I have set up a darkroom in a small bathroom. There are no windows to black out. There are mirrors in front and to the side of the counter. I have placed black poster board over the mirrors. In order for the safelight to be at least 4 feet from the working areas, I have placed it (15 watt red saftelight) over the enlarger and blocked the direct light with a poster board. This leaves it about 5' or so from the developing trays. My door is darkened with black trash bags around the edges (not necesarily an attractive work but it allows me to go in and out without having to retape as much each time) and I do a light check (wait in dark for several minutes and check for light leaks) before attempting to make a print. I am using an Omega Dichro Color head and use it with all filters in the "0" position. I am using black and white PlusX Pan 125 film that I have developed. Most of the negatives look pretty good - good contrast. I am using Ilford VC RC paper and my chemicals are stabilized around 68-70 degrees.

Now, in great anticipation I start. However, I have yet to get a good contact sheet or print. The problem.... cloudy, milky looking - has a "mushy" look. The edges of the paper outside the print look like murky water and there are lighter edges on the print itself. There is light coming from the enlarger itself that is hitting the black poster board... is that causing the milky look? Any suggestions?

Thanks for your help! Patricia

-- Patricia Arfsten (parfsten@cccd.edu), August 27, 2000

Answers

Patrica, get a bunch of coins or other small objects and go into your darkroom. Set up you chemicals, turn out ALL the lights, get out a sheet of enlarging paper, put some of the coins/small objects on the paper, and put them somewhere away from the enlarger, but still subject to whatever ambient light you have when you do your work. Turn on your safety light & generally recreate your light set-up as if you are working. After going through the motions you normally would with your enlarging paper out, take the coins off the paper and develop it. If you can see where the coins were then you have excess stray light.

Now you can play around with that, by setting up the paper/coin combination, and trying the effects of the various lights be turning them on or leaving them off.

Hope this makes some sense.

Don't hesitate to write.

chris

-- Christian Harkness (chris.harkness@eudoramail.com), August 27, 2000.

Patricia: Your darkroom setup sounds fine. Light leaking from your enlarger should not mess up a contact sheet, although it will certainly louse up any enlargement it gets to. However, I can't envision what your prints look like based on your description. "Mushy" and "murky water" don't mean much, I'm afraid. When light hits photo paper, the paper will come up dark or black in the developer, so I doubt that your current problem is the light leaking from your enlarger. However, that leak will be a problem later, when you've solved the current one. Try making test strips with a piece of clear film in the enlarger, like the end of a developed roll. When you get a test strip that has a good black on it, then you have some idea what f-stop and time will be needed to make prints. I'm groping for something, here, but it may be that you just aren't giving enough exposure to anything.

-- Keith Nichols (knichols@iopener.net), August 27, 2000.

From your description, it sounds like you may not be developing your prints long enough, and/or are not agitating properly.

The "muddy" look you describe happens when you try processing by inspection--checking the print's progress with your eyes instead of following a timer. It's a typical beginner's mistake, and easy to remedy.

Take a sheet of paper and expose it to white light. Then process it for your regular time. It should come out jet black. If it doesn't, you aren't keeping it in long enough. Make sure you use a timer, and follow the manufacturer's directions.

If your image comes out too dark, then you need to shorten your print time. Too light, you need to expose longer.

Good luck and let us know what happens!

-- Mason Resnick (bwworld@mindspring.com), August 27, 2000.

Patricia,

I do a lot of B+W work... I don't have a color head on my enlarger, so I'm not really sure what "0" position is on the filters. With that in mind, my comment might be off base.

You said you were using RC (good idea for you at this time) VC paper. Are you using the contrast filters? Printing with straight white light from the enlarger and no filter could give you a 'mushy' effect... if by that you mean very low contrast.

Other comments here are good. Keep after it. Once you get some good prints, it gets easier.

chuck k

-- chuck k (kleesattel@msn.com), August 27, 2000.

Dear Chris, Keith, Mason and Chuck, I am continually impressed with the patience, kindness and willingness to share information I have seen on this board. It is absolutely the best I have ever found! Now, THANK YOU for the many suggestions. I am eager to get back in there and try each one. I find this whole process of working with BW very interesting... haven't felt any frustrations yet... just a wonderful sense of curiousity when things turn out differently than I expected. Another question - should there not be any light coming from the light source other then through the lens? There are vents on the top which emit light and some comes through where the negative carrier is...

It is wonderful to have mentors at the touch of my keyboard... thanks again and as I develop my art I will remember to help others along!

-Patricia

-- Patricia Arfsten (parfsten@cccd.edu), August 27, 2000.

Regarding light from enlargers. I guess all enlargers leak some light here and there. Generally the light from the cooling vents bounces off the ceiling before it reaches your easel and shouldn't affect you prints because it is a lot dimmer than the direct light through the lens. You can check this by capping the lens, laying a scrap of printing paper with a coin on the enlarger easel and turning on the enlarger for 30 seconds or so. The paper, when developed, should come up white and show no outline of the coin that was lying on it. This is the same test that you carry out for several minutes to test safelights and so forth. If your ceiling is a light color and pretty close to the enlarger, I suppose you could get some noticeable effect. I used to have a piece of velvet tacked to the ceiling over my enlarger to soak up any stray light. I never tested to see whether it was needed; I just didn't like to see the ceiling light up at all when I made a print. Now I notice that the velvet is gone, and I haven't seen any effect on the prints. It must have fallen one day, and I just tossed it out and forget to replace it. By the way, whoever mentioned developing time may have something. You should develop at least a minute, even though the print looks fully done in 20 or 30 seconds.

