Extremely short paper development time

felivoll · 2020-01-18T21:16:46+00:00

Moin, habe gerade die ersten Gehversuche in der Dunkelkammer hinter mir. Mit einer Sache bin ich aber noch nicht ganz glücklich: Die Bildspurzeit und Entwick...

felivoll

Hi, I’ve just had my first go in the darkroom. There’s one thing I’m not entirely happy with, though: the image formation time and development time are extremely short: - At an aperture of f/5.6 and an exposure of 5–10 seconds, the paper turns black almost instantly when I put it in the developer. - Aperture 5.6 and a 2-second exposure: the image becomes visible after 3–4 seconds; after 10–15 seconds, it’s completely black. - Aperture 16 and a 2-second exposure, on the other hand, is too little light; after 30 seconds, nothing has appeared on the paper. With an aperture of f/11 and a 2-second exposure, I then managed to achieve an acceptable result. Image development time 5–10 seconds; after 20–30 seconds, I took it out. However, this is now significantly less than it should actually be. And I have hardly any leeway with either the exposure or the development. I’ve ruled out darkroom lighting and a red filter on the enlarger; if I increase the exposure time for the paper, it remains white during development. I’ve made a fresh batch of developer, so it doesn’t seem to be down to an incorrect concentration either. I’m using Adox Neutol Eco (40ml to 160ml of water) and Adox Easyprint paper. Does anyone have any ideas? Am I doing something wrong? Is the lamp on the enlarger (Durst M301) incompatible? Evil spirits? Thanks in advance, Regards.

Urnes

What size tray? Development temperature? Wrong light source? Scattered light? Wrong condenser, or no condenser at all? Negatives too thin? A development time of 30 seconds isn’t long enough. It should be a consistent 2 minutes. You don’t develop by eye. Regards, Sven

felivoll

Problem solved: - The lens mount wasn’t screwed onto the lens the right way round - The aperture can be closed further than the scale indicates! The stop at ‘open’ matches the scale (F/4). But in the other direction, I can turn it quite a bit further than the F/16 on the scale. I hadn’t noticed that before. So I’ve been performing the exposure with the ‘aperture half open’ the whole time, thinking it was almost completely closed. If I close the aperture all the way now and then open it up a few ‘clicks’, everything works. No idea what aperture setting that actually is now; I’m no longer on the scale, but it doesn’t matter. Depending on the format, I now have exposure times between 3 and 10 seconds. Approx. 15 sec. exposure time and approx. 1:20 to finish developing – so everything’s fine! Cheers & thanks! Here, for the sake of completeness, are the missing details – perhaps I’m getting my hopes up too soon: - What print size? – 10–15 - Developer temperature? -20°, rather too cold than too warm - Wrong bulb? - White, so not a clear bulb. But I haven’t unscrewed it. According to the instructions, up to 100W is suitable for the enlarger, so I don’t think it’s too strong - Stray light? - I’ve ruled that out (wrapped paper around and under the enlarger with a red filter and the darkroom lamp – it remains completely white) - Wrong condenser or no condenser at all? - How would I go about checking that? According to the instructions, the condensers are permanently fitted. - Negatives too thin? Agfa APX 100, shouldn’t really be anything out of the ordinary

RalfMichael

Hi Felifol, Everything’s fine, but it’s a condenser for the light (consisting of two lenses), not a capacitor (an electronic component). Have fun enlarging the images – it’s always nice to see someone taking it up for the first time. Best wishes, Ralf

felivoll

That's right, thanks – I'd misread that :-)

