with a #3 filter, but that was too contrasty, so I went down to a 2.5 filter, exposed for 6 seconds, waving my hand over the shadows in the bottom half of the frame, which didn’t actually help much. It’s too dark overall and I probably need to use a #2 and go for 5 seconds. There’s almost no gray in the image.
I’m still using the stopwatch on the Casio G-Shock, which confirms the continuing problem with the drifting lab timer.
Not pictured: A halfway successful attempt at printing a photo of Mel, Meg, and Max in West A.J. in 1992. Used a 2.5 filter, lens stopped all the way down, exposing the whole print for 6 seconds at the same time as sweeping across and dodging their faces with the round dial of the lab’s metal thermometer (Meg got the most of it and she looks like a ghost moving through time). Then I burned the window and Max’s shirt for 12 seconds each (I think). Next time I’ll bring a proper dodging tool made of wire and cardboard.
I did not try again on the Leesburg photo of Delirium on King Street. I could have, but I figured it was better to move on.
There was a moment last night where I headed back into the darkroom after pulling a print out of the dryer and putting it on the drying rack. I thought, I’m in my happy place and this is all I care about doing anymore.
Darkroom lessons from March 15
In Wednesday night’s darkroom class, I was at my regular Station A, using the Beseler 23C-II enlarger. I walked out with only two finished prints and one test strip when I was done. The decent one of Delirium Café in Leesburg (above, taken with the Leica M2 and Voigtlander 35mm Ultron f/2, and the photo of the print taken in RAW mode on the iPhone) was exposed for 7 seconds with an Ilford multigrade #2 filter, and the aperture stopped all the way down (I forgot to record whatever that aperture is). It’s still a little flat, and also too dark by a bit, so when I go back next week I’m gonna raise the contrast and try again, exposing it for maybe 5 seconds. I like how the sky came out, but the sky isn’t the subject, so I’m going to need to burn that in a little.
After repeated (expensive) failures and mis-prints, I’ve learned that the electro-mechanical timers beside our enlargers get less precise as you use them toward the short end of their range. And worse, their exposure time tends to drift in the long direction after you set them. So I can set it for 4 seconds, and after doing a print and running it through all of its chemistry to see what I have, if I don’t reset the timer and re-check it, 4 seconds can easily turn into 5 or 6 or more. Maddening when you’re trying to print according to what looked good on a test strip 20 minutes ago.
I’ve resorted to squinting at the stopwatch on the Casio G-Shock because I can’t rely on the old timer or myself counting “1-one thousand…”
But even with all this hassle, it’s the most fun I’ve ever had in a class.
The test strip (not shown) for FireWorks Pizza in Leesburg was taken with a #3 filter and exposed at 2, 4, 6, and 8 seconds and the aperture stopped all the way down again. Those strips were measured with the timer pulled all the way down to its minimum, which measures out to just about 2 seconds with the Casio stopwatch. Next week I’ll try printing at 8 seconds, and then 6 if 8 is too dark.
Dry January
We did Dry January all the way this year and it was surprisingly easy. Part of that is surely because we both got Covid at the end of the first week of January, which removed any taste for alcohol. But after that went away, the loop of no-drinking > less bloat > better sleep > more energy + time > accomplishing more stuff, reinforced itself and it was simple to keep going. Multiple nights I ended up doing dishes because I had a hint of momentum left after dinner when I would otherwise have been focused on a beer and TV/my phone. And after that I still had time to scan and post photos.
I had a handful of non-alcoholic beers in January when I was at a bar or at band practice. They were all less than 0.5% alcohol, which isn’t alcohol-free, but it’s close enough. It didn’t feel weird to drink them. They tasted ok, serviceable. Not something I want to spend money on to bring home, though. A Spindrift is better.
By the end of the month, I didn’t have a shocking, life-changing, everything-is-better, I-hate-alcohol revelation. Maybe that takes longer. But I liked knowing that I’d done something just a little difficult and exerted some control over what I did for 31 days.
The first drink I had on Feb. 1 was a Bell’s Two-Hearted. That one beer immediately torpedoed me for the night. It was delicious but it also made me feel bloated and dumb.
I’m back on the beer train now, but not like before. (I love beer!) I drink fewer beers at a time, less often each week, mostly on the weekends, and it’s great! I don’t feel like I’m missing out if I skip a second beer, or if we don’t have a drink on Sunday. My pants fit a little better. I know when it’s time to go to bed because I feel righteously tired in a way that would otherwise be harder to notice.
Whenever I’m on the fence about how much to drink (or whether to have one more), I just think: how much do I want to accomplish tonight?
Mac DeMarco wants an even smaller recording rig
Mac DeMarco On Quitting Smoking and Recording an Album While On a 7,000 Mile Road Trip | GQ
The record is a success in more important ways for DeMarco, too. “Now I have proof of concept. Now I know this psycho travel shit works, so I think this’ll just be what I do,” DeMarco said. “Fuck recording studios, even the one at my house. Burn all that gear. I need to make it smaller. I need to make it motorcycle-sized. That’s the ultimate.” He has recently gotten very into motorcycles.
David Crosby
I was raised on Crosby, Stills & Nash’s first album. It’s hard to see David Crosby pass away. If he’d never written anything besides these two songs, that would have been more than enough.
Crosby, Stills & Nash: Guinnevere
The Byrds: Lady Friend