Printing help requested...

Hi APUG'ers, I'm a darkroom novice & have developed only a half dozen rolls of film. This weekend I decided to venture into printing. What a challenge!! I worked for an hour setting up my temporary darkroom(my bathroom) & mixing chemicals. After that task, I proceeded to make test strips for about 2 hours. LOL! Obviously I didn't know what I was doing, even after reading what felt like tons of info on printing. Anyway, the prints I made came out blurry with little to no focus anywhere. I am 100% sure that on the negative(developed by pro lab, not me) the eyes are in focus. I am using a focus scope, but I am not seeing anything helpful in the scope while focusing the image. This is extremely frustrating, but I'm not going to give up because I know I can do it.
So now I'm here asking you fine folks for help. How do I focus the image for enlargement using the focus scope & the focusing knob? Or is there some other way I should be doing this?

Thanks for listening & your help

~Val

Do an initial focus by eye, then fine tune using the scope. I never used a scope for many years and managed, but they are a nice addition.

I'd suggest checking the focus rail isn't slipping after you've focused. What brand/model of enlarger are you using?

Also, don't do any funky dancing while waiting for the exposure to finish... you could be rocking the enlarging boat!

Edit : forgot to add, the 'pro' lab might give you clean negs back, but you responsible for focusing, so if you've got a loupe, or use a 50mm lens reversed, examine the neg to see if it's sharp!

Edit 2 : Focus with the lens at it's widest aperture, then stop down 2-3 stops for the exposure.

Edit 3 : Most focusing scopes need to be tuned to your eyesight. they usually have something in the field of view, like a thin wire, that should be sharply in focus to your eye. They usually have a method to ensure this is the case by adjusting the eyepiece (mine has a screw on the side that you loosen) Once you work how to adjust, look thru the eye piece and point the mirror at a bright light and adjust the eye piece to ensure the 'wire' is it's sharpest.

Where do you have the focus scope?

Is it on top of a blank sheet of photographic paper, held by your easel?

Can you see the grain in the film "pop" into focus, when you look through the scope?

Hope this helps.

Matt

Thanks for the reply Nige, here's more info on what I did:

I did an initial focus by eye & attempted to fine tune with scope, but just couldnt see anything with scope, maybe its me.
Enlarger is 35mm Durst F30 with Nikkor 50mm f/3.5 lens, it was given to me by another photog
I'll use my 50mm lens(camera or enlarger?) reversed to check the neg for sharpness, didnt know I could do that.
I didnt try focusing @ the widest aperture(3.5) & stopping down. Will give that a go as well.
I did play around a bit & decided to print f/4@20 & thats when I got the blurry image.

& oh yeah, no funky dancing while enlarger was on, but I did jump with excitement when I saw the image coming up in the developer, but I resisted taking it out before time was up.

Matt,
I sat the focus scope on top of the easel, but there wasnt any paper on it at the time. Should I have paper on it while using the focusing scope? Wouldnt that effect the exposure time because the light is on while I'm focusing? I did see the grain "pop" into & out of focus when I turned the focusing ring left & right, but I couldnt determine if that was making the image sharper. I also couldnt make out anything in the image like what part of the face I was looking at. Is this normal? Please tell me I'm not blind. LOL!

Use a scrap of paper to set the scope at the same height as the surface of your print will be. Once you see the grain sharp, that's the point of sharpest focus. Note, however, that the grain can be sharp, but the photo still out of focus (caused by focus error at time of taking the shot).

Hey Foxy!
Using one of those grain focusers is no easy task, so don't give up on it!
In the mean time, try focusing it by sight with the lens wide open like Nige says. move the enlarger head up & down with the fine "tuning" knob until the image looks sharp & clear.

As for the easel, I either use thin white card stock (or poster board) in the easel to crop & focus the image. Then, with the enlarger off, I remove the white card stock & put in the photo paper. It's much easier to see and focus the image on a white background than on the easel base. Some people also just take a sheet of their photo paper and develop/fix it without exposing it to light. That will also get you a white sheet to insert in the easel.

Hope this helps some! Good luck printing!

Thanks Ralph & Jeanette, I am going to give it another shot tomorrow night. I'm positive the image is in focus on the negative, so its my printing thats off.
I am using a white piece of printer paper on top of the easel when focusing the image because I could not see it on the black easel itself! LOL

Forgot to say something about test strips...

Most people print buy exposing for the highlights and adjusting contrast to control shadows (dark areas) What this means is you do your test strips across the bright sections of your pic (dark areas on the image projected on the easel).

So, assuming using Variable contrast paper, set up your enlarger by inserting a G2 filter. Stop down the lens 2-3 stops. Using graded paper you'd grab G2 I guess.

Lay a piece of paper across these highlight (dark on easel) areas and expose sections of the strip by covering up the stip with a bit of card (don't use photo paper as it's not opaque enough).

