Our 'How to' series of videos is designed to give you the confidence to take the first steps in your black and white film photography journey. This video filmed in one of our darkrooms here at ILFORD Photo will hopefully help you to make your first darkroom print. We'd love to hear how you go on in the comments below:)
I've always wondered how photos were print before the invention of digital cameras, and now that I've seen this, I can only appreciate the amount of work film photographers put in their photos. Thanks for the video!
Darkroom work is a lot of fun too. Very satisfying. When you see an image gradually appear on the paper as it's sitting in the developing solution, it's like magic. Almost surreal.
@@AlexStalin-ph2do in that time we did have analog cameraa. They don't record an image as whole frame, but scan the image as horizontal lines with CRT, CRT is sensitive to light and can record what is lighter and what is darker, so if you move the CRT in one line you can make a black and white image line (yes one pixel line) repeat this process every line you'll get a whole frame. Note: analog broadcast camera doesn't have horizontal resolution as the CRT record *everything* in it's horizontal lines, but they have vertical resolution.
How old are you? When I was growing up, CVS and Walgreens had their own film development lab. Though now CVS has no more lab and Walgreens have a digital lab instead of a film lab. I was born in the late 1980s.
15 years old and I just made my first print in my home darkroom with the help of this brilliant video! I don't think I can go back to digital, that first sight of the image appearing on the paper is just magical and it should never be a lost art.
@@Ilfordphoto I'm afraid I went over to the digital dark side a few years ago. I've recently been very tempted but a subsequent house move has meant no darkroom and I'm still pondering it as a big commitment. I had considered shooting film and printing digitally- don't shoot me!
I miss this! I took Photography in High School and we had a dark room. So fun. I think a year or two after I graduated, it became a digital photography class, sad.
This video along with developing black and white film are probably the best ones I've seen here. Excellent video production, well thought out, no obnoxious music, easy to follow along with the captions and just plain easy to watch.
I wonder how many people in this day and age realise whats involved in making one print. I'm maybe older school than this, and would have different grades of paper rather than multigrade. Very well made video in less than ideal lighting I guess.
there is a documentary about andsel adams and shows him in his darkroom. (I am novice photographer using 35mm 1979 olympus camera. ) and i have always just dropped the film off. these documentaries really make me want to have my own darkroom so i can control the finished product.
@@chasestewart8619 Mate it is relatively easy once you've been shown once or twice and you know what equipment and chemicals to buy. It's a shame that there's so few colleges that run courses that include the use of film and printing. The other thing is the people with the skills to teach it are a disappearing breed, I know that once I've gone from my college/course whoever takes over will not continue with teaching using film, they'll take the cop out option of using digital.
I remember being in photography school when my teacher showed off the first digital camera I ever saw. It was the size of 2 bricks side by side and had a screen the size of a postage stamp. That was probably 1998.
As someone thinking about taking the plunge into print making, this video comes at the perfect time! I really enjoy how comprehensive your instructional videos are.
OMG!... I watched both development and printing videos. I remember that at school, back in the '90s, I took the optional photography course and we used ILFORD films, it's really a beautiful memory. I really enjoyed the whole process, from shooting the picture, to development, to the projector, to the chemical baths, up to the final result. Film is something magical, completly different to digital: no display, no histogram, no photoshop, no instant gratification; I feel lucky to have had that experience.
In the 90's I took Commercial photography in college. I then setup my own darkroom at home. I had so much fun processing my own film and prints. I jumped full force into the digital age buying my first digital camera in 1999, a whole megapixal. I went through several camera upgrades over the years, but have lost some of the satisfaction in digital that I once had using film. I would love to share this process again with my kids. I am getting back into film photography and will use Indie Film Lab for processing for the time being.
This made me so nostalgic… the same process that I first learned almost fifty years ago… still works, and creates images that last and don’t disappear into the cyberspace. Love it!
Congratulations on this video. What a memory!!! I spent hours and hours learning the art of negative development, and then the circulation... and the very good circulation was rare... But what a time...
