Stunning photographic breakthrough!

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Andy in Sig

Vice President in Exile
Yeehah! I have just successfully managed for the first time and all on my own to develop two rolls of black and white film! Not all the negs are perfect but some of them definitely look usable.

Now my next Herculean labour is to get some sort of dark room functioning in the cellar so as to be able to knock out some prints. I'll probably open a bottle of champagne if I ever manage to produce a decent print.
 

Norm

Guest
One doesn't generally get the chance to brag about going alone into a darkened room and knocking one out over some photos, so congratulations for that at least. :biggrin:

Well done on getting the stuff developed. It's bloody hard work and, after not many personal attempts, I found the best thing to do was to take the films to Boots for processing then get the best ones to a local printer for hand-printing. :thumbsup:
 
When I first used B+W, we obviously went through the procedure of unloading film from the cassette and putting it carefully around the white nylon carrier in the Patterson tanks...in the studio but we shut our eyes in order to feel our way around the procedure. We were then let loose in London to take "15 frames in the style of Canaletto". I remember my efforts all being exposed on one frame as I cocked up the leader tab business, but the funniest thing was one of the girls returned to college, closed her eyes and pulled the film out of the cassette.

Well done Andy - but this thread is useless without photos! And to think you saw everything in Black & White, downstairs in politics and strife. Seems nothing has changed ;)

As a tip for exposing, I used to count 'baby ducks'. "One baby duck, two baby ducks, three baby ducks" etc corresponded to a second each :biggrin:
 

Globalti

Legendary Member
Gawd! How I remember the smell of the chemicals and the long hours spent in the darkroom. At college somebody gave me a 250ft reel of 35mm ex-Navy movie stock so I used to pull out a length and tape it inside a used canister, working by feel in pitch dark. I worked out that it was about 250 ASA and I must have shot thousands of pictures, my little Olympus 35RC rangefinder was always on my shoulder. Then I used to sneak into the Faculty of Art & Design and use their darkrooms, nobody ever asked me why I was there. Haven't the time for all that now.
 
Now my next Herculean labour is to get some sort of dark room functioning in the cellar so as to be able to knock out some prints. I'll probably open a bottle of champagne if I ever manage to produce a decent print.

Seems a shame to lose valuable wine storage space, for that is the purpose of a cellar, for darkroom activities! Where are you going to keep the champagne if the cellar becomes a darkroom?!!
 

tyred

Legendary Member
Location
Ireland
Well done. I love processing and developing B&W photographs. I hope to get my own darkroom organised over the winter as I can no longer use the one in the local college due to 'elf and safety.
 
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Andy in Sig

Andy in Sig

Vice President in Exile
Seems a shame to lose valuable wine storage space, for that is the purpose of a cellar, for darkroom activities! Where are you going to keep the champagne if the cellar becomes a darkroom?!!

A deep and penetrating question of no little import. Having just emerged from the cellar I can confirm that it can hold around 300 bottles of wine, the loads of storage boxes which are there and my enlarger (a whopping 2 m high thing made by Durst which can enlarge negs up to 5" x 7" and which only cost me €350 on ebay). I reckon that developing LF negs is going to be a lot easier than doing 35 mm. So as soon as I've got the window blacked out, I will be more or less in a position to start.
 

Coco

Well-Known Member
Location
Glasgow
No, you get (or at leat used to) cameras that had 5"x7" negatives. In fact I'm sure I've still got some sheets of Kodak litho in that size.
 
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Andy in Sig

Andy in Sig

Vice President in Exile
No, I've got a camera at the moment that does 5" x 4" negs (as well as my normal 35 mm gear) and I'm thinking of getting one that does 5" x 7" so as to use the full capacity of the enlarger e.g. a 10" by 14" print represents only a 4x enlargement so the picture quality is remarkable. Google "Walker Titan Camera" to see some examples of what I'm on about. There's also a firm called Lotus Camera that does seriously daft-sized gear.

http://www.walkercameras.com/

http://www.lotusviewcamera.at/index1.html
 

Archie_tect

De Skieven Architek... aka Penfold + Horace
Location
Northumberland
Brings back memories of days wasted spent in the dark rooms [not all happy] at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art processing and printing B+W photos. Thank goodness for digital! [B+W prints digitally adjusted look fantastic and I don't waste anything like as much paper as I used to!

we used to count bananas... though elephants came a close second [nicking the bananas].
 
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