Dongrappo

Hi Felivoll Have you made any progress since then? It sounds a bit as though your enlarger lens isn’t quite right. Perhaps the aperture scale has simply shifted mechanically, or something like that. Overall, though, I can also see that you still have – or had – a lot of questions. And the answers here may or may not have helped you. Nevertheless, I’ll try to summarise the points I think I’ve picked up from your text: - The exposure for the paper is controlled solely by time and aperture during enlargement! That’s why it’s important that the aperture on the lens is correct and must also be legible! - After that, as has already been written here, the paper is fully developed. This means the chemicals: all baths should always be fresh enough (not used up) and mixed in the exact proportions. And stored correctly. Protect from light, air and heat! And then stick to the times for each bath as specified on the chemical bottles. I tend to do everything a little longer rather than too short. - Expose the paper to the darkroom light for as short a time as possible! So, open the bag, take out the piece of paper or the test strip, close the bag, and carry on. -Do a test series! Do a test series! Do a test series!!! That’s how it’s done – saves me writing loads of text! Example: small image format, aperture 11 or 16; then have a light-tight piece of card or cardboard ready. Place the paper, or a strip of paper, in front of the lens with a red filter at a point in the image where light and dark areas are clearly visible and, for 10x15 for example – ‘you always have to try this out’ – then perform an exposure of the paper without the red filter for 1 second AND leave the paper in place. Now cover part of the test strip with the cardboard, taking care not to move the image, and expose it again for 1 second. Cover another part, and so on. In other words, divide the test strip into several sections. This gives you a series of different exposures, and after developing in bright light, you can see which exposure time works best with the chosen aperture. With my sizes, I usually use steps of 3-6-9-12-15 seconds. Or 5-10-15-20-25. Depending on paper size, aperture and subject. For 10x15, for example, 1-2-4-8 seconds. Then experience comes into play. It just happened to me that I forgot to reset the aperture again and then everything came out black. Annoying, but you learn from your mistakes, though they can happen every now and then. :-) It’s nice when you quickly realise why something went so wrong. It also depends on the enlarger. They vary in power, even with the same setup in terms of opal or halogen lamps. Different types of paper have different speeds. That’s why there are methods, but you have to work out the values yourself. AND as I said, with such small formats as 10x15, the exposure times are very short. A quick example. Yesterday I made prints from 35mm film, at f/8 on 18x24cm very light-sensitive paper, Fomaspeed 311, producing good medium-density negatives with exposure times of 6 seconds and 8 seconds. And I was using gradation filters as well, which absorb even more light. Otherwise, I would have been at around 4 seconds. Since light intensity decreases by the square of the distance, blah blah blah, well, with 10x15 for example, I would have been at 1–2 seconds. You can’t really control it well with time at that point. Sorry for the long text, but I think it’s really helpful to understand the whole thing a little. Since you’ve already achieved acceptable results, you’ve basically got most of it right. All great!!! :at: But you do need a bit of basic knowledge. You’ve probably picked that up in the meantime. It’s all about knowing what, how and where, so you don’t just end up with something on paper that you like by chance. Just wanted to write this so you don’t give up too soon! And perhaps another budding photographer is reading this, plagued by similar questions. Otherwise, there are books, blogs and loads of videos online that can help. But please don’t get completely lost in them. In any case, it’s not something you can just do on a whim; it takes a bit of time, patience and dedication, and then you’ll get something back from it too! Until then, wishing you good light, Werner Oh, and my favourite – though it’s in English – where, in my opinion, you learn everything in a subtle and elegant way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVTfoUrMTmA

felivoll

Hi, Thanks so much for the detailed reply! So far, I’m doing everything right – it’s good to have that confirmed again :) I found the video helpful for determining contrast; I didn’t know that before (if the highlights are OK after a shorter exposure time than the shadows, the contrast is too low; and vice versa) Development times for 10x15 have now settled at 3 seconds; that seems to be normal. I had two issues: - The scale on the lens is off, so I hadn’t stopped down the aperture far enough - The red filter on the enlarger fogged the paper – so it received more light than intended.

Dongrappo

felivoll wrote : - The scale on the lens doesn’t match, so I didn’t stop down the aperture far enough - The red filter on the enlarger is fogging the paper – so it ended up getting more light than intended.

