Basics: contact printing 4x5 without enlarger

Thepng · Sep 24, 2019

Hello,

Can any of you point me towards resources for contact printing 4x5 on vc paper without an enlarger? I’m sure this has been covered before, but can’t seem to find a consolidated source, just fragments here and there. New to 4x5 and printing in general.

From what I’ve pieced together, you basically just need a dim lightbulb and a sheet of glass on top of the negative/paper. Azo style is out of my price range for now, so sticking with enlarger paper.

What paper size is typically used to contact print 4x5? Looks like 5x7 and 8x10 are the most common paper sizes, is it worth it to try to get 2 4x5 prints off of a 8x10 paper?

Luckless · Sep 24, 2019

First question to ask yourself is: Do you want a paper border on your print, or do you want to print to the edge? Which will help you answer your question on what to do about selecting paper sizes.

For what it's worth, I've been happy working on my trial prints as cut down 8x10 sheets to just 4x5 paper, since 8x10 is the easiest to get locally if I want to skip the hassle of dealing with shipping. Have not done a great deal of printing yet, but for the few photos I've wanted to make "fancy prints" of, I've printed centered on an 8x10 sheet, and trimmed to better fit a 5x7 frame to give space for matting.

I've also been using a small night light on an extension cord taped to a broom handle clamped against the bathroom towel rack, and using a sheet of glass out of a worklight [that I had picked up to try as a UV light source] which I glued some scrap lead weights to the edges so it had more heft and offered better compression/contact...

A lovely thing about contact printing is that you can get wonderful looking results from not a lot of effort put into buying/making equipment.

Thepng · Sep 24, 2019

Thanks for that info, just the kind of details I’ve been after! Would you be willing to post some pictures of your setup?

Luckless · Sep 24, 2019

I will try to remember to snag a photo of the setup next time I get the chance to take over the bathroom. Will see how chaotic Friday gets this week, but I'm horribly behind on my development, let alone printing.

Alan9940 · Sep 24, 2019

If you want to print borderless (or nearly so), then you could cut an 8x10 sheet of paper into 4 4x5 pieces. I don't typically print 4x5 contacts, but, when I do, I just use a full 8x10 sheet. I think you've got the basics down. You'll need to determine what wattage bulb and what distance from the paper gives you reasonable exposure times for your chosen film and enlarging paper. You want a print exposure time long enough to allow dodging & burning, but not so long that it gets ridiculous. I would advise getting a good quality sheet of glass and thinking about the glass/negative "sandwich" because any air space between the negative and the glass will result in Newton's Rings.

Contact prints are lovely! Have fun!!

mshchem · Sep 25, 2019

Keep the distance from the bulb constant, use a darkroom enlarger timer, or a Gra Lab timer. Once you get the exposure worked out, it should be about the same for any normal negative. Download a "f stop timer" chart or there's a free app for Android and iPhone. That will show you how to adjust your timing. Contact prints are the best there is. There's tons of old Eastman print frames that come up on ebay, but all you need is a piece of glass.

mshchem · Sep 25, 2019

Edward Weston's darkroom. He just used a bulb hanging from the ceiling. Of course he was using very slow contact paper.

John51 · Sep 26, 2019

Keep an eye out for a Zenit UPA5 suitcase enlarger. They're pretty cheap and take up very little room when not in use. Will give you an consistent light source for your contact prints.

tezzasmall · Sep 26, 2019

John51 said:
Keep an eye out for a Zenit UPA5 suitcase enlarger. They're pretty cheap and take up very little room when not in use. Will give you an consistent light source for your contact prints.

That was my first enlarger, and I too had to pack it away into the suitcase that acted as it's baseboard = barely took a few minutes. I made many a print with it over the few years that I had it. I too have seen them pop up on ebay occasionally and will give you consistent light and also a 35mm film enlarger if you decide to go that route later on.

Terry S

Thepng · Sep 26, 2019

Wow, a suitcase enlarger would be perfect for me, didn’t know they existed. Took a quick look on eBay and not seeing any for sale (who are willing to ship to USA), but I’ll definitely keep my eye out for one!

Mike Lopez · Sep 26, 2019

Thepng said:
... is it worth it to try to get 2 4x5 prints off of a 8x10 paper?

