Darkroom Discipline
Make cleanliness a fetish.
Many processing solutions are sensitive to contamination by other chemicals, sometimes to an extraordinarily high degree. Contaminated solutions work less efficiently or not at all and may stain negatives or prints.
- Insufficiently cleaned bottles, trays, graduates, print tongs, and so on, dirty towels, and chemicals or traces of solutions carried by hands or fingers from one tray to another are the most common causes of chemical contamination.
- Handling photographic paper with wet or damp hands causes spots.
- Accidentally spilled solutions must be wiped up immediately before they have a chance to dry, crystallize and, in the form of fine airborne powder, contaminate the entire darkroom.
- Even ordinary dust is a veritable pest when it comes to enlarging, manifesting itself as spots in the print and requiring time-consuming spotting. The experienced darkroom worker knows that one of the smartest investments in terms of time and money saved is to give his darkroom periodic cleanings consisting of a good scrubbing with soap and water augmented by a thorough vacuum Cleaning that extends even to the insides of the enlarger. And he never smokes in his darkroom.
Be well Organized
Establish a routine-always performing the same operation in the same manner…and then stick to it! Such a system is the best insurance against mistakes caused by accident or forgetfulness.
- Keep each piece of darkroom equipment in its appointed place where it is handy yet protected against dust and Chemical contamination.
- Be sure that all bottles and other containers are properly identified; if necessary, make your own labels on which you can write with a ballpoint pen.
- Keep a pencil and a notebook or clipboard handy and write down everything you wish to remember, including ideas for future work and data that might be useful later.
The more highly organized your operation, the smoother and faster the flow of work, the better the results, and the greater your satisfaction.
Keep things simple.
Based on your own experiments and tests or following the advice of more experienced colleagues, choose a single brand of film, then use, as far as practicable, the same manufacturer’s other products such as developer and fixer.
The reason for this suggestion is two-fold:
- There are slight but sometimes significant differences among the films, developers, and other products made by different manufacturers. To know one type of film, developer, and so on thoroughly invariably leads to better results than limited knowledge of many.
- Each manufacturer’s line of products is in Chemical balance, i.e., his developers, fixers, and so on are compounded to give the best possible results when used with his films.
However, there is one place in the sequence of operations where it is safe to break the chain and switch from one manufacturer’s products to another’s without upsetting the chemical balance:
You can always print one manufacturer’s films on another manufacturer’s paper. If you do so, it is advisable to use the paper manufacturer’s paper developer and fixer because they are specifically balanced for best results with his paper.
Follow the manufacturer’s instructions (which always accompany his products), at least as a starter; They know their products better than you. This is particularly advisable regarding film development-type and temperature of the developer, time of development, modes of agitation, fixing, and so on-but also regarding the type of safelight, the mixing of chemical solutions, and other photographic operations. And not before a photographer is quite sure that results are not fully up to expectations should he try to improve on these instructions.
The mortal Sins
The three greatest obstacles to successful darkroom work are false economy, carelessness, and forgetfulness.
Typical examples of false economy are
- save money by buying little known brands of film, paper, and chemicals
- using a cheap coloured lightbulb or LEDs instead of a more expensive (but safer) Filter-equipped safelight
- overworking the solutions.
Carelessness is most often manifested in
- spilled solutions,
- finger marks on films and prints,
- unlabelled bottles leading to disastrous mix-ups,
- using fingers instead of print tongs.
And the most glaring example of forgetfulness is to turn on the white room illumination before closing the paper safe, irrevocably ruining the entire supply of photographic paper.