Glad I could be of some help. Good to see you’re still at it – it’s all still relevant somehow! As for recognising the right contrast, I need to practise that a bit myself. Sometimes you don’t actually want the technically correct contrast. It’s a vast subject, the whole thing. Good that you figured out the red filter issue. I had exactly the same problem with my equipment. A very old, beautiful Liesegang – the red filter didn’t last long on that one either and quickly started to create fog, even though, to the eye, it looked exactly the same as the other red filters. Have you tested your darkroom lighting yet? That’s important too. I still need to test it for Foma paper, as Foma, for example, requires different filtration to Ilford and Kodak. To start with, I only had green-yellow filters, which only work with fixed-grade paper. As I’d managed to get hold of some fixed-grade paper, it worked very well and it’s much more pleasant to work with than red. Now I have orange Ilford light, which is also quite good – much better than red. But somehow, everything works. For the veiling test, the paper needs to be slightly pre-exposed – you know that, don’t you? Have a look here too: https://analoge-fotografie.net/fotolabor/positiv/schleiertest/ Learning by doing is great, but it’s quite helpful if you know a little – or even a lot – about what to look out for in order to pinpoint mistakes. What kind of camera and lenses do you have? For example, I have a 150-watt opal lamp in my Krokus. For small formats, I switch to 75 watts and add a diffusion screen to the filter drawer to get longer exposure times. That makes a difference of a good two stops, so instead of 4 seconds, it’s 16. I also like to use a longer focal length for small image formats. (It doesn’t work the other way round, after all.) Then, because of the longer extension on the column, you have to pay a bit more attention to vibrations, but I don’t find that a problem. In return, the exposure times get longer and the light distribution improves even further. For this, even quite simple lenses will suffice, as you’re only using the inner, well-corrected part of the lens, and with such small image formats you can’t see any difference from more expensive models anyway. Especially with small formats, slightly simpler optics are sometimes an advantage, as these get better and better when stopped down, whereas the expensive ones often start to deteriorate again after reaching their optimum at f/4–f/8, meaning the advantage fades. That’s all I can think of on the subject of extending exposure times with small image formats. Well then, good light and enjoy your time in the darkroom

TR

Hello, I’ve read this quite a few times: the paper turns black or too dark far too quickly, especially when using smaller formats. There are a few tricks you can use to teach the enlarger to be a bit more restrained with its light. Lots of tips have already been shared here in the forum. This post has some more: https://analoge-fotografie.net/fotolabor/positiv/fotolabor-belichtungszeit/

Dongrappo

T.R. wrote : Hello, I’ve read this quite a few times: the paper turns black or too dark far too quickly, especially when using smaller formats. There are a few tricks for teaching the enlarger to be a bit more restrained with its light. Lots of tips have already been shared here in the forum. There are even more in this post: https://analoge-fotografie.net/fotolabor/positiv/fotolabor-exposure time/

Hello Thomas Thanks for the great link. I’ve already found lots of well-written articles on the subject on that site. Here too, Thomas “bist Du es???” explains the options for unravelling such practical topics wonderfully clearly! On the subject, I just swapped the Opal bulb in my Krokus yesterday for a standard, cheap 10-watt (=60-watt) warm light “2700 Kelvin” LED bulb from Rossmann. The light path on my unit comes from above, over the condenser. It provides wonderfully even illumination. In terms of light output, it is only very slightly below the 150-watt Opalleuchte, but above the 75-watt Opalleuchte. Just as I had read several times before. I then carried out a series of tests with the LED and the Opalleuchte to see how the gradients behaved with Ilford Multigrade filters. The result: (almost) identical, although the tiny differences could also be down to a minimal difference in exposure. With LEDs with a high colour temperature, the contrast is said to increase significantly. That’s actually quite logical. It would need to be adjusted. On the subject, if you work with small formats frequently or for extended periods, you can try an inexpensive, low-wattage LED alongside all the usual tips such as stopping down, using a longer focal length, neutral density filters, a focusing screen and a dimmer. It just needs to have that round bulb shape, as well as being completely matt and without any lettering on the top. So, just ordinary household bulbs, equivalent to 40 watts, or perhaps even 25 watts of incandescent power, the sort you might have at home anyway. With enlargers where the light source is at a 90° angle to the negative – Kaiser and Durst spring to mind – it won’t be quite so straightforward, as these LED lights only have their light-emitting surface in the lower third and therefore don’t emit light as evenly across the entire surface from the sides. With colour-mixing heads, you can of course also try fitting a lower-wattage halogen lamp. But not all of them are suitable. So, the proof is in the pudding! Unfortunately, I can’t explain it as clearly as Thomas, but I hope you get what I mean! :-)