No. Go for four 4x5s from that sheet of 8x10.

Thepng · Sep 26, 2019

Mike Lopez said:
No. Go for four 4x5s from that sheet of 8x10.

I’m assuming you cut up the paper before printing? What do you use to get clean cuts in the dark?

Luckless · Sep 26, 2019

Thepng said:
I’m assuming you cut up the paper before printing? What do you use to get clean cuts in the dark?

I would suggest a quality paper cutter with a good long alignment arm, and to not do it in the dark. Safelights are your friend.

[At least, they're you're friend if you have one that actually works properly and isn't leaking unsafe light for the paper you're working with. Always double check the material you're dealing with, and do a paper test now and then for sanity's sake. It doesn't take much of a scratch in a filter to give enough light to start fogging photo paper a bit. There was a thread not long ago about testing safe lights properly. "The coin test" is not a safe and complete safelight test, and may fail to show an issue when there is actually one.]

I also suggest getting the sliding razor style paper cutters over the old chopping blade style. Especially if you're the type who knows they can be a bit careless with where they put their fingers... (It is commonly accepted to put one's blood, sweat, and tears into their art. Finger tips are however, generally frowned upon...]

MattKing · Sep 26, 2019

If your budget stretches to them, the Rotatrim paper cutters are a joy to use, and with reasonable care should last a lifetime.
If you are like me, you look for excuses to cut other paper with your Rotatrim .

Mike Lopez · Sep 26, 2019

Thepng said:
I’m assuming you cut up the paper before printing? What do you use to get clean cuts in the dark?

I just use a paper cutter (from any office supply store) and a safelight.

KenS · Sep 26, 2019

He-He... the best 'thing' about making prints using the 'archaic' print processes (like I do), is that they are ALL contact prints under my home-built UV light source with my 'maple-wood' contact printing frame, and a 'minute (or so) 'deviance' does not matter that much.

Ken

John51 · Sep 27, 2019

Thepng said:
Wow, a suitcase enlarger would be perfect for me, didn’t know they existed. Took a quick look on eBay and not seeing any for sale (who are willing to ship to USA), but I’ll definitely keep my eye out for one!

They were mainly sold in Europe. The US was less agreeable to dumping for hard currency by the Soviets. A UPA5 doesn't justify the shipping cost imo, they go for ~£10 to £20 here.

Kodak made a suitcase enlarger, the Flurolite. It's a rarity these days.

tezzasmall · Sep 27, 2019

Thepng said:
Wow, a suitcase enlarger would be perfect for me, didn’t know they existed. Took a quick look on eBay and not seeing any for sale (who are willing to ship to USA), but I’ll definitely keep my eye out for one!

Search for 'Zenith enlarger' on your ebay site and put a notification on it.

I've just looked on the UK ebay, and there are a number available = probably many more than you will find over time.

I have attached a link to show you what they look like, but this is NOT the cheapest available, just in case anyone wonders, but is just used to show what one looks like.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Zenith-YNA...854232?hash=item42053ef798:g:TacAAOSwe0tcqk-R

Terry S

Digital Wendy · Mar 24, 2023

Please can I ask for more details from experienced contact printers in this thread? Can you give me any guidance to speed up my learning curve?
Is regular RC multigrade paper too fast for this 'light bulb and timer' approach? What other papers should I try?
What is the output of your light bulb and what would be a sensible starting distance for testing?
Many thanks

Digital Wendy · Mar 24, 2023

mshchem said:
Edward Weston's darkroom. He just used a bulb hanging from the ceiling. Of course he was using very slow contact paper.
View attachment 231675

And look at that re-touching easel!
I don't think many of those survived - I've never seen one. Such skilled, and often undervalued, work.

Don_ih · Mar 24, 2023

Digital Wendy said:
Is regular RC multigrade paper too fast for this 'light bulb and timer' approach? What other papers should I try?
What is the output of your light bulb and what would be a sensible starting distance for testing?

