A whole raft of newbie questions...
Dave Farmer
A few years ago I was going to create a darkroom and actually bought
some s/h stuff but moving house, having kids etc. means it's all spent
the last 5 years in the loft!
Well now I've decided to have a go. All I want to do is make colour
enlargements - B/W leaves me cold (usually!) and I don't want to mess
with my negatives - let a lab do that for me and give me 6x4 prints
and I'll attempt to produce something from the best ones. Having dug
my kit out of the loft I have a few questions and I'd be most grateful
if anyone could fill me in:
--------------
I can lightproof the study on a temporary basis but I will have no
water. For colour processing this shouldn't present a problem as I can
wash my prints in the light, right?
I have Jobo C6600 colour enlarger and 35mm neg carrier (I believe it's
an LPL enlarger badged as Jobo?) with a 50mm f3.5 Phago (!?) lens. No
instructions but it seems simple enough - dial in the required
filtration and switch the light on and off as necessary? Is this
enlarger and/or lens any good or just something to play with until I
either get hooked or bored?
---------------
I have a couple of print processing tools:
A 10x8 Paterson Orbital processor with motor (the flat thing that sort
of wobbles about on the motor/base)
A Paterson Thermo-Drum with motor (big deep tray with room for
chemical bottles and little cups with rotary drum sitting with bottom
half in the water)
Which of these will be easiest to start with? I guess the drum thing
means I can keep everything at the right temperature more easily as
all the important stuff sits in the water bath?
Again no instructions but I assume the chemicals dictate the terms for
these things.
---------------
Now we get to the things that have me a little more lost:
I have a Philips PCA 2060 colour analyser and a Paterson CdS Enlarging
Meter - again (you guessed it) no instructions. What do you do with
these things?
I assume from the name that the enlarging meter is just a Cadmium
Selenium cell - a simple light meter. It has two concentric dials -
paper speed and some numbers from 1.5 to 110 (seconds exposure?)
There's a translucent frosted circular thing in my box of bits that
may be related to it... do you stick that over the lens to 'average'
the light output from a neg and sort of calirate it against a good
print - then try to match that for other prints?
The colour analyser looks more complicated. I could come up with half
a dozen reasonable sounding theories but if anyone knows how to use
one I'd be most grateful.
---------------
Lastly, I have unopened RA4 paper and chemicals that have been in the
loft for those 5 years (some B/W paper and chemicals too for that
matter) - suffering presumably from loft-style tempertature changes
etc. The chemicals have a best before date of May 1997! The question
is, is this stuff likely to be OK to sort of get my act together -
practice until I can get a reasonable result before buying new stuff -
or will it be too far gone to even bother?
Any help you can give me will be most welcome.
Cheers,
Dave.
R&D
from Kodak seems to be good, but it only lasts a year or so. You are
probably better off buying new chemicals and paper than messing around with
old ones. I mix up 1/4 at a time and fill the concentrate bottles with
marbles to remove any air. This gives me four batches of 1 litre of
chemicals that lasts for about 3 weeks and enough chemicals to develop about
25 8x10s per batch.
I'm not sure what you mean by messing with negatives, but colour is exactly
the same as b&w except that getting the density, color and consistency in
developing process to get good results is the challenge. Get a book on
colour darkroom techniques, I think you will answer most of your questions
from reading and trying it. Start with the basics. Leave the colour
analyzer in its box.
You need some way to regulate the bath temperature to within +/- 0.25
degrees. I keep the temperature at 34.5 deg C which allows for 30 seconds
water wash, 1 minute dev, 1 minute fix. If you don't regulate the
temperature you may have problems with print density and not have consistent
results.
Good luck
Rob
"Dave Farmer" <dave-...@bigfoot.com> wrote in message
news:3beb1ab1...@news.freeserve.net...
Mike King
chemicals, you can keep the paper for focusing sheets unter your easel or
sketching out burining and doding plans for the next print you plan to make
(you could also make some interesting color photograms with translucent
objects--absolute color balance is not critical in such a application).
Print washing--if your Orbitol requires 60 ml of each chemical, just a guess
mind you, to process prints you chould be able to wash your prints nicely
with several shots of water at about twice that volume. eg 120 ml of water,
at your processing temp, for 30--60 seconds, five or six fill and dumps
should do well. Note if the processor constrution keeps chemicals and wash
water from the back of the print you may need to remove the print and do a
final wash in a sink somewhere.
--
"darkroommike"
Mike King, custom B&W film processing
"R&D" <youa...@cheerful.com> wrote in message
news:N6KG7.24336$9_6.3...@news20.bellglobal.com...
Dave Farmer
I have finally finished my darkroom (it really is astoundingly dark -
I found it quite eerie after 20 minutes in there checking for light
leaks, quite disorientating in a way although I could feel where I was
as it's only a small room) and so I decided to take out a sheet or two
of my 5 year old paper to feel (so I can tell which way is up!) and
use as a focussing base etc.
