Making many photoalbum prints.

Share your thoughts on making many small prints. How do you print, say 50 10x15cm "photoalbum prints"?

So far i have only made 20-30cm wide enlargements of single images in my darkroom, both color and B/W. Complete rolls of color films i have up untill now sent to labs or developed my self, then scanned and sent files to labs.

I have recently got so bad results from my labs that i have started to think about making all the small prints my self (not even good enough for snapshots, even light damaged film!). Now thinking about the best way to do it. Doing them one by one feels a bit time consuming to say the least. My first thoughts was about 4" wide roll paper and some home made easel, but how do i develop it?

Maybe a long tray so i can develop 10 prints at the same time on roll paper? Maybe wider paper with two columns of images, and a bit more complicated easel?

Then i thought of doing it on 20x30 sheets 4 prints on each, and develop in a wide and long tray with a light sealed lid and bottom drain?

Maybe a tank that can take 10 20x30cm with 4 images on each? But that would require way to much chemistry that will go bad in my very low "production".

So, how do you do it? Any suggestions on how i can do it at home, with low chem. usage and without any expensive automated machinery?

hi steelneck.
ive been making tiny prints for ages
i made myself an easel out of mat board, and
made a nice varied edge to it and just cut down paper
small enough to fit in the easel.
ive never used rolls of paper and would imagine
if you cut it down it might work well.
i tend to expose maybe 10-12 prints at a time and back to back them between my fingers
and flop my hands back and forth into the developer to get them all covered ..
then still back to back shuffle them in the developer bottom to top 4 or 6 times, then rock the tray ...
no expensive machinery just hands and trays ...
i'd be careful exposing a few images on 1 sheet, sometimes 1 exposure can fog the rest.

john

For batches of small prints, look for something like a Saunders Proofing Easel. The base of the easel is a 12x15" tray with sides, and there is a heavy mask with a handle that fits in the base and has a 4x5" window in the center and that lifts out completely. You put an 8x10" sheet of paper in the tray, moving it alternately to each corner of the base, so that you can quickly and efficiently make four exposures on an 8x10" sheet, and then you can develop the sheets in batches, so if you have 40 prints, that's only 10 sheets of 8x10". The weight of the mask prevents exposure of the adjacent areas of the paper. Dry and cut the prints with a trimmer.

I use one of these for making postcards, and it's very quick. It helps quite a bit if you have a closed loop enlarging system or a compensating timer like a Metrolux, so that you can make short exposures accurately, which further speeds up the process.

jnanian said:

i'd be careful exposing a few images on 1 sheet, sometimes 1 exposure can fog the rest.

Click to expand...

Yes i know. I thought about making an easel of about the kind David talks about above, with a black steel sheet having a 10x15cm corner cut out as mask. I have no trouble doing wood or metal work as i am an old mechanic and have most tools around.

This would mostly be for color work, so i have to "invent" something easy to use in darkness.

With sheets i guess the easel-part will be easiest made with 20x30 sheets, a 10x15 in each corner. Probably cheapest to buy rolls and cut my own sheets.

For the development part, two such sheets at the same time back to back is 8 pictures, then lights on and hang to dry. I think that would be doable. Two times makes 16 and that is about half a roll. I guess that is close to what usually ends up in my photo album from every roll on average. On a good roll it may be three times.

But coming home from a vacation with 5 rolls.. now it starts to feel like a lot repetitive work again..

Any thoughts or better suggestions?

I asked this question myself a few months ago, wondering about various logistics. I now have a 500-ft roll of Foma Variant III RC, and have cut perhaps 100 sheets of it. It's tedious work doing the small prints--I use a bladed easel--but so worth it. Sometimes one framed picture simply isn't enough, and there's not enough wall space or frame money for more. Albums are such a pleasure to flip through. But yes, it's repetitive...usually when I'm making 4x6s, I'm not the only one who wants them, so there's multiple copies of each. I have not yet done multiple exposures of DIFFERENT negatives at once, but I have done several copies of the same negative at once--expose, put back in safebox and take out new sheet, expose, repeat, put all the tiny prints in same 8x10 developing tray.

Lately I've been wondering about my next couple trips, which rather unusually, will be with family...so, lots of photos to print and share. My original plan was to keep using the Foma, but as happy as I am with sliding the RC prints into album sleeves, for the next couple trips I thought about making scrapbooks for my family...with unprotected photos. So I'm beginning to consider possibly making tiny fiber prints for that. But maybe not...it does sound like a lot of hassle.

One technique that I find helpful, when the paper size and image sizes permit it, is to print two images on one double size sheet of paper. As an example, if you are printing 4"x5" prints (including borders) cut your paper to 8"x5" and tape a mask to your easel to block out extraneous light. Then print one image, open the easel, rotate the paper, close the easel and print the second image on the other half of the paper.

This cuts in half the number of sheets you need to juggle when developing.