I'm one of the employees at the camera center (cameracenter.net) which I guess can be both a good and bad thing, such as good exposure to alot of the old film gear as I already own plenty of film cameras and film for that matter, plus my co-workers are over a hundred combined years of film and darkroom experience and such, so a lot to learn from them. Bad because as photography is an expensive hobby, temptations can be very bad for the pocketbook and the spouse. Anyways over the last couple weeks I've been a rather lucky little bugger.
Now I already have a fridge full of chrome and black and white film over the last few months either from obtaining 30+ years expired film from the store, or some people online who decided to let me have their stock of chrome 120s and such as being out of date and they either didnt trust it or went digital.
bout a week ago we have customers who sell us a lot of their old film and darkroom gear and such. One of the boxes came with a lot of enlarger equipment, and obviously a student setup because had alot of assignment folders with contact prints and the likes. One of the contents that we could not resell obviously was a box of Kodak Polycontrast III RC 8x10 paper, 250 sheets of it ( or very full to it with maybe 10% cut into 4x5 sheets ). That and a 25 pack of ilford Multigrade IV 8x10 Fiber based paper, so I borrowed a contact printer from work and bought some dektol and made some contact prints and thought that was cool.
Then the other day the opportunity for me to purchase about 150 foot of Kodak Technical Pan 25, 4 rolls of Agfa Pan 50 120s, three units of Technidol developer, and some other stuff all for 50$, so I took that offer.
Then today, one of the store's regular Mike, stoped by the store, and was showing me an enlarger he had, I guess intending originally to sell it to the store, he instead ended up giving me the enlarger.
The enlarger is a Kindermann enlarger, with a 6x9 glass negative carrier, that seems to have four knobs to slide in some frames like if yer printing 6x6 you can slide the bars over only to show the 6x6 frame, It also has a Schneider Kreuznach Componar 105 f4,5 enlarger lens. Also the hand-made wooden platform it is on, seems to have 4 levels for the large paper board, I can put the paper on the top, second from top, second from bottom, or very bottom. I guess allowing me to print upto 20x30 (or least a crop-equivilent as the paper board I think at best is 16x20 if not 11x14, I just know the 8x10 sheet of paper seemed to cover a quarter of the paper board. ) I did a quick enlarge/crop of a 6x7 negative I had for 2 seconds @ f/6.3 , and did a quick developed, rather impressed with the results, tho I may need to expose a tad longer (blacks not as solid black within the picture. ) and I should probally utilize that thing that looks like a microscope, which I'm told is designed for critical focusing.
so yes all in all, I am a very happy camper, and just in time too because I got a booth reserve for one of the art festivals coming up and might be nice to get down to doing some traditional B&W for sale.
any tips, advice, superstitions etc that I should keep in mind?
Now I already have a fridge full of chrome and black and white film over the last few months either from obtaining 30+ years expired film from the store, or some people online who decided to let me have their stock of chrome 120s and such as being out of date and they either didnt trust it or went digital.
bout a week ago we have customers who sell us a lot of their old film and darkroom gear and such. One of the boxes came with a lot of enlarger equipment, and obviously a student setup because had alot of assignment folders with contact prints and the likes. One of the contents that we could not resell obviously was a box of Kodak Polycontrast III RC 8x10 paper, 250 sheets of it ( or very full to it with maybe 10% cut into 4x5 sheets ). That and a 25 pack of ilford Multigrade IV 8x10 Fiber based paper, so I borrowed a contact printer from work and bought some dektol and made some contact prints and thought that was cool.
Then the other day the opportunity for me to purchase about 150 foot of Kodak Technical Pan 25, 4 rolls of Agfa Pan 50 120s, three units of Technidol developer, and some other stuff all for 50$, so I took that offer.
Then today, one of the store's regular Mike, stoped by the store, and was showing me an enlarger he had, I guess intending originally to sell it to the store, he instead ended up giving me the enlarger.
The enlarger is a Kindermann enlarger, with a 6x9 glass negative carrier, that seems to have four knobs to slide in some frames like if yer printing 6x6 you can slide the bars over only to show the 6x6 frame, It also has a Schneider Kreuznach Componar 105 f4,5 enlarger lens. Also the hand-made wooden platform it is on, seems to have 4 levels for the large paper board, I can put the paper on the top, second from top, second from bottom, or very bottom. I guess allowing me to print upto 20x30 (or least a crop-equivilent as the paper board I think at best is 16x20 if not 11x14, I just know the 8x10 sheet of paper seemed to cover a quarter of the paper board. ) I did a quick enlarge/crop of a 6x7 negative I had for 2 seconds @ f/6.3 , and did a quick developed, rather impressed with the results, tho I may need to expose a tad longer (blacks not as solid black within the picture. ) and I should probally utilize that thing that looks like a microscope, which I'm told is designed for critical focusing.
so yes all in all, I am a very happy camper, and just in time too because I got a booth reserve for one of the art festivals coming up and might be nice to get down to doing some traditional B&W for sale.
any tips, advice, superstitions etc that I should keep in mind?
