A/NZ PX Round #9 - Comments and Feedback

[Oxleyroad]

This round is now in progress. I will have sent our my address details by later today via PM. Looking forward to what we all produce in this round.

[polyglot]

Printed!

[Michael W]

There's no prize for coming first you know.

[polyglot]

There's no prize for coming first you know.

What!? You mean I don't get bonus points on my license for driving past speeding cameras at 40km/h either?

[TimF]

This little project has reminded me of the good things about digital. I took a few days driving taking photos for the swap. Dreaming of the beautiful pictures I was about to see I pulled a clear strip of tri-x out of the tank :/ turns out to be my 2nd case of canon sticky goo shutter now. So I took another trip with my little xa1 but I'm never that happy with its quality - always seems a bit soft on one side and at infinity. So off to the bay for a 'new' slr which just arrived. I'm off for the 3rd attempt at a photo to share now

[Oxleyroad]

Tim, don't stress. If you have anything on file that'll do. Just tell us what you wanted to achieve and we'll give appropriate feedback. That I what his exchange is about. Well this is what I use this exchange for. To slowly hone my darkroom skills.

Here's a funny story. I had made a set of what I had hoped was a brilliant set of colour reversal prints (RA4 paper used to make a print from a transparency) for one of several exchanges back, and the next day I found my son (5 years old) had made ships out of them all and was racing them down the rain water running down our driveway. At the time as you can imagine it was not funny. So I just had to come up with another set of prints.

[spatz]

just returned fresh from japan with 10 rolls of tri-x itching to be proofed. i have a few shots which im keen to see how they print and some even call for toning which im glad about as ive been meaning to try toning for a while now.
Andrew: That's a nice surprise that you manage to do rr-4. are the results wall-hangeable? i'd be interested to know now that ilfochrome is dead and the fact that i shoot mostly e6 for colour and not much c41.

[TimF]

Well I think I'm done printing! I've learnt a few lessons through this exercise...

First I realised I'd need to be able to wash a number of prints at once. I decided to make a print washer out of a 25l water cube so started to cut the top off with a stanley knife. Halfway through the blade snapped and the knife sprang back and took a deep slice out of my chest. I grabbed my Sham-Wow to stop the bleeding and popped in to the local hospital. THe nurse said "Oh, that's an interesting use for a chamois." I said "It's not a chamois, its a Sham-Wow!" But I digress - when home with a dressing I used a hacksaw to finish cutting the top off the water cube more safely..

Once I found time (toddler, job) to get into my darkroom (corner of the laundry) I realised I wasn't really set up to do any volume of printing. I had to string some baling twine from the door hinge to the corner of a cupboard for drying and spread newspaper around so my prints didn't drip all over her clean towels.

First lesson: Dust is a pain. I went through a few cycles of print, check, wipe everything down, print again before I was getting prints without dust and hair visible.

Second lesson: It is hard getting the paper to line up perfectly square under my easel. Sorry if anyone gets a print that is a little off, I'll try to pick the ones with nicest margins. Is there a trick to this or do I need a better easel?

Third lesson: Ilfosol S exhausts more quickly than I thought(?). When I turned on the lights I found the later prints have some yellow staining apparent in the white borders. I made up a fresh batch of fix and gave those prints another fix with no change so I'm assuming it is the developer - any advice? I used 500ml of made up 1:9 for 20 8x10s.

Fourth lesson: Allow more time. It ended up taking me 4 hours from start to finish. Only left me 5 hours for sleep last night :/

So yeah I did 20 8x10s which I think exactly doubles the amount of BW prints I've ever made. Hopefully I can find 10 that don't have crooked borders and yellow stains. At least I'm fairly happy with the image.

[Oxleyroad]

Tim this is why we do wet prints. Your story is now part of this exchange. :-)

[polyglot]

Second lesson: It is hard getting the paper to line up perfectly square under my easel. Sorry if anyone gets a print that is a little off, I'll try to pick the ones with nicest margins. Is there a trick to this or do I need a better easel?

Assuming it's the usual 2-blade cheap easel with fingers at top and left to push the paper against, you push the paper up into the easel and then slide it right/left. You should be able to feel it sliding along without ANY rotation. If there's rotation, it's not in correctly. Then you slide it left until it comes up against the other stops.

Third lesson: Ilfosol S exhausts more quickly than I thought(?). When I turned on the lights I found the later prints have some yellow staining apparent in the white borders. I made up a fresh batch of fix and gave those prints another fix with no change so I'm assuming it is the developer - any advice? I used 500ml of made up 1:9 for 20 8x10s.

Isn't that a film developer? You probably want to use paper developer (Multigrade is Ilford's main offering; Dektol is Kodak's and there is of course an infinity of other options) for developing paper...