RC paper is too fast, sort of. You can reduce the wattage of your bulb and increase the distance from the paper to get a bit more time. And, of course, it will also depend on the density of your negative. You would need to experiment with all of that to see if you can do it. (If you have an enlarger, that's a good light source - you can stop down the lens to reduce the amount of light, you can add filters for VC paper)

Some people say Ilford's Warmtone paper is slower than their regular emulsions. If it is, it's not by much.

I don't know if Lodima silver chloride papers are still being made. Most seem to be out of stock on their website.

Anyway, whether a paper is too fast depends on what you want to do when printing. Dodging and burning become problematic when the base exposure is too fast. But for a good negative, if you can get the print you want a a .5 second exposure, then that's great.

mshchem · Mar 24, 2023

Don Heisz said:
RC paper is too fast, sort of. You can reduce the wattage of your bulb and increase the distance from the paper to get a bit more time. And, of course, it will also depend on the density of your negative. You would need to experiment with all of that to see if you can do it. (If you have an enlarger, that's a good light source - you can stop down the lens to reduce the amount of light, you can add filters for VC paper)

Some people say Ilford's Warmtone paper is slower than their regular emulsions. If it is, it's not by much.

I don't know if Lodima silver chloride papers are still being made. Most seem to be out of stock on their website.

Anyway, whether a paper is too fast depends on what you want to do when printing. Dodging and burning become problematic when the base exposure is too fast. But for a good negative, if you can get the print you want a a .5 second exposure, then that's great.

If you are using enlarging papers you need a nice timer for the bulb. Warmtone papers are a bit slower. Silver chloride (contact speed) paper is still made by Adox called Lupex. Lovely to work with double weight fiber base paper. I would start with a 25W bulb. Use ordinary tungsten light bulbs. This paper allows you time to dodge and burn. Fotoimpex in Germany sells this.

FriedLouisStudio · Mar 24, 2023

We had a dedicated contact printer in my parents' studio (*), but we also had one that we rigged ourselves. We used it for making larger contact prints, proof sheets, and the tens of thousands of photo paper samples we made for Luminos to give out at trade shows (which were four identical 4x5 negs stripped together with red lithographer's tape; we'd slice the resulting 8x10 prints into individual 4x5s after drying.)

The negatives/paper were held in a 24x36 vacuum frame on a NuArc (pic below: a huge steel arc-light-lit device intended for burning offset printing plates - you flipped the vacuum frame over to face down at the arc for that process; we left it face up for doing contacts); the light came from a "point source light" projector mounted on the ceiling directly above the frame, controlled by a Time-O-Light timer. I have no idea what kind of bulb and lens was in this thing (it was just a black cylinder), but it wasn't bright enough to disturb work at the enlarger and developing stations elsewhere in the darkroom. Exposures ranged from about 5 seconds to 20 seconds on standard enlarging papers.

I know this isn't exactly germane to the question about how to do basic contact printing with a printing frame. I'm mainly mentioning it because moving the light source further away allowed better control of exposure times on enlarging papers.

(* Our floor-standing contact printer - which doubled as a table holding a Durst M600 enlarger we used for 35mm negs - was mostly used by my mom to contact-print the ID photos we made for passports and drivers licenses. We shot these on 2-1/4 x 3-1/4 inch sheet film, measuring the required regulation sizes for the head right on the camera ground glass so they wouldn't need resizing with an enlarger. For these prints, we used 2x2 inch Kodak Azo contact paper.)

RalphLambrecht · Mar 24, 2023

Thepng said:
I’m assuming you cut up the paper before printing? What do you use to get clean cuts in the dark?

A guillotine-type cutter with guide rails will do that.

Rolleiflexible · Mar 24, 2023

The stupid easy solution is to buy a contact printer and 5x7-inch paper. Brumberger and Eastman and Burke+James and Airequipt and many others made contact printers -- typically boxes with a bulb inside, a frosted glass window on top, cropping blades, and a lid to hold it all tight during exposures. They typically are made for 5x7-inch contact prints, and are readily available on eBay for under US$50. I've printed with them in the past, and they work well for making 4x5 or 5x7 contact prints. Here's a link to some pictures to get a sense of what these beasts look like:

As for cutting paper to size, don't bother. Just buy a 5x7-inch paper and contact-print your negatives onto it.

Basics: contact printing 4x5 without enlarger

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