TR

Dongrappo wrote: Here too, Thomas asks, "Is that you???" and it’s quite dull and has no markings on the top

Hello Werner, yes, that’s my site. Nice to meet you! It was many years ago that I simply tried using a normal ‘household light bulb’ in the enlarger. At the time, I didn’t notice any poorer illumination (though my expectations weren’t that high back then). The condenser does the job, after all. The markings didn’t bother me either. You can certainly remove it with a hard eraser or nail varnish remover. These bulbs are no longer available in regular shops (as far as I know), but there are alternatives. As I now only enlarge using a colour head or 12V halogen bulbs, I don’t give it any further thought. However, if I were enlarging with an enlarger head using 230V bulbs and didn’t have a proper opal bulb, I would certainly experiment with standard bulbs. You can quite easily find out how evenly they illuminate (or how well they work with the condenser) by conducting exposure of a sheet of paper to grey light. It shouldn’t get any darker towards the edges. The simplest solution: if the enlarger has a filter drawer, you can simply place paper or a grey sheet in there, perhaps several layers on top of one another. You’re bound to find something in the house that absorbs light. An enlarger is, after all, a very simply constructed piece of kit. There’s plenty you can modify yourself.

Dongrappo

Hi Thomas So you’re still active on the forums. Well done! Hi everyone I measured the illumination using both lights: the Opal 150W for the enlarger and the domestic LED. With both, I stopped down to f/11 on a 6 x 9 format using the Anaret 105mm lens, and measured a difference between the centre and the outermost corners of significantly less than 1/4 EV, which is probably a very good figure for condenser units! At f/16, the difference decreased slightly further. With the Anaret’s aperture wide open at f/4.5, the difference between the centre and the corners is then a good 1 stop. That’s still an acceptable figure. And with smaller negative formats, it only gets better and better. :-) Some matt LED lights are apparently as well diffused as opal lamps and emit sufficiently even light. Of course, it always depends on the individual model. So you can try them out very cheaply, energy-efficiently, without heat build-up and with a long lifespan, and simply use very powerful LEDs for lower light output, e.g. for small image formats and/or very large paper formats. As I said, the LED almost always has a much higher power rating than the comparative values for incandescent bulbs stated on the packaging. On the other hand, personally, in real life, I find non-full-spectrum light sources hard to tolerate for health reasons. But for the purpose of exposure, I find them suitable in this case. @ Thomas OT: Oh yes, I’m still missing an AN glass for the negative stage on my 69s. I’ve already contacted Kienzle several times by phone and email, and they can make the glass plates, but I never received a reply regarding the price. Are there any other sources? How do you work with the device? And the colour head on the Krokus can only handle up to 75 watts, can’t it? And is it therefore supposed to be very dark, or have you stopped using the Krokus? Oh dear, that was a bit off-topic just now. Best regards Werner Here are the test images. I simply tore a piece of Ilford MG IV 13x18 in half and placed three Ilford Multigrade filters, 7x7cm in size and with gradations of 4 / 2 1/2 / 1/2, directly onto the test strips. The top one was taken with the opal lamp and the bottom one with the LED in the enlarger. The LED version has turned out a little darker (or perhaps a little softer???), but you can still compare the gradations to some extent. This was done quite spontaneously and quickly!

