The rubber met the road tonight.
We spent a short amount of time reviewing aperture and shutter speed basics before talking a little about prominent photographers and their work. We spend a short amount of time cleaning off our negatives from last week (water spots, man). THEN, it was into the dark room for the rest of the evening to work on contact sheets and prints.
First the contact sheets: we did test strips, initially, where we exposed each negative for five seconds more than the next. This gave us a feel for the range of exposure on the paper. After this we made full contact sheets from entire rolls of negatives at an optimal exposure based on our test strips. I, for example, made my full contact sheet exposed at 30 seconds with the enlarger's aperture set to f11, while some folks used exposed for 35 seconds.
Then on to the prints. We learned how to load a cut strip of negatives into the loader, adjust the height and focus of the enlarger, and set up the easel for the size and shape of our prints. We made test strips here, too, and finally made our own full prints. I chose to make my first real print of the 3600 photograph I've posted earlier, and when I get a chance to trim down the edges and scan it, I'll post it for comparison. I have to say that making prints was actually pretty easy, and a very enjoyable process. I look forward to many more pictures in the coming weeks.
So here's this week's assignment:
Two rolls as usual, same 400 TX, one of them whatever we want, but the other must be all longer exposures; that is, nothing faster than 1/30. If possible, in fact, we're to try capturing movement with these long exposures. Ghosting, light trails, and intentionally shaky pictures are all fair game.
Now I just have to use up this roll of color in my camera so I can get back to the black and white shooting :-)
We spent a short amount of time reviewing aperture and shutter speed basics before talking a little about prominent photographers and their work. We spend a short amount of time cleaning off our negatives from last week (water spots, man). THEN, it was into the dark room for the rest of the evening to work on contact sheets and prints.
First the contact sheets: we did test strips, initially, where we exposed each negative for five seconds more than the next. This gave us a feel for the range of exposure on the paper. After this we made full contact sheets from entire rolls of negatives at an optimal exposure based on our test strips. I, for example, made my full contact sheet exposed at 30 seconds with the enlarger's aperture set to f11, while some folks used exposed for 35 seconds.
Then on to the prints. We learned how to load a cut strip of negatives into the loader, adjust the height and focus of the enlarger, and set up the easel for the size and shape of our prints. We made test strips here, too, and finally made our own full prints. I chose to make my first real print of the 3600 photograph I've posted earlier, and when I get a chance to trim down the edges and scan it, I'll post it for comparison. I have to say that making prints was actually pretty easy, and a very enjoyable process. I look forward to many more pictures in the coming weeks.
So here's this week's assignment:
Two rolls as usual, same 400 TX, one of them whatever we want, but the other must be all longer exposures; that is, nothing faster than 1/30. If possible, in fact, we're to try capturing movement with these long exposures. Ghosting, light trails, and intentionally shaky pictures are all fair game.
Now I just have to use up this roll of color in my camera so I can get back to the black and white shooting :-)