This finally makes sense to me! I found my dad's old enlarger in my grandparents' loft yesterday. Aside from knowing it was something to do with film photography, I had no idea what it was. Googling just confused me more, but everything clicked with this video. THANKS!
I loved being in the darkroom at college doing black and white prints, I’ve done colour too but nothing better than watching your print appear on the paper and see the final result, started to get back into it going to make my own little darkroom film will always be better than digital for me
This is one the best made videos related to photography I have come across until now. Right from the start till end the presentation of the information was fantastic and explanation crystal clear. Thanks so much!
Wow - amazing how much work and care goes into analogue photography and how much work has been lifted off our shoulders with digital photography, at a cost of authenticity and style though. Nothing like analogue photos.
I took a film photography class in high school & i miss doing this so much! having access to a dark room to use whenever was awesome and I took it for granted !
I really enjoy making my images, I wouldn’t dream of letting anyone else develop them, I always cut my own mounts and even have a passion for making top quality frames with a multitude of woods. But none of that compares to the magic of the darkroom. Adams, Weston, Penn and Koudelka are all primarily known for their work in the darkroom, unfortunately most people just see the image and miss the magic. Great video, thank you.
I'm just now getting into medium format film photography, and also just now learning about Ilford. I'm an instant fan. The amount of love you guys share for photography has made me even more excited and confident to get really into doing my own developing and printing!
Just too add a note for posterity. As an apprentice in the 80s we where taught to run 30 10 x 8 inch prints through the chemicals at once by rotating the paper from the bottom to the top. We would time them and as the top one reached the density’s we would flip it in to the fixer. We cauld do batch runs of a single image of seven hundred in a day. This was in the days when catalogues needed prints for their reps to take on the road of new dresses to shops. And kept us busy spring and autumn.
Wow. That sounds intense. I bet it took your eyes a while to adjust after spending all day in the dark. Although after speaking to some of our production team they say it can be relaxing to work under safelight conditions.
Love from AFGHANISTAN It was greattttt I like it After 14 years I watched , it brought back my memories of printing in past I miss this way of printing I'll start again Thanks
I take photography in school, it's my first year and this process is so much fun to do! i absolutely love working in the dark room and just seeing the picture develop right before your eyes is such a beautiful thing. I've only been in Photography 1 for about a month now and I've learned so much about it that it makes me fall in love with photography more and more.
Really glad to hear that Jayden, we agree that there's nothing quite like the magic of printing in the darkroom. If you are taking photography at school then it may be worth mentioning our student competition to your tutor www.ilfordphoto.com/studentcomp2018
I have had the privilege of growing up through both analogue and digital camera era. I used to sell cameras back in the early 2000s and was an avid (hobbyist) photographer, although I've never had the opportunity to do my own dark room developing. Now I'm older with children. I just bought a 35mm half frame film camera for my daughter. I'll be damned if she doesn't even get to experience the fun of loading a film into a camera. When she watched this video she was amazed at the magic of the image coming onto the paper. Thank you Ilford for the video!
What a cool job it must have been back in the days. Developing dreams, travels, loves, families, special moments, all through science and practice. I love photography because it's the perfect blend between pure rational technological science and and emotional artistry
If you are broke like me plus a pair of scissors to cut the paper for test prints and then you sell those test prints as cool bookmakers to friends and family so you can buy more paper ,chemicals and film. P.S. broke guys tip: if you don't have money to buy all three chemicals you can just use water at 20C for stop bath but you need it to let the paper in there for a second or two more. Btw any other person born in or after 2000 that still shoots 35mm or medium format?
I came across this movie and brought me back in my student days about 30 years ago. The long hours in my darkroom. About 7 years ago while fixing the house I through all of it.
