First darkroom print - Exposure / test strip

First darkroom print - Exposure / test strip

 

I have a question on setting the correct exposure for my darkroom prints I'm about to do in 2 days. Should I get the negative that looks to be evenly balanced and use that to make the test strip + determine the exposure for the rest of the prints? Thanks

Pick a representative negative, obviously you will be willing to spend time & effort if necesssary on what you perceive as the best image if it differs.

Yea, thanks for the info

Do you have any kind of darkroom exposure meter / timer ? This can be of assistance when attempting to determine optimum base exposure, before you start dodging and burning.

Dont think I'll do dodge and burning for my very frist print

Find and use paper black as your starting point.

Place a piece of unexposed, processed film of the same type in the enlarger and focus the grain. Set the timer for 2 seconds, set the aperture on the enlarging lens to f8~f11. Expose a series of 2 inch wide strips across the length of the paper. Process the paper and dry. When dry find the strip where the paper goes black and you cannot see any strip after that. Back lighting the test paper helps. Count the strips to the final black, this is your exposure time.

A correctly exposed/developed negative will produce a good test print, if not adjust your exposure or development of the film. A 1/3 stop increase in exposure and or a 10% to 15% increase or decrease in development will work 90% of the time.

Shooting so that negatives print well at paper black saves a lot of time when printing.

Thanks for the tip. I think I might go fro 4-5 seconds fro each section for the test strip

When you're starting out it's easy to get bogged down in rules or generalities that may not work until you get your whole process under control. You probably won't be making larger prints yet, maybe 5x7 or smaller. Enlargers are often too bright for good control at those sizes, so stop down as said above. That's stopped down beyond where the lens will perform at its best, but control over the print is more important.

 

I don't do stepped test strips, finding I need to see more of the image to judge. There are also some paper behaviors that cause a stepped strip not to be equal to the same continuous exposure. A 1/2" wide strip, maybe 5" long is a handy size, and I just zero in on exposure one at a time. Very important- do not pull your prints from the developer based on appearance. Pick a recommended development time, say 1 minute, and do not deviate from that. Ever. Control the appearance of your print using exposure time and contrast setting (graded paper or filter or filter head) only. Paper black is important because you'll never get good blacks until you understand it and expose sufficiently to get it, but I offer one caution. True maximum paper black, the absolute blackest the paper is capable of, viewed under bright light, is too black, and makes no improvement in print quality. Getting it requires sub-optimal negatives in other regards. Use what I'd call "sufficiently black", as described above under normal (moderate) lighting conditions, but not trying for the last possible few percent.

Just accept that you're going to burn some paper for your first series of exposures before you nail things down.

 

I'd encourage you to go in 2 second intervals as suggested above. At 5 second intervals, you can easily find yourself with an abrupt change and you don't really know where it happened. With two seconds, you can nail it down a bit better.

Thanks for the tips guys, appreciate them