Film & Darkroom

For your exploration of Film & Darkroom you will need to produce a series of images demonstrating your understanding and control of these things. In order to achieve this you will need to shoot and process at least 2 rolls of film, produce a contact sheet of each roll, produce test strips of at least 2 of your best shots in order to determine correct exposure for the print and produce 2 final prints, all fully annotated in your visual diary. You may also choose to explore scanning your negatives and making digital prints with Photoshop manipulation if you have the time and/or inclination.

Shooting

Shooting with a film camera is virtually identical to shooting with a digital camera. Shutter speed, Aperture and ISO all still do the same thing.

The only real difference is that your image is being recorded on film rather than on a digital sensor.
So, loading the film into the camera will be a new experience for most students and must be done carefully and correctly for everything to work.
We will spend some time in class demonstrating and practicing this process.

Processing

After shooting a roll of film and before making any prints your film needs to be processed in a range of different chemicals.

This involves loading the film into a processing tank in complete darkness and adding film developer to process it.
After processing you must stop the chemical reaction with stop bath solution, at this stage the film is still light sensitive so must be kept in complete darkness.
Next you must fix the film in fixer to stop it being light sensitive.
Finally you must rinse all the chemicals from the film in clean water for 10 minutes and now your film is ready to hang up to dry.

Printing

Printing is very similar to processing film, but as the paper is so much less sensitive than film it can be done under safe red light.

First you stick your negative in the enlarger with a sheet of photographic paper under it and expose light through the negative onto the paper for a predetermined amount of time.
Once exposed you place your paper into a tray of developer for 2 minutes to develop the image, just like film.
Next you place your paper into a tray of stop bath to stop the developer from developing the image any further. Just like film.
Then it's into a tray of fixer for 5 minutes to stabilise the paper and make it no longer light sensitive. Just like film.
Finally, just like film, you wash your print in a tray of clean water for 10 minutes and it's ready to hang, dry and present.

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