contact printing ??

[Maross396]

Tried my first contact prints today with no luck, using Ilford multigrade RC paper and multigrade developer at 1:9. All the prints went totally black except one where i could see a faint image of the 4x5 negative border but not much else. I did use a amber safe light and this is a brand new box of paper(just opened) exposures were 5-10 seconds using a 40 watt light bulb. Any suggestions on what i'm doing wrong?

[Richard Wasserman]

I think your bulb is much too bright. Try a smaller wattage bulb (5-10 watts), move it farther from the paper, and maybe add some diffusing material under the bulb to reduce the brightness further. The paper you are using is very sensitive and you don't need or want a great deal of light.

[Vaughn]

I like the lower wattage and diffusion material idea/s.

Moving the light a lot further away will help, too. (3 to 4 times further away?). If you are using a contact printing frame, you can print from any direction...horizontally if that works better in your space.

[revdoc]

Paper is a high contrast material with a very short exposure scale, so getting the right exposure can be challenging. A dimmer light source will help, but you'll also need to do some test strips to determine the best times. Having the light on an electronic controller will help with consistency.

[Maross396]

Thanks, this is my first attempt; I was worried that the amber safelight caused issues. Found a 7.5 watt light so am giving it another go

[Maross396]

OK tried the a 7.5 watt bulb and that worked better, got a workable image but that was at 3 seconds with the light about 3-5 feet above. Need to go dimmer or try to get the light farther away

[Ulophot]

I can't help but wonder, MAross396, if you had seen images of Edward Weston using a set-up similar to your initial one, or, perhaps, alternative process artists doing something like that. The paper that Weston used, if I am not very mistaken (and I'll undoubtedly find out soon after this is posted), was much, much slower than Multigrade. There are a few similar papers today, I understand, but with Multigrade and most modern papers, enlarger light passed through a lens with an adjustable aperture is more often the source for contact printing.

Good luck with your set-up! Experimentation will get you where you want to be.

Keep in mind that you can, with the small bulb you have now, confine it's light in a carefully home-made enclosure of black foam core with a cutout in the bottom, allowing the possibility of easily inserting diffusion in one, two, or more layers to give you a workable contact printing time if you wish to fine tune your exposures and/or doge and burn some areas.

I'm sure I don't need to say that proper caution is needed to ensure that the lamp does not get close to close the foam core; it would need to be suspended in the enclosure. Please note also, that little LED bulbs are also available. How they may affect contrast, given the tendency to have a green spike, you'll have to discover, but the heat issue would practically be eliminated.

[LabRat]

RC paper is very fast, and at those short distances exposures can be very short, even fractions of a second...

Getting the light source a further distance, using lower wattage light sources, and using an enlarging timer that can be set for fractions of a second help...

Try and test...

Steve K

[gypsydog]

Here is what you need, ADOX Lupex Contact Paper FB

https://www.freestylephoto.biz/58925-ADOX-Lupex-Contact-Paper-FB-Glossy-Grade-3-8x10-25-Sheets

[jnantz]

Here is what you need, ADOX Lupex Contact Paper FB

https://www.freestylephoto.biz/58925-ADOX-Lupex-Contact-Paper-FB-Glossy-Grade-3-8x10-25-Sheets


that's like Lodima / Azo and needs like a 300 watt bulb, I think Maross396 might have equally as much trouble with a dim bulb and negatives that might not be suited for the paper.

[Alan9940]

If you go the Adox Lupex route, then you'll have to go the other direction with your bulb. Lupex is a VERY slow paper, as are similar papers such as Azo and Lodima.

[Duolab123]

For Multigrade papers, any modern Enlarging paper, I contact print using the enlarger light source. Adox Lupex is a Contact paper, beautiful stuff, like others have mentioned you need more light.
I would try again, with your small bulb. If you had an enlarger with a timer, doesn't need to be a large format enlarger. With an enlarger you can use the contrast control filters.
In the mean time just put the light farther away. Google Inverse Square law, light intensity diminishes quite rapidly as you move away.

[Mark Sawyer]

The negative goes on top of the paper?

[koraks]

I did use a amber safe light

In addition to what the others said, start by conducting a safe light test to verify that your safelight doesn't fog the paper and doesn't reduce its contrast.

And yes, multigrade / VC paper is very sensitive, so it only takes a very dim light to expose it.

Since you're apparently using a bare bulb, keep in mind that the negative will have to match the white-light contrast curve of the paper; this will be around grade 2 or 2.5. If you want to reduce or increase contrast, you could filter the light using a set of multigrade filters; you'll have to have your light bulb in a suitable housing for this of course, so no unfiltered light slips past the filters. If you want to go fancy, you can build a contact printing light source with a green and a blue LED that you turn on for different durations or at different intensities to increase or decrease contrast.

Alternatively, just use an enlarger with a dichroic or multigrade head for contact printing. Might not be as romantic as a bare bulb, but it works just as well and is arguably easier. If you have an enlarger of course. Bonus: even with a 35mm enlarger you can do 8x10" contact prints.

