Black and White Workflow and Some More Algonquin Shots
I made an effort this year to shoot more colour photography which you have seen on recent posts over the past couple of months, my first love is black and white. In terms of workflow, I drop my colour film off at a lab and I have recently switched to Downtown Camara in Toronto as they have a busy c-41 service and their processing chemistry is fresh and that's important.
All the black and white film I process is done at home in the basement and the process is in fact pretty easy. You need a daylight tank and I'm partial to Patterson because their reals are easy to load in complete darkness and in my case I use a dark changing bag.
As far as the developing process goes it's three steps. developer which pulls the image out of the silver emulsion on the film, the stop bath which lasts for 40 seconds of course stops the developing process and the fix bath pulls out the remaining silver particles and stabilizes the negative and that lasts from five to 10 minutes depending on the film. Once all that is done the negatives are rinsed in the daylight tank for a good 20 minutes to get the fix solution off, hung up in the furnace/laundry/dark room to dry over night.
The negatives are cut, scanned on a flatbed scanner, then sleeved and stored in a binder. If I choose to print I will either use my darkroom to make a traditional wet print or scan high resolution and have a lab do the rest depending on the size.
Top photo taken with my iPhone 4.
All others with my Nikon FM2, various Nikkor lenses with Ilford HP5 400 black and white film.
All the black and white film I process is done at home in the basement and the process is in fact pretty easy. You need a daylight tank and I'm partial to Patterson because their reals are easy to load in complete darkness and in my case I use a dark changing bag.
As far as the developing process goes it's three steps. developer which pulls the image out of the silver emulsion on the film, the stop bath which lasts for 40 seconds of course stops the developing process and the fix bath pulls out the remaining silver particles and stabilizes the negative and that lasts from five to 10 minutes depending on the film. Once all that is done the negatives are rinsed in the daylight tank for a good 20 minutes to get the fix solution off, hung up in the furnace/laundry/dark room to dry over night.
The negatives are cut, scanned on a flatbed scanner, then sleeved and stored in a binder. If I choose to print I will either use my darkroom to make a traditional wet print or scan high resolution and have a lab do the rest depending on the size.
Top photo taken with my iPhone 4.
All others with my Nikon FM2, various Nikkor lenses with Ilford HP5 400 black and white film.
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