Just thought I’d share the basics of my current “big print” setup. Do bear with me…economy with words is not exactly my strong suit!
Photo#1: In my gallery/workroom (convertable to darkroom) - “table” (hollow core door on saw horses) in foreground with large (42” wide) photo paper roll feeder on right end. You can see the horizontal enlarger in the background…with the large (44x66) easel against the wall. This easel, made up from two leftover Gatorboard sheets (very lightweight and stays flat) with glued-on black molding strips (with routed paper-channel rabbets) is precisely located but easy to detach from the wall - so after focussing and doing test strips, the easel is unclipped from the wall and placed on the table to the left of the paper feeder, and after unclipping the right side paper hold down strip (from the easel), the paper gets fed into the easel, trimmed off, the hold down strip reclipped, and the easel is clipped back to the wall for the actual exposure.
Photo#2: DIY enlarger, front view - cobbled from a DIY 8x10 vertical enlarger…incorporates ancient 5x7 Linhof focussing bed, and the entire thing rolls on wheels and is secured by a cannibalized Beseler 45MX motorized enlarger carrier (with weight compensating spring “de-sprung”), which facilitates quick positioning via motor transport, easy to reach fine focus as the motor’s flywheel knob is very reachable from my position as I fine-focus on the easel, and, once I’ve carefully determined “left/right” alignment (top to bottom having been pre-set permanently) and then taped the focus frame to the table…keeps film to easel congruency perfect regardless of focussing distance.
Light source is a Heiland LED VC head, removed from my Zone VI enlarger, and placed against the glass negative holder. The design of the Heiland head facilitates very firm/even placement against the glass, without needing to clamp anything down.
#3: Once I’ve made an exposure, I unclip the removable paper hold-down (right side of easel, other three are glued in place)…pull out the paper (carefully!) and bring it into my actual wet darkroom - where it is then placed, face-up, into the large, dry (no developer yet!) plywood/epoxy single tray. This tray is elevated above the sink bottom to facilitate pouring and to allow solution tanks to be pushed back underneath to their original positions after use. (These filled tanks, by the way, are used as individual “trays” to develop test strips prior to processing the actual print).
Before developer is poured in (4 gallons for this print size…from plastic container closest to the tray), I clamp two “hold down strips” (see in photo) near each paper edge…not tightly - but close enough to ensure that the outer curvature of the paper is held down enough for quick and even coverage of the developer, which is extremely important, at least (as I’ve found) with Ilford Classic paper - which, in my experience, does not work with a pre-soak! Having said this…the hold downs only need to be in place for the first thirty seconds of the four minute developing cycle (Moersch 4812 developer slightly more diluted to give more time)…just until the paper relaxes enough to remain flat on its own. Agitation is accomplished initially by gently swishing with my (nitrile) gloved hands…and, once the hold downs have been removed - by lifting the tray by three sides (front/left/right) in succession.
At some point during the developing cycle, I move the now-empty developer container to the right (downstream) side of the large tray - partially underneath to ensure complete recapture of developer at the end of the cycle.
#4: After three and one half minutes of the four minute development cycle (thirty seconds added for pour-out), I place a length of 2x4 (with added handle) underneath the left side of the tray…tilting the tray to the right - after which I open the hinged water-tight flap (opening of which is aided by a rubber band), and allow the developer to pour back into its tank. Near the end of this pour, I very gently squeegee any remaining developer from the print surface and from the remainder of the tray. Again…gently - but firmly enough to also recapture a good amount of solution from underneath the print as well. This is very important - not just to maximize solution recapture…but to also ensure minimal solution carryover.
Once the developer is completely poured out and the print squeegeed…I remove the 2x4 to re-level the tray, re-clamp the watertight flap, and pour in the stop bath - allowing about thirty seconds with agitation, plus the thirty second pour out and squeegee.
Very crucial to this “single-tray” process…is that the succession of chemistry gets agitated slightly more for each - so that, for example, the “high water mark” from stop bath agitation goes just a bit higher than that for the developer…and so on - to minimize the risk of “three step” (developer to fixer) carryover. Sounds like a PIA…but in practice this is very easy to accomplish, and if I’m a bit too aggressive in a particular step, I can always, with a gloved hand, splash some of the next-step chemistry up onto the inner sides of the tray to neutralize the previous one.
At any rate…I then repeat the process with the fixer (Sprint Ammonium Thiosulphate Fix) for six minutes total, divided between first and second fixing baths…after which the room lights are switched back on, as are two carefully placed (adjustable as they are on a track) 3500K gallery spotlights located above the print tray. These two gallery lights are operated via. a switch and brightness slider (separated)…so that I can adjust brightness based on light measurements taken both in the gallery and at the level of the print holding tray (“single tray” in this case), with any necessary dry-down compensation (hardly necessary, I find, with Ilford Classic) figured in to ease print evaluation.
