Software Artisan

I got it stuck in my head that I would print all the negatives that I inherited from my grandparents. These are a treasure trove of years gone by that capture a world we have forgotten about. Along with these negatives comes some inherent problems. The negatives are pretty near 60 years old already, and were made before the film base was standardized on something that doesn’t deteriorate so quickly. The film is either Kodak Plus-X or Kodak Tri-X (they had several rolls of each). None of it is safety-film which means it isn’t. The film format is 127 film. That means it is not quite as big as modern day medium format or as small as 35mm film. The negatives are about 4cm wide with some frames 6cm, some 4cm, and some 3cm. I can’t find proper sleeves, and the film has a nasty curl due to being stored rolled up in a plastic baggy.

Archivists will tell you to make sure you store the film in archivally safe sleeves that are acid-free, buffered, lignin-free, etc. Lignin is found in paper, cardboard, etc. Rubber-bands deteriorate and the byproducts also help break down the negatives. These negatives were stored in a plastic baggy with the original cardboard boxes when available (which is where I got the dates from), or wrapped with rubber bands that were disintegrating. I can’t say it’s archivally safe, but there is no more cardboard or rubber bands anymore. Due to the storage conditions, some of the negatives are damaged, but most are OK for now. I really need to find out how to copy the negatives on to standard film. I’d rather step up a size rather than down, because I don’t want to lose any more information than I have to.

All that said, several of the negatives are in good shape and almost all are printable. The picture at the top of this article is one of those pictures. As you might expect when the person taking the picture (my grandma) is not a professional photographer, many of the negatives present significant challenges. This negative is losing contrast to the shadow detail, so I have to bump it up on the paper. This picture requires a #4 contrast filter to bring out any definition. I may have to go up even more than that, but I think I’ll live with this. The quality going to limit how much I can enlarge the picture. The picture would have been even more striking if grandma thought to reflect a little light up underneath this gentleman. A large sheet of white paper would do the trick nicely. Based on the angle of the highlights and the shadow under this guy, it was probably taken around noon.

In my insanity to grow my darkroom skills, I decided to use fiber based (FB) papers. They are similar to resin coated (RC) paper in the sense that it is paper, and it uses a gelatin based emulsion. Other than that they are completely different. When RC paper gets wet, it doesn’t feel any different. The chemicals only penetrate the emulsion, and thanks to the resin or plastic coating on the paper it does not penetrate the paper. RC papers are therefore much more convenient in that the process is a whole lot quicker. FB papers feel different once they are in the solutions. The paper actually gets wet, and you can feel the fiber of the paper much better. Glossy also looks different. The gloss on a FB print is virtually unnoticeable until the print dries, where on RC paper it is ever before you. It seems that FB paper is more susceptible to dry-down effects. However, FB paper does take toning better than the RC paper cousins.

Bottom line, this will be a good learning process and I will be able to pass on my personal family history to another generation. Part of the process will be making digital copies as well as copies of the negatives.

Scanners have issues with dense negatives, and it turns out I had an overexposed negative that was worth doing something with. When I scanned the negative directly, I only got the detail that was in the picture to the right. You’ll note that the house in the background doesn’t have a lot of detail, and the grassy area in front of it has almost no detail. There’s plenty of detail in the negative but you can’t do anything with it if the scanner can’t bring it in properly. That’s OK, because there’s things you can do with high contrast negatives like this. It’s called making wet prints, or optical prints. Using an enlarger, I can make the picture as large as I want, and play with the amount of light hitting the paper. For all you who only use Photoshop and the like, the darkroom is where dodging and burning came from. However, in the darkroom you can bring out detail you couldn’t see before while in the digital world, you can’t bring out what simply isn’t there.

First, I attempted to get a print with all the delicate tones and smooth the image out a bit. The scan has some blown highlights where there is still detail in the negative, so I wanted to make that work a bit better. You’ll find that the print is very similar to the negative, except with a little less contrast overall. It’s a straight print, with no dodging and burning.

One of the cool things about working with variable contrast paper is that you can burn and dodge at different contrasts. This picture needs better tones, otherwise it is just too stark. I chose to do all the burning using a #00 filter (lowest contrast and smoothest tones). The print is primarily exposed for the plow, with the adjustments made to the rest of the image. As you can see by the straight print I made, the bush in the top left kind of dominates the picture, which is not what I want. I chose to dodge it a full stop, so it isn’t as heavy and doesn’t draw the eye away from the plow. The edges needed attention, and there was a whole area that was lacking detail that needed it. The two sides and the bottom I burned in for 1/3 stop. The top area where the grass was, I burned in for a full stop. It’s now that you can appreciate the detail still in the negative that the scanner just couldn’t handle.

This particular print I did change the base exposure for the print unwittingly, so the plow is darker than I like. However, that is easily corrected. When I get a new print of this, I’ll fix that problem.