B/W large wet print handling methods during devopment to prevent contamination

Hi all,

I plan to make 16x20 b/w fiber prints in the darkroom.

Just wondering from your experience how you handle developing large prints and transferring the print from tray to tray (dev, stop, fix) in order to prevent chemical contamination on the print?

I have a huge pet peeve when peers mishandle tongs and do not place them in the proper trays.

What are your personal preferences of handling a large print to prevent contamination during development?

Nitrile Gloves and using the same pair of gloves (that is after drying the current pair with a towel)? Use a new pair of Nitrile Gloves each time you process a print? Or Tongs?

I've used tongs for printing 11x14's but never had printed large such as a 16x20.

Appreciate your feedback.

I don't worry too much about a little developer or stop carrying over into the fix. In-between prints just wash hands briefly to get rid of whatever sticks to them. For big prints I use a single tray and pour in/out the consecutive chemicals. No need to worry about a little carryover.

I've got plenty of prints with stains on one corner. Seemed to happen even after hand washing. Now I use a nitrile glove on my left hand and tongs in my right to move the prints from tray to tray. New glove for each print. No more stains.

For larger prints I'll often use a pair of tongs instead of just one. One pair for the developer tray and one pair for everything else. The print gets lifted by two corners and flopped face-down in the stop. Developer tongs are returned to the developer tray and print handling is done with the second pair from there.

Best,

Doremus

After printing B&W with Bob Carnie one Saturday in his shop, I switched from tongs to food handlers gloves changing after each print. They are cheap, maybe $6 for 500 at the discount store, and no more prints slipping from the tongs back into the chemistry or tong marks.

Thomas

I do the same as Thomas, and use gloves.

Not recommended, but I used bare fingers for 16x20 prints for 10 or so years (I have not made many silver gelatin prints since 1992). I would use tongs for test strips/prints, or for the 16x20 prints I would use a tong to lift a print corner up out of the chemicals before grabbing it with my fingers. I'd walk the print all the way through from developer to a rinse after a full fix, so if I started with my fingers clean and rinsed them after each exposure to chemicals, I had no problems.

I thought I was contaminating my prints for awhile. I would introduce the 16x20 sheet of Agfa Portriga Rapid 111 into the developer face-down for 15 seconds or so, then flip the sheet over and watch things develop. I was getting dark fingerprint marks on the white border of the print where I grabbed the corners to flip the paper over. No matter how clean my hands were, I'd get the fingerprints.

Turned out that photo paper can become very pressure sensitive when first introduced into the developer, and the high pressure I was putting on the emulsion with my fingers was 'exposing' the paper mechanically rather than by light or chemically.

I saw this with students' prints -- on test strips/prints, they'd often toss the paper in the developer and flip it over with the SS tongs and stab it to the bottom of the tray with the tongs. This would cause black lines to appear on the paper. After looking at their negs, I told them that the lines would not be in the final print if they laid off stabbing their emulsion with the tongs.

For 16x20's I use a pair of tongs in each tray to transfer paper only...then tray-rock to agitate. I am rather careful, when using the tongs, to handle prints by edges only.

For larger prints I use nitrile gloves, and am careful to inspect these...even when fresh - to ensure that they don't have any small punctures.