[John Kasaian]

Look around for a Kodak (or who ever makes them these days) Print Projection Scale.
An inexpensive bit of acetate that will save you quite a bit of paper, time and money
when figuring out these kinds of things.

[Alan9940]

The negative goes on top of the paper?

Yes. Paper emulsion up, negative emulsion side down. Some photographers have the printing light mounted in/under a table and flip the printing frame over, but the "sandwich" in the frame is the same.

[Maross396]

231402 Here are the 2 I finally managed to get, the darker one was for 3 seconds and for the other I bounced the light off the ceiling for 4 seconds. I see these you tube vids where they have the bulb hanging above the print and seems to take much longer?

[Doremus Scudder]

231402 Here are the 2 I finally managed to get, the darker one was for 3 seconds and for the other I bounced the light off the ceiling for 4 seconds. I see these you tube vids where they have the bulb hanging above the print and seems to take much longer?

You're on the right track for sure!

The next step is to rig up a way to mount contrast filters over your light source so you can control the contrast of your contact prints. Mounting filters will also help with the light intensity problem. FWIW, I like 15-30 second exposures when I'm printing so I can dodge comfortably. Dodging contact prints is a little more difficult than when enlarging, since you can't see the image as well, but certainly doable.

When I rigged up a contact printing set-up in my apartment in Europe (my regular darkroom with all the enlargers was in the U.S.), I just taped together a box out of white boxboard and hung the light in that. I made a small frame for 6x6 filters. I wired a cheap hardware-store dimmer in line with the power cord for the light to control exposure time a bit. The light was hung over my washing machine in the bathroom; I used the top of the washer for the work surface. Worked fine for making contacts for years.

Have fun,

Doremus

[Alan9940]

I see these you tube vids where they have the bulb hanging above the print and seems to take much longer?

They were probably using a contact printing paper like Adox Lupex. I use a 300-watt flood about 6 feet above my enlarger table and get ~30 sec exposures with Lupex and my 8x10 negs.

[Vaughn]

They were probably using a contact printing paper like Adox Lupex. I use a 300-watt flood about 6 feet above my enlarger table and get ~30 sec exposures with Lupex and my 8x10 negs.

That sort of turned me off of using Azo...I felt I needed to retreat to a safe room like the X-Ray technicians do, before I turn the light on. Of course I just got done with a four hour exposure under a 750W Mercury vapor lamp (carbon printing) -- but those lamps are out in the garage where I don't have to look at them. My neighbors think I grow weed probably (I don't...that'd be coals to Newcastle).

[Alan9940]

That sort of turned me off of using Azo...I felt I needed to retreat to a safe room like the X-Ray technicians do, before I turn the light on. Of course I just got done with a four hour exposure under a 750W Mercury vapor lamp (carbon printing) -- but those lamps are out in the garage where I don't have to look at them. My neighbors think I grow weed probably (I don't...that'd be coals to Newcastle).

LOL! My wife gets a big kick out of me wearing sunglasses in the darkroom when I contact print. That's a really friggin BRIGHT light! :)

[Duolab123]

That sort of turned me off of using Azo...I felt I needed to retreat to a safe room like the X-Ray technicians do, before I turn the light on. Of course I just got done with a four hour exposure under a 750W Mercury vapor lamp (carbon printing) -- but those lamps are out in the garage where I don't have to look at them. My neighbors think I grow weed probably (I don't...that'd be coals to Newcastle).

I have an old Arkay Speed Dodge contact printer, I rarely use it. It has the argon lamps, something like 16 of them, each on an individual switch. Typical Azo exposures range from 2 to 7 seconds. These things were made to make huge volumes of commercial single weight 8x10 glossy prints. It does seem a bit brutal. There were all kinds of these printers in the heyday of large format portraits and commercial work. Folks that knew how to set lighting ratios and such didn't need to dodge anything, negatives were exposed and developed the same, made printing a simple process.

[j.e.simmons]

I always thought the idea of using the high powered floodlight came from Michael A. Smith who was shooting old, fogged XX film. There was lots of talk of negative density on the old Azo Forum. I found a less dense, but full contrast negative to print just fine on Azo with a regular 60-watt bulb in a reflector about 18-inches above the paper. I usually made 30-45 second exposures.

[jnantz]

231402 Here are the 2 I finally managed to get, the darker one was for 3 seconds and for the other I bounced the light off the ceiling for 4 seconds. I see these you tube vids where they have the bulb hanging above the print and seems to take much longer?

nice !

if you have trouble with contract control with your film and not being able to use contrast filters, you might consider a double bath developer, it works great. if you can stick a light source in place of your camera's ground glass you can get a better control of your light converting your camera to an enlarger so you can use f-stops and have a way to mount contrast filters. you could probably just buy a LED that people use for their "perfect zoom meeting lighting" and it would work well, and there wouldn't be any heat to foul your lenses. might be cheaper still to buy a garage sale enlarger if you have the money and or room.

[Tin Can]

Mythical AZO

so many 'musts'

I go my way

I have seen Michael and Paula prints in person at one of the last exhibitions

Highland Park

http://www.michaelandpaula.com/mp/index.php

[Tin Can]

https://www.lodima.org/