For the darkroom guys

Kev M

Kev M

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Some of you may know but as an early present Tim Rudman's re-print of "The Master Photographer's Toning Book" has landed at Silverprint and is ready to be shipped.

By all accounts it's a must have resource. When the firs print run finished and sold out copies were going 2nd hand on amazon for up to $1000.

I'm just about to order mine along with Robin Bell's "Silver Footprint" which whilst I was looking for reviews on stumbled across this nice little video about the man and the book.

In the same way that digital photographers hope for a photo which is worth spending money on getting it printed on a big canvas or something, I one day hope that I will have a negative worth sending to Robin for printing. Watch the man work, it's a bloody art-form of its own (and I'm glad to see I'm not the only person making thin negatives, but I suspect those in the film were meant to be).

[YOUTUBE]<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/t4_ogz10kH8&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/t4_ogz10kH8&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>[/YOUTUBE]
 
Thats a great find. What is a thin negative though? Im hazarding a guess its something to do with underdeveloping the negative?
 
Thin means it's a bit more see through than you really want it to be. Generally caused by under exposure or under developing.
 
I loved what he was doing with his hands on the enlarger. I take it that was to lighten that part of the image...
 
Yeah, its basically how you burn and dodge. He looks like a magician. What does thining the negative achieve? Does it mean you then need to expose longer for the prints?
 
Seeing that bit of film makes me so miss darkroom work. It is a beautiful art in it's own right it's such a shame to see it disappearing.

Digital photography may well have brought the passion of image making to a new world of hungry photographers but printing has paid the price. :crying:
 
next said:
Yeah, its basically how you burn and dodge. He looks like a magician. What does thining the negative achieve? Does it mean you then need to expose longer for the prints?
Click to expand...

It's not really desirablre to have thin negs, it means there's not a lot of details. If you're negs are a bit dense (dark) the detail should be there it will just take it longer to come out.

Thin negatives have a shorter printing time as they allow more light through to the paper. More light on the paper=darker print. Having them too thin can make printing tricky as you don't have much time to D&B.

All my thin negatives are because my metering is crap and so is my developing.
 
Just found this "rough cut" of the final film, 18 minutes long but for some reason it stops around 14 for me.

http://vimeo.com/13659991
 
Another problem with thin negs is you have to stop the enlarger lens right down to have enough time to burn in various areas. You're not getting the best out of it at f22. I used to have a thing about slight under-developing for less grain and have books of negatives that are a pain in the backside to print.
edit: point made by Kev above.
 
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