Darkroom technique

The Master Photographer’s Toning Book

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Recently I purchased a copy of Tim Rudman’s The Master Photographer’s Toning Book [1] from Silverprint in the UK. Thanks to Silverprint, this “definitive guide” to toning gelatin silver and platinum prints is now in its second printing, and thank goodness it’s now in print once again. This book is really a superb resource. Here’s a brief synopsis from Tim Rudman’s website: Using a system of First Steps, Second Steps and Further Steps, the normal use of simple ‘off-the-shelf’ toning kits is explained and then developed further by exploring the […]

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Helping Hands

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I’ve received a number of questions about the print that is framed for the inaugural Sybase Waterloo Community Service Award, so I thought I’d post the details here. The models were Marketing Events Manager Christine Weber and retired employee Dagmar McIntosh. Christine and Dagmar’s hands were photographed against a white backdrop tilted at 45 degrees and lit by two Novatron 500 strobes with umbrellas. Their hands were lit with a single Novatron 500 strobe with a snoot to prevent lens flare. For this shot, I used my Mamiya C330S TLR

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Moving to split grade printing

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On the way home from our most recent trip to Burlington for a Burlington Photo Art Group meeting, my friend Jim Blomfield convinced me to try split grade printing (see also this tutorial) rather than using the mixed-filter settings on my Devere 504 enlarger. The Devere supports filter grades from 0 to 4 (not 5) in 1/2 grade increments. Jim suggested that with split-grade printing I’d get better results since the light colour that is exposing the paper matches exactly the emulsions within it: magenta and yellow. So, on this

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Qu’Appelle River, Round Lake

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Over the last two months I’ve spent my darkroom time developing film taken during the summer – 15 rolls of 120 and nearly four boxes of 4×5 film taken in and around Grasslands National Park on James R. Page’s Wild Prairie workshop. This week I started making work prints of some of these images on Ilford RC paper; here is one example. This photograph is of the Qu’Appelle River, looking west (upstream) as it flows from Round Lake in southeastern Saskatchewan. It was taken from the old, abandoned Highway 9

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Finding the right development times

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I ran out of Ilford ID-11 this week. I have lots of Perceptol, but looking both on the box and on the Ilford website, Perceptol isn’t rated for developing Kodak 320TXP. I knew that ID-11 was Ilford’s formulation of Kodak D-76 so I ran to my local Henry’s store to see if I could find either – and found two 1-litre envelopes of D-76. Cheap. Now the question was: what developer times to use? While Ilford makes some attempt to document how their chemistry works with films from other manufacturers,

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Using the RH Designs PaperFlasher II

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Working in the darkroom yesterday made me again appreciate how useful the PaperFlasher II is when trying to print scenes with excessive contrast. The PaperFlasher II is made by RH Designs in the UK.  The PaperFlasher II is powered by a nine-volt battery and offers precise control over the duration of the flash. I attached the bulb housing to the mount of the lens on my DeVere 504 enlarger with silicone – more temporary methods such as duct tape eventually failed. I calibrated the flash unit for each height/paper combination assuming a full-frame print

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New dodging and burning technique

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At our Burlington Photographic Arts Group meeting last night, John Price gave a 15-minute presentation on the technique he uses for dodging and burning large-format negatives that I’ve not seen before. John cuts a 4×5 piece of mylar – the translucent material that draftsmen use to trace drawings – and places it on top of the negative when he places the carrier in the enlarger head. The mylar acts as a diffuser, so exposure times can be slightly longer, though the diffusion helps to avoid dust marks on the print.

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