how can i make a good enlargement from thin negatives?
what aperature and how many seconds should i use?
how can i make a good enlargement from thin negatives?
what aperature and how many seconds should i use?
That's an impossible question, Amber. Even if we knew how thin the negative was (22" waist? ;-) ), exposure will depend on your specific environment. Most enlarging lenses are sharpest when stopped down 3 stops or so, but that's not always critical. You'll just have to run individual test strips for each negative to determine optimal exposure for the size of enlargement you want to make.
Hi Amber,
There is a forum dedicated to solving the exact problem you describe. See: www.photo.net. Click on the forum entitled "B&W Photography-Printing and Finishing". Post your question there. You will get many answers to your inquiry.
If your negatives are too thin, there's a good chance they may be underexposed.
Underexposed negatives do not have a full range of densities, and therefore produce flat prints.
So the short answer to your question is to use higher-contrast paper (or printing filter) to make the best of a bad situation.
If you were taking pictures of a dark subject, with no high values, then the negatives should appear thin. Make a contact print where you expose for the black film edge. That will tell you if they are underexposed, or simply of a dark subject.
To help the negative along a bit resoak in water then tone in selenium for five mins approx, this will build up a little more density and also boost the contrast up a bit which thin negs need anyway. Trying to localise selenuim toning though is fraught with danger and don't advise it.
CP Goerz
If you let your negatives eat more light in the camera, they won't grow up to be so thin. But don't let them eat too much, or they'll get dense...
"I love my Verito lens, but I always have to sharpen everything in Photoshop..."
For really thin negatives have them scanned by a professional service and printed out on a Fuji Frontier.
Make test strips.
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My main question would be: why did Amber decide to post that question to this forum. Is it related to LF?
Andre - I've been thinking of trying something like that. I have an 8x10 B&W neg taken in a of a stained glass window in a church, but with foreground detail. There's detail where I want it, in both the window and the foreground, but the contrast is just so great that I can't do anything with the neg, even with water bath development or anything else I've heard of.
How well would a neg with such a high contrast range scan? I assume, better than it prints. Is there any way they could adjust brightness pre-scan, and do two scans - one for the lows and one for the highs?
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