We agree Mark. We can hopefully show people the basic steps to get them to have a go, but after that its hard to share the experience. We are just in the process of releasing some new videos that we hope will go a little way to doing this ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-b-keDPtVnGA.html
The 'How to' series is fantastic and has got me inspired to print in the darkroom again. I'm currently using a public darkroom I can hire, but I'd like to build and be printing in my own darkroom within the next 12 months. These videos really help in making progress. Thank you!
@@Ilfordphoto I'm using a local darkroom in Oxford called Fusion Arts darkroom: www.artsjobs.org.uk/arts-news/post/fusion-arts-darkroom-open-for-bookings/ It's been really helpful being able to get back into printing my b&w negatives.
When I build my photography studio in the near future, I would love to make a dark room workshop. I have always been interested in dark room mainly because of Ansel Adams, alongside his landscape photos.
Thanks for sharing that, glad you enjoyed the video even if it wasn't what you were looking for initially. If you fancy trying your hand at shooting black and white film then there are lots of other videos on our channel to help you get started.
My college still had a dark room for the X-ray diagnosis program. Figure out, back then when using film, they were taking an X-ray in the operation room during surgery, then went 20min to develop. Imagine the surgeon wasn't happy if the image wasn't well exposed
In 1950 I was 3 years old. My next door neighbour, Mr Murry, was into photography and he showed me how he developed and printed his photos. Watching the photograph magically appear on the paper, in what I thought at the time was a dish of water, started a life long love of photography.
Nice, back in the day I worked in professional photography, worked in darkrooms for over a decade, b/w, color and transparency processing. Black and white involved dodging and burning, using card with holes in it or pieces paper stuck on a metal rod, all those dodge and burn Photoshop techniques were done by hand. Airbrushing a background out is easy in Photoshop, we had to use an actual airbrush and spray onto an actual print.
Memories of my college photography class. I have an itch to pick up a vintage 35mm pentax and start this kind of photography as a hobby. But sadly no darkrooms anywhere!
Hi Andrew - We are in the process of updating our darkroom finder on ilfordphoto.com Obviously many are shut at the moment but we hope that we'll have a good selection on here in future.
I started printing in my bathroom in February... And the prints actually come out pretty good... Of course I've made some mistakes... But it's fun learning...
Learning is definitely the fun part, and I think the more time you spend in the darkroom, the more likely you are to go back to older prints and re-print them slightly differently as you find what works best for you and your negatives.
Your video is very informative for those considering traditional B&W print photography. Back in the good old days the actual print developing process could not be filmed but instead was simulated by using the sepia tone process which is not light sensitive. This made it possible to film the darkroom scene with cinema lighting and an appropriate filter to look like the orange illumination of a typical darkroom. I'm curious if this ILFORD video used modern super sensitive digital camera equipment to record the actual chemical development process and not a simulation.
Did this as a teenager in the 70's (also tried colour film/prints but that was expensive). It was great fun at that time. But today some 40 years later I much prefer to use my 42 mpix Sony A7R3 + Epson XP15000 photo printer. There is just not enough time (and money) in my life to play around with grainy b/w photos. The final print quality I get is also insanely better that what I could achieve in the old days (and you don't have to mess around with chemicals). That being said... I understand why some people may like to try this. And the video is very well made.
Disagree all around. You can get an enlarger and all the developing kit you need off auctions or Craigslist for under $200 if not less, and a nice SLR + prime lens is about $100 or so. You can make a heck of a lot of prints from many rolls of film for well under $1000, and that Sony A7 is something like twice that. That film camera and enlarger will keep you going for decades while you'll be replacing the Sony and the printer for a newer model in a few years. I'm still using cameras made 60 years ago and they work great, and give great results. The analogue look and digital look are quite different - it's of course up to the viewer which you prefer but for me I like both the images I take and the process more with analogue methods than I do with the DSLR I previously used. YMMV.