Before pouring out the second fix…I’ll slide the refilled developer, stop, and first fix tanks back under the tray (on a cannibalized piece of “office chair floor protector” plastic to minimize sink scratches) to make room for the empty second fix tank. Once the second fixer is poured out…I’ll fill the large tray with about two inches of water and agitate this for about a minute (*see note at the end of this piece) - then dump and refill again, agitating this time for about three minutes…then another fill with five minutes agitation, dumping this, then filling with four gallons of Sprint fixer remover (at recommended dilution). I then agitate this for five minutes…dump out (into fixer remover tank), then refill the large tray with water and do six to eight changes of water over the course of about one half hour. Alternately, I can simply leave the trap-door partially open and leave the rinse water running for the last step of the wash cycle…but I am more apt. to follow Ilford’s published wash protocol in favor of not wasting water.
Once washing is complete, I empty the tray for the last time…squeegee off the print, re-level the tray…then, while standing on a step stool - I very carefully lift the print along the closest long edge, flip it over (with great care, to avoid creasing), elevate the left side of the tray, and firmly squeegee off the back of the print. The glass-smooth epoxy coating on the tray’s bottom makes this very safe and effective.
Finally, I re-flip the print, do one last gentle squeegee of the top surface, roll the print up using a dampened pool noodle (thank you Clyde Butcher!), and carry the rolled print/noodle out to the gallery, where it is hung on a “clothesline” (rigid elevated wooden pole with clips) to dry. Very important to the drying process is to flip the print over before it is dried completely - to help ensure some degree of dried-print flatness. This act of print flipping can be very tedious, and potentially dangerous (crease and/or drop-wise) for the print…so to make this easier and safer, I simply curl the “bottom” of the still attached print upwards and clip this to another set of clips attached to the other side of the drying pole - finally releasing the original clips to allow the print to hang in reverse. While it might seem easier to simply weight the bottom of the print and leave it this way until dry, I’ve found that for prints this large (and heavy when wet), such weights can seriously affect the efficacy of the top clips - resulting in sending the print to the floor and basically ruining it.
IMHO, this “single tray” approach offers some distinct advantages when compared to the more familiar multiple tray setup. Most obvious here is that it saves space - absolutely essential in the case of creating 40x60(ish) prints, where my “large-ish” 36inch by 16foot sink bottom would not be large enough for multiple trays of this size. But even if my sink were large enough, just think if there were five (dev/stop/fix1/fix2/holding) 4x5ft. open trays along a sink bottom…possibly overtaxing a ventilation system, developer steadily oxidizing - plus the sheer logistical challenges of pouring chemistry, cleanup, and tray storage. I could omit the second fix and go with a single fix - but it that case I would want a single fix to be a much stronger mixture to be trustworthy…which would only serve to worsen the fumes.
With my system, pour in and out of chemistry is relatively simple, and the chemistry gets largely recaptured (with minimal carryover) into relatively small tanks (storage bins from Wally World)…each with its own top to minimize fumes, and pouring from these back into original storage jugs is quite easily done, after which the WallyWorld tanks are washed, allowed to dry, and conveniently stacked.
In a multi-tray system, the amount of chemistry carryover can, especially with prints this large, be huge - exacerbated by the fact that the only logistically feasible and truly safe means of such (large print) transfer is to simply slide them from one tray to the next - which omits the “lift and drain” step. With my system, most of the chemistry is recaptured by draining the large tray and squeegeeing the print after each step.
Another huge advantage of my system is that the print itself is only minimally handled - extremely important for such large sized prints, which can be extremely vulnerable to handling (moving from tray to tray, etc.) related creasing. Here, the print stays put…and is only flipped over and back once (for final squeegeeing) at the very end of the process.
*Note regarding possible need to bleach/spot print after fixing…if the print in question has distracting black spots (amazing how many of these appear with such a large print!) - I will, after pouring out the first, post-fix rinse, proceed to bleach out these spots with potassium ferricyanide (to make white spots which I then spot out later). This spotting process is extremely tedious…being done looking straight down from a step stool, with a small spotting brush. Plus, no matter how well the print surface has been squeegeed prior to bleach/retouching, it remains impossible to limit the bleach application area to only where its needed…so the resulting white spots are much larger than they need to be. I try to work quickly, as I cannot re-fix the print until most or all of the spotting has been completed. Initial trials, during which I’d spot a few places and then apply fix locally before moving on to more spots would, to the extent that some time would have intervened between spotting batches of black dots, create areas of reduced print density due to over fixing. Very frustrating!
I look at the above described spotting scenario as anything but ideal, and have a plan to deal with this. If you look again, very carefully, at the first photo of the gallery-printing setup, you will notice a microscope in the background. This is a really nice, 1970’s vintage Zeiss binocular transmission (as opposed to dissecting/reflectance) microscope, with a large X-Y stage. My aim is to use this microscope as a negative retouching tool - with the negative itself to be placed on a slightly larger plate of glass on the microscope stage. My goal here is to apply as small a retouching-spot as possible…hopefully not much larger than the original spot itself (which, depending upon the size of the spot in question, can be next to impossible using more conventional means). At any rate…to keep the retouching spots small, I will first try a 10/0 spotting brush, from which I will have first removed most of its bristles. If this does not work…I have an extremely small (#27) injection needle (donated by my nurse-practitioner wife), and will try to deposit very small amounts of retouching fluid with this needle. I have no idea if any of this will work - but I need to try, because if this works…it would mean avoiding the entire ferricyanide “pre-retouching” process altogether. (whew!)
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Originally Posted by Vaughn
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