-- Keith Nichols (knichols@iopener.net), August 27, 2000.

couple of things...

Make sure you're sinking the paper into the developer and agitating enough to replace the developer on the print surface. I have this problem occasionly when doing small test prints and I forget to either develop it face down or keep prodding it under the surface as they tend to float to the top. A 10x8 sheet in a 11x9 tray doesn't seem to have the same problem and tend to stay sunk.

The lighting aspects of my darkbathroom would make many cry... the enlarger sits over the basin which has a huge mirror behind it (and the light leaks from the enlarger can easily be seen!), the safelight is stuck to the top of the mirror (it's a little one) which is maybe 4ft from the baseboard and the door into the room has lightleaks but I just place a towel along the floor to stop the majority of them. I don't have fogging problems as I don't leave paper out for any longer than it takes to expose it.

Do the test decribed above to eliminate any worry about paper fogging from light leaks and the safelight. Also do a test strip of a contact sheet to determine the exposure required for maximum black. And... make sure you're developing for the minimum manufacturers suggested time (as mentioned above), if the print is too dark.. correct it in the exposure, not by pulling it out of the developer (that stuff is for advanced workers trying to achieve some effect)

-- Nigel Smith (nlandgl@unite.com.au), August 27, 2000.

Concerning the test where you put coins on a sheet of developing paper: I hope somebody jumps in and helps me here with exact specifics, but I seem to remember that the paper should be exposed just a little bit before the start of the test. The reason given was that the emulsion should be brought to a "threshold" level first, so that slight amounts of light fogging will show up better. An amount of light that would not show on a completely fresh sheet of paper might produce a more evident effect in highlight areas of a print, making them dull without any apparent reason.

-- Paul Harris (pharris@neosoft.com), August 27, 2000.

From your description of your darkroom, ambiant light should not be such a significant problem. I cannot see the safelight being a problem, unless you are using a light that is not compatible with B&W paper. Unless you use VC filters, you must use your colour filters in your colour head to get the necessary gradation. As stated by previous respondents, the ilford paper needs to be developed for at least one minute. Change your exposure times to vary darkess of the print, not the developement time. Stop bath should take about 10 secs, fixing 1-2 minutes, washing another couple of minutes. Keeping the print wet too long can affect quality, but rarely to the extent you describe. Here is one more possibility: Are you using fresh paper? I got back into printing after a 15 year hiatus, and decided to use some of the old paper. Even at the hardest filter settings, the prints remained absolutely murky! To test, just develop some unexposed paper as per the above described process. If the paper does not come out brilliantly white, the paper itself may be the problem. Good luck!

-- Paul Oosthoek (pauloosthoek@hotmail.com), August 28, 2000.

Paul Harris is correct, paper should be exposed to a threshold level for safelight testing.

Here is the Kodak procedure:

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/consumer/products/techInfo/k4/k4TestSaf elite.shtml

-- Chris Ellinger (ellinger@umich.edu), August 29, 2000.

Tried the link to the Kodak procedure, and it gave a page not found error on the Kodak website. Did a quick search and came up with this URL for the safelight testing procedure.

http://www.kodak.com/cluster/global/en/consumer/products/techInfo/k4/k 4TestSafelite.shtml

Arnie

-- Arnie Milowsky (arniemly@earthlink.net), August 29, 2000.

Arnie's link doesn't work for me.

Patricia's problems sound fairly major to me, and perhaps the pre- fogging is an unnecesary complication. But the idea is to use the enlarger to give the paper just enough light to make it light-grey (when developed). But before developing it, leave it on the baseboard, with a coin partially covering it, with the safelight on, for a couple of minutes. Then develop it. The paper should be an even grey. If you can see the coin's outline, you have a safelight problem.

Similarly, repeat with another piece of paper, with the safelight off, and the enlarger on but lens capped. This will show up problems from enlarger leakage.

All enlargers 'leak' light, and this might be a problem. But I agree that Patricia's problem is probably uneven, and too short, development. Read what it says on the paper and developer packets, and if they say develop for less than three minutes, ignore them and give it three minutes, constantly rocking the dish. Then stop and fix, and look at the print. If it is too dark, try again, with a shorter exposure.

-- Alan Gibson (Alan@snibgo.com), August 29, 2000.

Because as Alan and others have said, with her bathroom walls being probably painted white, she has fogged her paper from the reflected light out of the enlarger. I had the same problem when I set up my first darkroom. My old enlarger leaked light from the top and around the carrier. My walls were painted white. I cured it by painting the area around the enlarger area flat black. She can drape some cloth around the enlarger to soak up the light too. Just don't restrict the cooling airflow around the enlarger itself. James

-- james (james_mickelson@hotmail.com), August 29, 2000.