Comparing digital prints and darkroom prints, one is not better than the other. Traditional darkroom prints have a really nice look about them which is different to digital prints and some people really like that particular look and may prefer it over the digital route. And as for grainy b & w prints, yes you can have a fair amount of grain in some images as a result of a number of factors. And once again, some people really like grain. It's an individual thing. It's also possibly to have fine grained b & w prints. For example, the finished print in the video didn't really look particularly grainy to me. And by shooting medium speed film stocks in larger sizes (eg medium format and large format) you can produce extremely fine grained prints. In such cases, the grain would be just about invisible - even with big prints.
My Dad had a darkroom when I was very young - I can still remember the smell of the chemicals now! I didn't realise just how much went into it. All I remember is Dad had a lot of equipment in a tiny room xD
My grandmother was a photographer and showed me how to do this when I was very young. She’s in the trenches of dementia right now and can no longer do what she used to love. I’m learning so that her art will live on, even if she can’t do it.
Hello, thought i would get back to you guys,!! I have finally set up my darkroom in my sons old bedroom, Invested in a leitz V35 enlarger, with 40mm lens, also a RH Designs Timer 3, all sourced from Second hand darkroom supplies. I currently use Ilford Pan F and pull process as far as 6 asa developing with Ilford Perceptol and Ilford Fp4 pull processing as far as 12 asa .I use Ilford Warm tone MG Pearl paper and I am printing stunning pin sharp prints. I am enjoying the whole darkroom process and trying out different techniques such as dodging and burning and split grade printing from your how to videos. Cheers Jonathan
I'd love to see some of those extreme pulls! 6 and 12 asa are pretty low. Are you on social media? Please share some of your prints and shots with us. #ilfordpanf #ilfordfp4
Hi, thanks for commenting on my post, I would be happy to send some prints to you, as i don`t do social media, I think they would look better in the flesh, Let me know if you would be interested ?
I love these videos, and find them very informative. The only thing I would suggest is leaving the text on screen for a bit longer - especially when more info is included.
Usually, you can find a public one nearby; you can rent them for like an hour and it should only be a few dollars. Sometimes they give you the chemicals and supplies, sometimes you need your own, depends on the place.
Amy Rigsby; Photography clubs, schools, etc. Also just ask around, like minded folk tend to be generous and share. The first enlarger I used was an older student (rich kid) at school. Also you'll get hints and tips and where to save money and where not to.
Add the cost of plumbing, a good water temp control valve. A very good voltage regulator, if not the light could vary from the enlarger. You need safety lights. You need a short timer for enlarging and a long timer for negative development. The size of the trays vary depending on the size of the prints you make. Enlarging paper is expensive, really expensive. Now you need a good, solid bench for the enlarger. The enlarger must be rock solid so as to not shake during enlargement. And then sinks for the chemical trays, should be stainless steel. Oh, I forgot you need a GOOD water filtration system. Clean water is very important. Ventilation. Plenty of it. Need to keep from breathing in the fumes from the chemicals. Plus there is many little items you need. Too many to list here but they do cost a bit. So you have several thousand dollars, then by all means build a darkroom. Better yet stick with digital.
I develop my own Black and White but alas don't have the set up for printing. I would love to one day. I really enjoy everything about film photography and the way that, in a fast paced world, one can free oneself from the frantic nature of our lives in the 21st Century.
Nice overview of the process. I used a spotmeter to measure the amount of light in the brightest and darkest parts that still needed details. It calculated the exposure time, and told me if I should use soft/medium/hard paper for optimal contrast. Of course the paper wasn't hard, it's just related to the contrast conversion (as far as I can remember, Ilford used numbers). It was actually a simple version of the zone system. It all ended when digital camera's became available.
This was super easy to follow and very thorough!! Can you review the other equipment needed? Pre-solution, how is the image pushed from the negative onto the paper and what equipment would you need to do this at home?
The image isn't really 'pushed.' The negative is projected on to the paper with the light from the enlarger. This creates a latent image on the paper (an image that is temporarily invisible.) Developer is then used to make the image visible.
