You will need the following materials to make prints: photographic paper, negatives to be printed, an opaque piece of sturdy poster-board that will block light effectively, and your TOWEL. If you plan to touch the chemicals in the trays, whether accidentally or in an attempt to die a horrible death, wear gloves. Thick ones. Also, you need to check out a negative carrier (any type), a focusing aide (small microscope thingy), and a box of the mysterious contrast filters. This checkout process can possibly be made following these simple steps: Check the room hidden in the back for a darkroom monitor. When you find no one in the back room, look on the schedule posted on the door to the film closet to see who should be the monitor for that particular day/ time. If you know who the monitor is, wander around the basement looking for him/her. Then check outside the glass doors in case the designated monitor is addicted to nicotine. If all fails, ask anyone in the darkroom for the monitor's location until you find someone who may or may not know. Then check all secret rooms downstairs. The monitors like to hide. Perhaps offer bribes. Last effort: Feign death until someone in charge comes to help you. (N.B. This can be extremely time consuming.)
Setting Up
There are somewhere around 18 enlargers in the darkroom. They are all different. Each has its own particular way of functioning. Either learn them all, or stick to one or two that you do know. Place the negative strip in the negative carrier very carefully, making sure it slips between the silver knobs. (Note: it is usually a good idea to clean your negatives with a fine brush or an air gun prior to the printing process, to avoid unsightly dust spots on your images.) Then place the carrier into the enlarger in the designated spot. Making sure your paper is put away from the light, turn the light on to see the size of the image and adjust elevation to desired size. (Judge size by fitting image within one of the squares of the easel.) Then check focus with focusing aide, (You'll know the image is in focus when you can see the grains of the negative through the eyepiece of the focusing aide.) Now you're ready to make the print.
Click to "Enlarge"
Test Strips
At this point, the first thing you're going to want to do is create some "test-strips." It's a lot less complicated than it sounds. This process exists to save you the time and paper. To create test-strips, you need two things: a small strip of photographic paper and a sheet of black poster board. Place the strip of paper at the most interesting part (The area with the most gray tones) of your image and place the poster board over most of it, leaving about ½ inch exposed. Then, set your timer to one second and expose that small portion of the paper. Do this several times, each time exposing a new ½ inch section of paper, until you run out of paper to expose. The purpose of this is to find the exact exposure time in which your print will achieve its blackest blacks without sacrificing its gray tones. After you have developed these test strips using the same methods as described in "Contact Sheets," take your test strips out into the light (yes, florescent ones will do) and see which exposure will work best for you. When you have made your decision, take a whole sheet of paper and place it shiny side up in the easel, expose it for the desired amount of time and follow the same developing methods described in "Contact Sheets."
A Test Strip
Filters
For more control over your prints, however, you'll want to use filters. Filters, when used with the enlarger, help you control the amount of contrast in your prints. The filters are numbered 00-5 with 00 being the least amount of contrast and 5 being the most contrast. It is wise to make test strips when using filters to make sure you are using the right one before you waste too much paper. (This is, however, inevitable.)
Split Filtering
My preferred method of print making involves a process called "Split Filtering." This process differs from the one just I described in that it only uses the zero filter and the five filter. The five filter is used only to get the blackest blacks. It does not affect the gray areas. The zero filter is then used to get the most gray tones. To do this, you just make two test-strips, one of each filter. After you've decided the correct exposure for each filter, you're ready to print. Expose the print with each filter separately. Because each filter affects completely different areas of the gray scale, it is safe to expose them both separately. With your test strips, split-filtering takes a lot of guess work out of the print making process.
Dodging and Burning
There are times when filters alone will not solve your contrast problems. Sometimes a space is still over or underexposed in your print. To solve this problem, take the piece of poster board I mentioned in my spiel about test-strips and have it ready after you've finished exposing your prints but still haven't developed them. If a spot is underexposed, use your board to cover those spots on your print which you feel have had enough exposure, and, moving the board in a funky waving motion, gradually expose that particular spot which hadn't been exposed enough in the first place. This brings out its subtle gray tones without making the rest of the print too dark. Dodging is just the opposite of burning. Rather than exposing particular spots longer than others, you use the board to block a portion of the light from reaching especially dark areas of the print during the initial exposure process. This will keep definition in the dark areas of your print.
Spotting
Sometimes, after you've finished the printing process and are viewing your prints under "normal" light, you will notice tiny white spots. These are usually caused by dirty or damaged negatives. Because you've worked so hard on this print, you're going to now "fix" these spots. The tools you will need are a jar of #3 ink which you can get at just about any reputable photography shop, and a fine tipped paint brush. You do not need very much ink on your brush to begin with and you should not apply any ink directly onto the paper until there is so little ink in the brush that you can barely see it. When applying the ink, take a pointillist approach to it. Working from the outside in, dab tiny spots of ink to simulate the grains of the photograph. When you have applied enough spots that the area blends in with the rest of the image, stop and move on to the next blemish. Make plenty of time for this. It will take up a large portion of your day.
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