Printing from Dark Negatives

cromatt · Jun 5, 2022

Hi

I developed a roll with Adonal (admittedly not long enough) & now my negs are too dark so its hard to focus them through my enlarger. Is there anything I can do to lighten them to make succesful prints or is it too late?

Paul Howell · Jun 5, 2022

You can bleach negatives with Farmers Reducer.

grain elevator · Jun 5, 2022

You can bleach them. But before going that way, have you made sure they are properly fixed (underfixing would also make negatives dense and flat) and have you tried focusing with the darkroom safe lights off? That helps a bit in this situation. And of course with open aperture and no contrast filter, I mention this just in case, sorry if that's insultingly obvious.
Btw. if you're negatives are too dense overall, you've overexposed (and possibly overdeveloped) or maybe underfixed.

Sirius Glass · Jun 5, 2022

Does your enlarge have a "white" mode without filters? Does your enlarger have a "High" and "Lo"?

pentaxuser · Jun 5, 2022

cromatt, what grain elevator has said about your negatives being overexposed makes sense given that you have described them as too dark and yet you have said that the negs are not developed long enough.

So are the shadow areas very light compared to the highlights?

Is it possible for you to take a digital picture of the negatives and show us those negatives.

You might be asking what this has to do with the correct advice about you dark negatives but once we see the negatives our advice about what you do can be more easily targeted to giving you the best solution to the problem and maybe preventative action for the future

Thanks

pentaxuser

cromatt · Jun 5, 2022

so first off, thanks so much guys!

Safelights are off & Aperture is as wide as it´ll go - I don´t have a white mode or lo-hi.

I have this enlarger: https://www.fotoimpex.com/darkroom/adox-enlarger-for-35mm-and-medium-format.html

I´ve attached a pic of my contact print & some negatives

otto.f · Jun 5, 2022

Do you use a grain focuser?

busrider · Jun 5, 2022

Do you have a scanner or a digital camera or cellphone Make a contact sheet of all your negatives and just scan or rephotograph the images from that and chalk it to experience. I like film like yours much better than crappy thin film,

Andrew O'Neill · Jun 5, 2022

Work with them. You'll be surprised. You should see some of my students negatives!! Focus them as best as you can with a grain focuser. Make a test strip. Once you nail the time for your highlights, you can decide which direction you need to go as far as contrast, etc. There are several photographers who preferred working with dense negatives. Edward Weston comes to mind... If you really want to go the Farmer's Reducer route, then by all means... but practice first with dense negatives you don't care about. Farmer's reducer can get away from you quite quickly, if you are not careful.

MattKing · Jun 5, 2022

Those are colour film negatives, so they are going to be harder to work with when trying to make a black and white print.
You need to increase the contrast as much as you are able, and you need to print the contact proof sheet for a longer time.
When printing the negatives themselves, the orange mask in colour negatives will restrict the contrast available and, as you have discovered, make it harder to see the image.
Try focusing with the negative moved so that you can see the edge of the frame, and then carefully move the negative back into place. Alternatively, focus a black and white negatives set to the magnification you want, and then switch the colour negative back in.
In either case, after framing and focusing, stop down the lens 2 stops and be prepared for long exposure times.
Hope this helps.

M Carter · Jun 5, 2022

Paul Howell said:
You can bleach negatives with Farmers Reducer.

The problem with over-developed negatives is dense highlights; usually by the time Farmer's can affect the highlights, the shadows will be gone due to their much lower density. Farmer's reducer is more effective on low-density - it's kinda low-hanging-fruit. there are the verious proportional/non-proportional bleaches out there, an unsharp mask can work wonders, or rehalogenating bleach followed by weak developer and limited agitation can sometimes bring a more balanced neg out of the mess. (The weak developer will exhaust quickly on areas of greatest density while continuing to work on the shadow areas without exhausting as fast. In my experience, it's best done under room light with a glass dish on a light box to see what you're getting, and stop bath handy).

Doremus Scudder · Jun 5, 2022

What's really going on here? The orange mask on the negatives makes me think that this is color negative film that was then developed in conventional black-and-white chemistry. Is that the case?

If not, where is all that base coming from? Are the negatives overexposed? Overdeveloped? Both? Are they severely underfixed?

OP, inquiring minds want to know!

Doremus

pentaxuser · Jun 5, 2022

Like you Doremus I am confused as to what we are looking at. Like Matt says the first set of negs look like colour negs so presumably these have been developed on Adonal as cromatt says and I assume that the very low contrast grey-looking second set are contact prints from the b&w developed colour film. I cannot see enough of the detail on the negs to say if they are dark

A pity that cromatt didn't say that it is a colour film, assuming that it is really a colour film developed in Adonal I am not sure that it would be sensible to bother with this combination of colour film and Adonal again

cromatt, if it is colour film and Adonal-developed how long did you develop it for and where did you find the development times ?

Thanks

pentaxuser

MattKing · Jun 5, 2022

I'm also wondering if that may be cine film, based on the apparent shape of the sprocket holes.
And if it is ECN-2 cine film, with some remjet on it, all bets are off.

btaylor · Jun 5, 2022

It’s color film! Interesting, I never considered developing color film in B&W chemicals. I imagine it will be difficult to get a great print out of it. Try some B&W film stock to start out with and you will get much close to you goal of a nice B&W print. Have fun!

cromatt · Jun 19, 2022

Sorry for the lack of response, I didn't get any notifications! Anyway, thanks everyone, I did forget to say that this is colour film developed with bw developer

Don_ih · Jun 19, 2022

Even colour film developed properly can be hard to print on b&w paper. Kodak made a paper specifically for printing colour negative to b&w (Panalure) - but every bit of it I have is badly age fogged. That paper also needed to be handled with no safelight (thus the "Pan" in its name).

The best bet for getting contrast out of those negatives is printing to a graded paper, since the orange acts as a #1 or #0 filter on vc paper. Results will still be weird.

Raghu Kuvempunagar · Jun 19, 2022

cromatt said:
Sorry for the lack of response, I didn't get any notifications! Anyway, thanks everyone, I did forget to say that this is colour film developed with bw developer

For colour film developed in B&W chemistry, you can do steps 4-9 described in the post below:

what is the last thing you developed or printed

Over the previous weekend, I ran 16 rolls of 120 Tri-X in Pyrocat HD. I'm so thankful I have a Jobo or running that much film would be a pain in the ass.

www.photrio.com

Printing from Dark Negatives

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