Numerous ways to time these test strips but if you've got something using f4 @ 20secs, I'd suggest stopoing the lens down one more stop (it will be sharper) and doing a sequence of 30,5,5,5,5 secs (paper will actually get 30,35,40,45,50 secs of exposure) and hopefully a likely time will be in there somewhere.

Once in the ball park, do another strip around that time to fine tune a bit. For example say 40secs looked pretty good, do another test strip of 36,2,2,2,2 (strips with 36,38,40,42,44 sec) to fine tune. Once you have your prefered time, do a whole sheet using that time to get an idea of the overall exposure.

Depending on your image, running test strips across (or up) a page may not tell you much. There are easels (including home made devices) that allow you to move the paper under the image so you expose the same section to different amounts of light. Without one of these devices, sometimes it's better to do tests using little bits of paper individually on the highlight area you want to get right.

Once you happy with the overall exposure for the print, you might like to alter the contrast to suit the picture you had in mind. Good experiment doing this at this stage of your printing career to see what happens. Using drop in filters (which I'm guessing your Durst uses) is handy because the exposure time will be the same for filters 00-3.5, then you double it for G4-5.

To use the lens (usually a 50mm camera lens but the enlarger lens might be ok)reversed as a loupe, you'll need to experiment with the distances for how far to hold it from the neg and how close to position your eye. From memory, you can't get your eye to close otherwise you won't see anything. Someone might be able to shed some light on this, as I haven't done it for a long time, nor have a lens handy to try it out! Also, try to place the neg on something where you can get some light shining thru it. During the day, a window works well. If you've got a flatbed scanner with Transparency adaptor, you can use that as a handy lightbox.


P.S. If you can't get a sharpish print when focusing on the easel, adding a single sheet of paper won't be a magic bullet!

A short treatise on Focussing Scopes...

Some focus scopes need to be configured for your eyesight by moving the eyepiece up or down. For example, with the widely used Paterson scope, you move the eyepiece so as to bring a horizontal wire inside the unit in to focus.

Almost all scopes need to be near the centre of the paper, directly underneath the lens; there are a couple that can be used at the edges but you are unlikely to have one of those. If you can find a middle tone near the centre, rather than a dark or very light area, it is easier to detect the grain. Try to ignore the little bit of the image you can see and concentrate on getting the grain in to focus.

Always focus with the enlarger lens wide open as it gives less depth of focus, making the focus/unfocussed transition sharper. It is worth checking with the scope after you stop down to see that the grain is still in focus as some older and cheaper lenses experience a focus shift as they are stopped down.

Good luck, and have fun! Bob.

foxyscootie said:

Hi APUG'ers, I'm a darkroom novice & have developed only a half dozen rolls of film. This weekend I decided to venture into printing. What a challenge!! I worked for an hour setting up my temporary darkroom(my bathroom) & mixing chemicals. After that task, I proceeded to make test strips for about 2 hours. LOL! Obviously I didn't know what I was doing, even after reading what felt like tons of info on printing. Anyway, the prints I made came out blurry with little to no focus anywhere. I am 100% sure that on the negative(developed by pro lab, not me) the eyes are in focus. I am using a focus scope, but I am not seeing anything helpful in the scope while focusing the image. This is extremely frustrating, but I'm not going to give up because I know I can do it.
So now I'm here asking you fine folks for help. How do I focus the image for enlargement using the focus scope & the focusing knob? Or is there some other way I should be doing this?

Thanks for listening & your help

~Val

Click to expand...

At the risk of stating the obvious and this has been mentioned in the replies along with other good advice: If you can see the grain sharply which you seemed to have now managed then the neg's projection on the easel is in focus. If the print is out of focus and you have eliminated any vibration during exposure and re-checked the focus when reducing the f-stop prior to exposure then it has to be a slipping focusing knob on the enlarger. Of course check that the neg wasn't out of focus anyway when it was exposed. Nothing will cure that.

There's usually a means of tightening the knob to the sliding tube that moves the bellows. Normally the knob should be tightened until it is quite stiff but still smooth to move. Try continuing to look down the focusing scope after you have taken your hand off the bellows knob. If there is movement over say the ensuing 30 secs then the knob requires tightening. On my Durst M605 the bellows will exert force to open themselves up if focusing the neg has compressed them to any extent and the screw requires that the knob is quite stiff to prevent this.

Sometimes getting the grain to pop isn't easy. It is helped if you have a neg with large writing on it. Advertising hoardings or car number plates or traffic signs are helpful. By eye it is usually possible to get these fairly sharp and then the neg will be close to giving you grain that's nearly in focus. The focus scope and very small movements with the focusing knob will get the grain to pop.

Best of luck

Pentaxuser

Thanks everyone for your help. Here's what I have found so far...

1) the print is not out of focus on the negative, used reversed 50mm to check sharpness & it is tack sharp
2) I just cant use the focus scope, so I'm going to use the suggestion of focusing @ widest aperture & stopping down 1-2 stops for printing.

Planning to give it another shot this weekend. I'll let you all know the results.

Thanks again!
~Val

Happy Turkey Day!!

Can't wait to see your results! Persistence!