Introduction

Discuss enlarging as a printing art that allows much more control over the resulting prints than making a proof sheet does.

Instruction

Demonstrate the use of the enlargers (including loading negative carriers, focusing, and adjusting lens openings), electric exposure timers (if you have them), and enlarging easels (see instruction manuals for enlargers and timers). Show how to crop with the enlarger. Demonstrate how to determine exposure by making test strips or by using the KODAK Projection Print Scale. Emphasize the importance of a clean negative and a clean enlarger lens, and caution students about proper safelight bulbs, filters, and distances from the working area. Safelight fog is a common cause of flat prints. Have students pick out some of their best negatives and enlarge them to 8 x 10 inches. To save time printing the same negatives at a later date, suggest that the students record the following in pencil on the back of the dried print -- paper name and grade, lens opening, length of exposure, developer, developing time, and filters. While students are washing and drying prints, discuss and demonstrate grades and textures of different photographic papers.

Enlarging Parts of Negatives -- Although you enlarged the whole negative when making your first enlargement, you may want to enlarge only a part of the negative. You can improve many pictures by printing only the best part of the scene, eliminating cluttered backgrounds or unimportant areas. This is called cropping. Suppose, for example, that your negative is a full-length picture of a person. If you like, you can enlarge just the small area of the negative containing the image of the person's head. When enlarging only part of a negative, be sure to use more exposure time than you did when enlarging the whole negative.

KODAK Projection Print Scale -- The Print Scale is a piece of film divided like a pie, with a number in each of its 10 slices. To use it, you focus the negative, turn off the enlarger, and place a piece of enlarging paper onto the easel with the print scale so that it reads correctly on top of it. Turn on the enlarger for exactly 1 minute with the lens set at f/11. Then process the paper. Pick the section of the pie that looks best. The number in that section will be the exposure time in seconds.

Safelight Fog -- The room must be lighttight. To check for stray light, stay in the darkroom for 5 minutes with all the lights turned off. After 5 minutes, if you still can't see a sheet of white paper placed against a dark background, the room passes inspection. If there are light leaks, you will be able to see them because your eyes will have become adjusted to the dark. Eliminate small light leaks with black tape. For large ones, such as the crack around a door, use dark heavy cloth or weather stripping.

For your health and comfort, you should introduce a plentiful supply of clean, fresh air into your darkroom -- especially during the chemical mixing and processing operations. Be sure to follow the safety recommendations appearing on the product labels and provided in the instructions packaged with the processing chemicals. Check the photo magazines in your local library for articles on building lighttight darkroom ventilators.

Arrange your safelights so that they provide as much light as possible, but keep them at a safe distance -- at least 4 feet (1.2 m) -- from your working area. Use a safelight equipped with a 15-watt bulb and the filter recommended on the paper (or film) instruction sheet. You can make a simple safelight test as follows:

1. Set your enlarging easel to give 1/2-inch white borders for the paper size you'll use in the test.
2. Place a normal-contrast negative typical of your work in the enlarger. Be sure the clear borders of the negatives are completely masked.
3. Size and focus the image on the easel.
4. With all safelights on, make a good-quality print on grade 2 paper -- or the paper you normally use. Develop for the recommended time in one of the developers recommended for the paper. Mark this print No. 1.
5. Turn the safelights off, and make print No. 2 in the same way as print No. 1.
6. Turn the safelights off, and expose print No. 3 in the same way as print No. 2. Do not develop print No. 3.
7. With the safelights still off, place a piece of cardboard over the developing tray and put print No. 3 on it, emulsion side up. Safelight illumination is generally brightest in this location. Cover one-fourth of the print with an opaque card and turn on all the safelights. In the same way that you would make an exposure test strip, expose print No. 3 to the safelight for 1, 2, and 4 minutes, in steps. This gives four steps with safelight exposures of 0, 1, 2, and 7 minutes superimposed on the image exposure. Develop this print for the same length of time as prints No. 1 and 2, with safelights turned off.
8. Fix, wash, and dry all the prints in the normal manner.
9. Compare the prints. Prints No. 1 and 2 should be identical. If print No. 1 shows lower contrast or fogged highlights when compared with No. 2, you have a serious safelight problem. Be sure that the safelight filters (especially the one over the developer tray), bulb wattage, and distance and number of safelights are consistent with the recommendations on the paper instruction sheet.

If all three prints are identical, your safelight conditions are good. If print No. 3 shows slight fogging of highlights in any of the safelight-exposure areas, it is a warning to limit the time of exposure to safelight illumination to a time that will produce no fogging.

Note that fogging from safelight illumination will show up in areas that have already received some exposure before it will show up in the white borders. For this reason, safelight fog may go unnoticed unless the safelights are tested correctly.

Assignment

Have the students expose more film and process it before the next class.