I took out one sheet of Konica RA-4 glossy and one of Kodak RA-4
lustre (says Kodak Professional Paper on the back) - and they're both
BLUE!!!! (Konica turquoise, Kodak darker blue-grey)
Now, forgive my naivete, but I was sort of expecting white.
Two thoughts occur:
1) The paper turns blue on exposure to floods of light.
2) The paper is completely shagged!
Anyone know which is closer to the truth?
Cheers,
Dave.
Volker Kerkhoff
> I took out one sheet of Konica RA-4 glossy and one of Kodak RA-4
> lustre (says Kodak Professional Paper on the back) - and they're both
> BLUE!!!! (Konica turquoise, Kodak darker blue-grey)
>
> Now, forgive my naivete, but I was sort of expecting white.
>
> Two thoughts occur:
>
> 1) The paper turns blue on exposure to floods of light.
> 2) The paper is completely shagged!
Neither! The paper _is supposed to be _ blue. That's some kind of
built-in filter (ever printed color? Noticed you rather seldom need
to filter cyan?) to make the paper work properly. Alas I don't know
exactly how this works, your paper (if stored under refrigeration)
is perfectly well. Fear naught! ;-)
--
Volker Kerkhoff
> Weis jemand ob's den C-41 Prozess überall auf der Welt gibt? Auch in
> Entwicklungsländern?
Klar, deshalb heissen sie ja so!
Francis A. Miniter
Francis A. Miniter
Dave Farmer
<min...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>The negative mask is yellow so the paper mask is blue.
>
>Francis A. Miniter
>
>
>Volker Kerkhoff wrote:
>
>> Neither! The paper _is supposed to be _ blue. That's some kind of
>> built-in filter (ever printed color? Noticed you rather seldom need
>> to filter cyan?) to make the paper work properly. Alas I don't know
>> exactly how this works, your paper (if stored under refrigeration)
>> is perfectly well. Fear naught! ;-)
That makes sense, I guess. Thanks guys.
As for refrigeration, it was stored refrigerated in the winter and
stored at high temperature in the summer (in the loft!).
I'll try it and see what I get...
Cheers,
Dave.
Bernie Kubiak
> Thanks for the replies guys,
>
> I have finally finished my darkroom (it really is astoundingly dark -
> I found it quite eerie after 20 minutes in there checking for light
> leaks, quite disorientating in a way although I could feel where I was
> as it's only a small room)
Apart from pulling weeds in the garden, being in a darkroom is as close as
most of us will come to being truely alone! A good CD player is a valuable
accessory (I drop a folded sheet of black paper over the blue LCD on mine)
it keeps you company plus you can dodge or burn to the music.
Amy Hoy
bku...@mediaone.net wrote on 11/17/01 7:56 PM:
>> I have finally finished my darkroom (it really is astoundingly dark -
>> I found it quite eerie after 20 minutes in there checking for light
>> leaks, quite disorientating in a way although I could feel where I was
>> as it's only a small room)
>
> Apart from pulling weeds in the garden, being in a darkroom is as close as
> most of us will come to being truely alone! A good CD player is a valuable
> accessory (I drop a folded sheet of black paper over the blue LCD on mine)
> it keeps you company plus you can dodge or burn to the music.
The danger there is getting your groove on while developing film and
over-agitating, resulting in dense negatives or edge acceleration. I speak
from experience! Remember: film tanks are NOT percussion instruments! ;)
Amy
John
<eris...@NOSPAMpair.com> wrote:
>Remember: film tanks are NOT percussion instruments! ;)
>
>Amy
No but they could double as cocktail shakers !
Regards,
John S. Douglas Photographer & Webmaster
Website ------------------- http://www.darkroom-pro.com
Formulas,Facts and Info on the Photographic Process
=======================================
David Rifkind
>On Sun, 18 Nov 2001 02:02:23 GMT, Amy Hoy
><eris...@NOSPAMpair.com> wrote:
>
>>Remember: film tanks are NOT percussion instruments! ;)
>>
>>Amy
>
> No but they could double as cocktail shakers !
Bond, James Bond. I'll have a vodka martini, very dry, agitated for the
first minute, then ten seconds per minute, for twelve minutes.
Bernie Kubiak
developing!
"Amy Hoy" <eris...@NOSPAMpair.com> wrote in message
news:B81C80DE.BB04%eris...@NOSPAMpair.com...
> in article IGDJ7.2241$sA.10...@typhoon.ne.mediaone.net, Bernie Kubiak at
> bku...@mediaone.net wrote on 11/17/01 7:56 PM:
>
DaveHodge
Get a roll of phosphorescent tape, and put little pieces on things you want to
find, or not find, in the dark.
I want to find light switches, stools to sit on, corners of trays when
developing sheet film.
I don't want to find (or bang into) the edges of counters or cabinets.
I have a complete audio system in my lab, with Bose speakers. I saw a picture
of Eugene Smith's lab and he had a TV with safelight filter over it!
Mike King
the voice of experience--OK--I was really tired that night.)
Mike King
"darkroommike
"DaveHodge" <dave...@aol.com> wrote in message
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