RalfMichael

Hi Werner, This is a bit off-topic, but in case you’re interested: standard incandescent bulbs are still available, specifically as impact-resistant bulbs with a small hammer symbol on the glass.These have always been available for commercial use (hand lamps, rail vehicles, for example), with efficiency class G, but with a nice frosted finish. The downside is that they’re quite expensive (around €4?), though I actually saw some in Bauhaus recently. As a special design, they’re still permitted (as are opal bulbs). Best regards, Ralf

Dongrappo

Ralf Michael wrote : Hi Werner, This is a bit off-topic, but in case you’re interested: standard incandescent bulbs are still available, specifically as shock-resistant bulbs with a small hammer symbol on the glass.These have always been available for commercial use (hand lamps, rail vehicles, for example), with efficiency class G, but with a nice frosted finish. The downside is that they’re quite expensive (around €4?), though I actually saw some in Bauhaus recently. As a special design, they’re still permitted (as are opal bulbs). Best regards, Ralf

Many thanks for the tip, Ralf I’ll have a look at those. I’d actually stocked up on a few back then, and there are still the halogen versions of the bulbs available. As a full-spectrum light bulb, I can tolerate them well. Incidentally, it took me a while back then to figure out why I often didn’t feel well. And I’m not alone in this; there are probably quite a few people affected to a greater or lesser extent. And it’s good to read that special light sources, such as opal lamps, projection lamps etc., are apparently not (yet) banned. The story of how the cartels back then agreed on the lifespan of incandescent bulbs and have continued to do so to this day, despite antitrust laws, is quite interesting. But also completely off-topic! (“The history of :idea: is a history full of misunderstandings!”) :D

TR

Dongrappo wrote to Thomas Re: Oh yes, I’m still missing an AN glass for the negative stage on my 69s. I’ve contacted Kienzle several times by phone and email, and although they can make the glasses, I’ve never received a reply regarding the price. Are there any other sources? How do you work with the device? And the colour head on the Krokus can only handle up to 75 watts, can’t it? And is it supposed to be very dark as a result, or have you stopped using the Krokus?

I don’t have any AN glass for mine either. Since my last move, my darkroom has been on hold for the time being, so I haven’t done anything further about this. What I’ve been doing so far: a sandwich of normal glass (for the emulsion side) and a mask (homemade from almost plastic-like, rigid cardboard) for the support side. That has always worked very well with non-curved negatives. If there is warping: the thin cardboard mask simply goes into the glass-glass sandwich on the (smooth) backing side. So: glass-negative-cardboard-glass. Even like this, there are no Newton’s rings. Of course, you have to be meticulous about dust here. I coated my cardboard masks with varnish so that they don’t shed fibres or fray. For 35mm film, I have the original metal masks. I use those as well, provided the films don’t warp too much. As far as I can remember, I use a 12V 150W halogen bulb in the Krokus colour head (can’t check right now). That’s always worked quite well (and brightly) so far. My transformer (“Osram Mouse”) is rated up to 150 watts.

PeterK

Hello, Perhaps a few more comments from a (truly) old hand: 1. Exposure times too short: as already mentioned in the links, there are various methods. Instead of a grey filter, colour filters of all three colours work just as well, provided they are of the same density and stacked on top of one another in the filter holder – or, even simpler, set all three colours to the same value on a colour-mixing head. 2. Exposure bracketing, test strips: The exposure strip (recommended almost everywhere) where you slide the cover strip along is not the best solution for several reasons. On such a strip, it is often very difficult to determine the correct exposure time, as the most important detail in the image (and that is what matters) frequently does not fall within the correctly exposed section. Above all, however (as already noted): five times five seconds is not the same as 25 seconds! The warm-up time of the lamp is relatively long, for example with halogen lamps (mixed light), and so the exposure times on the test strip cannot be added together. Better: (though this requires a little experience): Place a test strip over the most important detail in the image (or, often more importantly: so that both the deep shadows and the highlights are included). Perform exposure. Once the time is right for the grey tones, look at the shadows and highlights: do I want detail in the shadows, or in the highlights, or both? Then it’s time to choose the gradation. With a mixed-gradation head, the exposure time is the same for all gradations. However, this only applies to the mid-grey tones! If I want to retain detail in the shadows when increasing the gradation, I need to reduce the exposure time slightly. (The opposite applies to the highlights). The whole process often involves a fair bit of fiddling about, but the result is worth it! N.B.: When assessing the test strip, it must be dry. For PE paper, a small hairdryer comes in handy here. Peter