I bought my own scanner because I got tired of paying a lot of money for low res scans from my photo lab that were basically worthless unless you're posting them to Instagram. That has already paid itself off but want to develop my own film at home now too to save both money and time in getting my negatives. It's like $9/36 exposure roll to get it developed at the photo lab and they only develop after hours once a week so if I miss the day, then I have to wait another week to get my negatives. Can't wait to buy a house so I can set up a place to do it all
Hi Dirty Water- to develop 35mm and 120 film you don't need a darkroom. All you need is a thing called a 'changing bag' . This allows you to load the exposed film into a light-proof developing tank in daylight, and you can then develop the film at your kitchen sink. If you scan your negatives it's all you need- a darkroom becomes essential if you want to make traditional wet prints.
See if your local university has a darkroom photography program. If they do, try to see if their labs are open to the general public or if they are for students only. I know I can use mine for free as a student, but once I graduate I’ll still be able to use it for $10 a week. $10 to develop dozens of rolls of black and white film and use their equipment. Compared to my local photo lab, they charge $15 a roll for black and white and $7 for color. Scans are $2 per picture there, so I invested in a scanner and get all of my negatives scanned, whether I like them or not. This way, I can get all my black and white rolls developed and scanned for free (minus the upfront cost of the scanner) and my color rolls for $7. This is how I make film photography a viable & affordable hobby for me
Thank you! I'm gathering all my supplies to start my developing adventure using my Argus C3, and this video is incredibly helpful! I was slightly confused on how to focus the enlarger and now I know how! I managed to find a Beseler 23C II for $75 and everything works on it so hopefully things go well. Thank you!
AMAZING! I just p/u a Omega Enlarger B22 for $5 bucks from the thrift store. Was $10, but they had it since last week, and let me have it for $5.00... I'm excited and a bit nervous.
Overall a great video. Out of curiosity, what do you use as a timer when dipping the paper in the different chemicals? Would a timer with an LCD screen cause potential fogging in the paper? Perhaps a timer or clock could be added to the list of items featured at the beginning of the video.
great video and developing your logo as a finish, BRILLIANT idea, adds a nice touch. Still would be a nice idea to have a table (spreadsheet/ pdf ) of all the volumes, chemistry used, paper and the timings; these videos go a bit fast if you are amateurs , like me, to comprehend and need a paper copy to use in the darkroom.
im a student studying film and absoluteley addicted to the process of creating a print. I love every second of it. But something I'm having trouble with is understanding the use of filters. I never know in what situation I should use what number filter.
Hi Daniel. Filters can be confusing. Most normal negs don't require anything other than a grade 2, and many people choose to split grade print which you can find more information on here www.ilfordphoto.com/split-grade-printing/ . A good option if you are able to is to print the same negative as grade 00 - 5 so you can see the difference between the softer and harder grades. We will look at putting a simple guide together in the future and adding it to our website.
It's it usual to expose the contract sheets in sections to judge the correct exposure time and then repeat the process with your enlargement? Surely you'll have a pretty good idea by now and could try for a good first enlargement?
There is no reason that you couldn't try your first print after this step if you wanted to. Also, as you get more experience you find it easier to judge from the test strips.
I did this in highschool and man, later thinking about it I wish most public and private high-schools had an old film photography class. At least for my area, that is.
Just got my hands on a old enlarger that should be capable of 6x6 negative. (Depends on if it works at all) I do have a camera that shoot 6x9negative. Would i be able to enlarge it in my enlarger but just loose some of the frame on the longer length? Best regards Alfons
Some do and we were starting to see some that had previously closed them, re-open. When things get back to normal it's probably also worth having a look at community darkrooms if you want to print:)
Wow! Now I unsderstand why traditional photography is so exciting. And this is the reason why I only use Lightroom for my pictures. Removing, adding or displacing objects from to and in a picture is not what I call photography.
It is addictive. Hopefully when our new community darkroom finder is up on www.ilfordphoto.com you will be able to find somewhere to give it a try with minimal expense.
does anyone know what music they use for not only this video but the rest of their film tutorials or the name of the song because it’s great and i love it
