Darkroom progress.

Toby Webster

Toby Webster

Well-Known Member
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Having bought a pile of darkroom equipment at auction back in September, and then spending a fortune on filling gaps and replacing worn out or second rate items (transformer, lens, bulbs, filters, trays etc etc) - and, of course, paper, I've been slowly learning and relearning the ropes. Multigrade papers and filters were in their not so good infancy when I last spent serious time in a darkroom 40 odd years ago. Thankfully we now have youtube, which has been an absolute Godsend, and I bought a copy of Tim Rudman's fine tome, but by crikey the learning curve is long and expensive.

I particularly struggled with RC paper, as it seems to need so little time under the enlarger, and the results weren't differentiating themselves sufficiently from those from my faithful Epson 3880, so I finally took the plunge (ouch) into a couple of boxes of 10x8 Ilford Warmtine FB. Oh, what a beautiful thing it is too, slow to work, but it rewards patience, and it is a visual and tactile treat. I think I'm beginning to climb out of the abyss, but I have no doubt I'll trip over on those words in no time at all. If I can just get on top of the basics in the first few months of this year, I think I'm going to stretch myself on one of the great Andrew Sanderson's workshops before he draws stumps on them at the end of 2024.

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Scans of various of the negs shown above for interest. These are scans of the negs on a Nikon Coolscan 9000ED developed in Photoshop, not scans of the silver gelatin prints.

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Sounds like you are enjoying yourself. Congratulations on your new purchase.
 
It sure is a rewarding experience. Keep at it and the results will come and you are well on your way.
 
I like the tones in these shots Toby, very nice work, I now stick to RC paper's as I found FB paper hard to flatten even with my old drier 40 odd years ago, I think I might still have my drier up in the attic..
 
Drying the fb paper is an absolute SOB! I've got one of those old Patterson dryer/glazers, but I haven't had much success with it. I'm using a combination of gentle hair dryer followed by pressing between weighted placemats with baking paper protecting the print, which seems to be getting reasonable results. Those prints I photographed haven't been toned yet, so they have to be rewashed.
 
I find these stainless steel kitchen racks useful.

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This particular print is now mounted and framed, and lives in Cornwall, in fact not far from where it was taken.
 
And it looks very nice, Toby, last year I restarted working in the darkroom after a few absent years and enjoyed it, fortunately, what I learned over those years in the DR was still there in the old brain memory banks. I now do both the full darkroom and the hybrid method and find both to be a very satisfying method of creating prints, as a suggestion maybe practice on the resin-based papers first, as it keeps costs lower than fibre and is quicker to use, then move on or just print on the special prints you want on fibre based paper, just a thought.
 
Thanks Martin, and good to hear that you're back in the darkroom.

I did lots of practice on RC over the past two or three months, ripped through a frightening amount, and I got to a point where I felt sufficiently confident to hit the FB for the best negs (most of the test prints on the table shot are RC) so I'm reasonably frugal - I got that last one up to finished print on as little as 3 sheets plus test strips, though it probably was a bit of an exception! I find that the problem with running up a print on RC is that the exposure time for FB is quite a bit longer, so you have to go all the way back to test strips. I actually find FB easier to work with, as it gives you more time for dodging and burning.

I have got a number of negs that I've really struggled with - I haven't dared attempt that big pine tree on FB yet, as I can't seem to get the detail into the shadow on the lower right that I've got in photoshop, and there's an awful lot of dodging and burning required in at least two grades. There's lot of learning yet to do!
 
Alan Clark said:
Wonderful. And beautifully toned. What toner are you using Toby?
Click to expand...

I'm using quite diluted selenium, it gives a very subtle tone and richens the blacks. I'd like to split tone with a light sepia and selenium, but there's no stock of sepia about at the moment.
 
Toby Webster said:
Thanks Martin, and good to hear that you're back in the darkroom.

I did lots of practice on RC over the past two or three months, ripped through a frightening amount, and I got to a point where I felt sufficiently confident to hit the FB for the best negs (most of the test prints on the table shot are RC) so I'm reasonably frugal - I got that last one up to finished print on as little as 3 sheets plus test strips, though it probably was a bit of an exception! I find that the problem with running up a print on RC is that the exposure time for FB is quite a bit longer, so you have to go all the way back to test strips. I actually find FB easier to work with, as it gives you more time for dodging and burning.

I have got a number of negs that I've really struggled with - I haven't dared attempt that big pine tree on FB yet, as I can't seem to get the detail into the shadow on the lower right that I've got in photoshop, and there's an awful lot of dodging and burning required in at least two grades. There's lot of learning yet to do!
Click to expand...
I thought as much, from what I see on the LCD is a very nice FB print
 
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