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Having built a darkroom - and tried printing - I just got hooked on making my own photo paper using old processes. So a few months ago I built a darkroom in my garage, got an enlarger and some paper and had a go at printing my own pictures. And I must say it's good fun.
As it turns out it takes about £20 in chemicals and paper, a piece of cardboard and some bulldog clips, a good sunny day and you can make magic happen in front of your eyes... and you don't even need a darkroom - subdued daylight indoors will do!
So I thought I'd share my adventures so far for the amusement of others.
First - cyanotypes, or sun prints, or blue prints!
Get a good recipe.
My shopping list of ingredients:
200g Potassium ferricyanide - £6.50
100g Ferric ammonium citrate - £9.00
Those ingredients will give you enough to coat over 100 A4 sheets. And some cartridge paper from an art shop - an A1 sheet to cut up cost 75p.
When you're ready mix up your stock solutions of each chemical (which you can store to save for next time), combine a bit of each in a pot, brush it thinly on a piece of paper and let the paper dry in darkish conditions - indoors or subdued daylight is fine.
To print, put your negative (or print a picture onto an acetate sheet) in contact with it, hold it down with a couple of bulldog clips, and leave it in the sunshine. Areas exposed to light go from pale yellow to dark green quite quickly - and within 10 or 20 minutes turn gun metal grey. It's like magic in front of your eyes! At that point take your cyanotype paper and run it under the tap for a couple of minutes. That will turn the exposed bits bright, prussian blue, and the rest washes away leaving the white from the paper
If the garish blue gets on your nerves, soak it in strong tea for half an hour - the blue turns almost black
I've also tried salt printing, which requires table salt, silver nitrate and hypo (sodium thiosulphate) as a fixer.
Something went a bit wrong :thumbsdown:
But I have had the odd good result
I think the problem was due to being too cautious about light and trying to coat the paper under darkroom conditions. It turns out to be almost impossible to evenly spread a transparent liquid on a sheet of paper in the dark when you can't touch the paper as the silver nitrate solution will turn your fingers brown. 10 brown fingers later :bang: I decided to try it with more light so I could see the wet sheen on the paper. but I've decided I don't like this process much.
Fortuantely you can get a similar result with the Van Dyke process (very similar to the salt process, but needs ferric ammonium citrate and tartaric acid as well). This gives lovely results - like a platinum print so I'm told.
And you can use it to print on cloth too. I'm planning a few T shirt designs already.
All of these don't require a full dark room - a standard garage with the door shut will work fine. If you need a touch extra light use tungsten rather than fluorescent, as most of the processes work on UV light which you don't get from tungsten light.
I'm planning on trying gum bichromate printing - which just needs some potassium dichromate, PVA glue and poster paint - then I can print using any colour I like. The odd other ingredient from tescos opens up lots of other types of printing too:
eggs for glossy albumen printing
ground arrowroot (99p from Tescos) with eggs to make matt albumen prints
dried milk powder for casein printing
In all, I've spent £60 on chemicals, £20 on paper and reused old spoons and bottles for chemicals, and can try about 10 alternative processes and print hundreds of A4 sheets - much cheaper and more experimental than normal darkroom stuff. And I've got some lovely brown fingers (and plastic gloves on the shopping list).
As it turns out it takes about £20 in chemicals and paper, a piece of cardboard and some bulldog clips, a good sunny day and you can make magic happen in front of your eyes... and you don't even need a darkroom - subdued daylight indoors will do!
So I thought I'd share my adventures so far for the amusement of others.
First - cyanotypes, or sun prints, or blue prints!
Get a good recipe.
My shopping list of ingredients:
200g Potassium ferricyanide - £6.50
100g Ferric ammonium citrate - £9.00
Those ingredients will give you enough to coat over 100 A4 sheets. And some cartridge paper from an art shop - an A1 sheet to cut up cost 75p.
When you're ready mix up your stock solutions of each chemical (which you can store to save for next time), combine a bit of each in a pot, brush it thinly on a piece of paper and let the paper dry in darkish conditions - indoors or subdued daylight is fine.
To print, put your negative (or print a picture onto an acetate sheet) in contact with it, hold it down with a couple of bulldog clips, and leave it in the sunshine. Areas exposed to light go from pale yellow to dark green quite quickly - and within 10 or 20 minutes turn gun metal grey. It's like magic in front of your eyes! At that point take your cyanotype paper and run it under the tap for a couple of minutes. That will turn the exposed bits bright, prussian blue, and the rest washes away leaving the white from the paper
If the garish blue gets on your nerves, soak it in strong tea for half an hour - the blue turns almost black
I've also tried salt printing, which requires table salt, silver nitrate and hypo (sodium thiosulphate) as a fixer.
Something went a bit wrong :thumbsdown:
But I have had the odd good result
I think the problem was due to being too cautious about light and trying to coat the paper under darkroom conditions. It turns out to be almost impossible to evenly spread a transparent liquid on a sheet of paper in the dark when you can't touch the paper as the silver nitrate solution will turn your fingers brown. 10 brown fingers later :bang: I decided to try it with more light so I could see the wet sheen on the paper. but I've decided I don't like this process much.
Fortuantely you can get a similar result with the Van Dyke process (very similar to the salt process, but needs ferric ammonium citrate and tartaric acid as well). This gives lovely results - like a platinum print so I'm told.
And you can use it to print on cloth too. I'm planning a few T shirt designs already.
All of these don't require a full dark room - a standard garage with the door shut will work fine. If you need a touch extra light use tungsten rather than fluorescent, as most of the processes work on UV light which you don't get from tungsten light.
I'm planning on trying gum bichromate printing - which just needs some potassium dichromate, PVA glue and poster paint - then I can print using any colour I like. The odd other ingredient from tescos opens up lots of other types of printing too:
eggs for glossy albumen printing
ground arrowroot (99p from Tescos) with eggs to make matt albumen prints
dried milk powder for casein printing
In all, I've spent £60 on chemicals, £20 on paper and reused old spoons and bottles for chemicals, and can try about 10 alternative processes and print hundreds of A4 sheets - much cheaper and more experimental than normal darkroom stuff. And I've got some lovely brown fingers (and plastic gloves on the shopping list).
