5 First Steps to a Successful Gelatin Silver Print

The gelatin silver printing process consists of several different stages. The stages depend also on the paper and the chemicals used. I warmly recommend to look for and try out materials from many different manufacturers to find your favourites. The selection is again larger than what it was in the first decade of 21st century. Webshops Fotoimpex and Makodirect sell good quality black and white chemicals online. In Helsinki chemicals and papers may be bought from Interfoto, Fotoyks at Fredrikinkatu and Telefoto.

The steps below are based on my own twenty+ years experience in the art of gelatin silver printing and on some remarks from the older masters. They are based on fine art printing tradition, which means that the aim of the print is to achieve a print valued by those standards. The basic standards include a wide tonal range and good contrasts, small grain and airy, bright light end, as well as the strong but not completely stuck blacks.

Gelatin silver prints may be done in many different ways and with many different looks. Every darkroom printer also has their own ways of doing things. So if you’ve learned differently, that’s more than fine. You’re welcome to use all your creative and innovative power in the wonderful art of darkroom, without any strains or weight of any traditions. However these steps I’ve gathered to help a darkroom printer in early stages of their career. Often it’s easier to be creative if you know the basics well.

1. Choosing the negative to print

The first step to succeed in making a gelatin silver print is to choose the right negative to print. Some negatives are easy to print, some extremely hard. I will write a whole different text soon about choosing the negative.

The main rule is that the bright and strong light, like midday sun or flash, makes the negative hard to print in the darkroom as the contrasts are so strong. When the contrasts in the negative are strong, the subtle greys in between are missing and getting the wide tonal range in the print is hard.

2. Putting the negative in the enlarger

Choose the negative masks in your carrier for your enlarger machine according to your negative size. If the masks are too big, the negative will curl and the resulting image is out of focus in one end. If needed, you may use also glass plates in the negative carrier, but make sure that at least one of the glasses is so called Anti-Newton glass, to avoid the unwanted Moiré effect. I will write more about Moiré effect soon.

Don’t touch the negative with your bare fingers as they leave grease on it and may ruin it. After squeezing the negative between the masks, blow some air on the both sides of it to clean any possible dust particles. Use either real compressed air from a pistol (not canned as it may result to humidity on the negative) or a small rubber pump. The best pumps are not found from photo stores. Photo store pumps are a bit too soft to blow the dust away effectively. Instead I use a pump which is manufactured for watchmakers. Those may be ordered from eBay or similar web stores. Do not brush the negative with any brushes as they may scratch it.

3. focusing and composing

Put in the printing framer a paper of the same size which you want to make your print on. Framing and composing of the print is easier, when your model paper is the same size as your actual light sensitive photo paper. Some sacrifice one from the photo paper pack which is also ok. In that case also the thickness of the paper is the same so you can be sure that the focusing stays the same.

Grain focuser and white model paper in the printing frame. When you want to makes sure that the image is in focus, use a model paper of the same thickness as the actual photo sensitive paper you’re going to use.

Open your lens to largest f-stop and put your contrast filter in OFF position, if you’ve got a lever to make that choise in your enlarger. Make sure that also the potential Supplement filter is in OFF position. Make sure, that you’re using the diffuser box suitable for your negative size. In some enlargers you make the choice by moving a lever, in larger Durst enlargers, for instance, there’s an actual box which diffuses the light. You may always use bigger diffuser box to smaller negatives, although the light will be a bit dimmer, but not vice versa. If you’ve got, say, diffuser box for 35mm film and you’re printing 6x7 negative, the image circle is too small to cover the whole picture and the corners of the negative are left in shadow.

Focus the picture and find a composition that pleases you. Finalize your focusing with a grain focuser. Smaller the ISO in your film is, bigger your negative, and smaller the print that you are making, smaller also is the grain in the image. With the grain focuser you make sure that the image is in focus. If some parts of the image are in focus (the grain looks sharp edged through the grain focuser) while some parts are not, your negative might be slightly bent. In that case make sure, that your negative is tightly placed between the negative masks from all the sides.

4. choosing the contrast filter values

In this image Durst Laborator 1200 CLS 501 enlarger with colour head and electronic timer. On the right also air pump, loose and unsatisfying photo store model.

It depends on the contrast of your negative, which filter values you want to start your printing from. It depends on the enlarger you’re using, what kind of filters you’re using. The filters may come in many forms; they might be plastic Contrast Grade sheets you place in your enlarger; they might be all electrical, in which case you feed the value in your electrical timer or they might be the values of Magenta and Yellow in the colour head of your enlarger. These colour head enlargers are suitable also for printing chromogenic colour prints, and they’ve got one extra value, Cyan, which is not needed in B&W printing. They also got Density filter, which may be used to dim the light, but you may do that also by shutting the f-stop in your lens (I’ve never noticed any problem with the sharpness when using the f-stops, but that might depend on the lens you use, so some printers choose to dim the light rather with Density filter that the lens).

When printing with colour head enlargers, you use two filters: YELLOW and MAGENTA, which affect to the contrast of the image. Bigger the Yellow value is, less contrasty the print will be, and bigger the Magenta value, more contrasty the print will be. Usually these values go by the system based on the Grade values. The lists for changing the Grade values to Yellow and Magenta values you’ll find here.

If the negative is correctly exposed (not too much over or under exposed), and not very contrasty to begin with, and you use a normal multigrade paper from Ilford, good starting values for the colour head enlarger might be 20Y and 60M, meaning 20 Yellow and 60 Magenta, or with the Grade value 2,5–3.

5. Stripe exposure aka test strip

So here we are. The negative is in place, you’ve focused the image, you’ve decided the composition and framed the paper, you’ve chosen the contrasts, and you’re ready to begin the printing. At first you want to get some idea, how much the exposure time would roughly be. The easiest way to decide is to make a test print, which is also called the test strip or stripe exposure.

First, remember to close your f-stop a bit in your lens after focusing the image. I start normally from f8 or f11. Also, remember to put the filters in ON position, if you’ve put them OFF during the focusing process. The idea is, that all the settings in your enlarger would be exactly the same as with the actual print you’re going to make. Then the test strip may be used as the starting point when you decide the exposure time for the actual print.

Make sure that there’s no light on in your enlarger, your cellphone is in the pocket or preferably in another room, and there’s only red light on in the darkroom. Take the light sensitive photo paper from the box and place it in your printing frame. Then take so large piece of cardboard that it covers your light sensitive photo paper completely. Set the time in your timer, for instance 3 or 5 seconds. Don’t use shorter times than 3 seconds, at least if you’ve got a bit older timer, as very short times they aren’t always totally accurate. Then move the piece of cardboard over your light sensitive paper so, that you expose stripes, about two centimetres (or one inch) wide, one by one, from one edge of the paper until the other end. As a result (when developed), you’re supposed to have a print like this:

Two stripe exposures, stripes made from different directions. In the image on the left, I’ve started from the right edge and moved towards left – whereas in the print on the right side, I’ve started exposing from the left side and moved to the right. In both of these the exposure was made with 3 second intervals. Use a paper large enough that you see the difference between several stripes. Often I use the whole paper though, to get all the info also from the corners of the negative.

After the exposure let’s put the test print in the chemicals. About that, see the next text: 5 Next Steps to a Successful Gelatin Silver Print.