Introduction to Darkroom Printing

Earlier this week I journeyed to Portland for a PDX Film League darkroom printing event at Franklin Foto. It was an opportunity for me to do some darkroom work for the first time in over 30 years.

Bobby Abrahamson, one of Franklin Foto’s managers, first walked us through the key features of an enlarger. He then touched upon achieving sharp focus using an enlarger grain focuser and a focusing knob that is not dissimilar to the focusing mechanism one finds on many telescopes. Next, Bobby explained how to use the aperture setting ring on the enlarger’s lens and the enlarger’s timer to control the amount and duration of light streaming through a black and white negative onto a sheet of photographic paper.

We then proceeded to make test strips by exposing a small section of photographic paper in 5-, 10-, 15-, and 20-second increments. By doing this, one can get a better sense of how long the final print should be exposed.

After exposing the photographic paper to light through the negative, the next step was to develop the print. We used a series of trays containing developer, stop bath, and fixer before putting each print through an archival wash.

After getting my bearings with one photograph I took a few months ago on Kodak Tri-X film, I tried another shot I took on Ilford FP4 Plus in Seattle last year.

During my time in the darkroom, I made some classic beginner mistakes like exposing the wrong side of the paper. When everything is new to you and you’re working in the dark, it’s easy to forget to check whether you have the emulsion side of a piece of photographic paper facing up. Fortunately I did that only once.

Over the course of the three-hour event, it was utterly energizing to be around other film photography enthusiasts. That evening, several participants brought their film cameras with them (why didn’t I?) to make a record of the event. I think I saw more people using film cameras in one place than I have ever seen since the dawn of the digital age.

Moreover, re-learning the process of making a print was awesome. The smell of the chemicals, handling negatives on a light table, seeing an image appear in the developer tray, and the challenge of learning darkroom techniques to make a physical print that I can hold in my hands and look at all without the use of any computer screens—not one—makes me want to pursue this all the more.