Seamless printing.

[baachitraka]

I planning to print @max 8x10 inches with 35mm negatives and also have no plans to change formats that soon. Is an easel really required for seamless printing? How can I manage without an easel?

 

[Ian C]

In English the term is “borderless”, prints without a discernable border. An easel is a convenience, not a necessity.

It used to be that enlargers were customarily equipped with a red safe-placement filter. You’d first compose and focus the image to overlap the edges of an upside-down scrap print of the same size paper you want to use.

Then, with the enlarger lamp on, you’d place the red safety filter under the lens so that a dim, red image was projected, remove the scrap sheet, and position the enlarging paper on the baseboard in the projected image where wanted and switch off the lamp.

Then you’d remove the safety filter and trigger the timer to expose the paper.

The red filter allows placing the paper without exposing it provided that it doesn’t stay in the red light for any significant time.

If you don’t have the safety filter, you can tape rulers to the baseboard along 2 adjacent edges of the focus/composing sheet and place the enlarging paper against those 2 positioning references under safelight, and then expose.

 

[MattKing]

What Ian said.

You will want an easel - especially if you start printing different sizes (4x5, 4x6, 5x7, 6.75x10 etc.).

But you can certainly make do until you have one.

And paradoxically, an adjustable easel designed to give you borders works great for making borderless prints - just set it to create a spot that the paper drops into (that is how I print my postcards borderless).

 

[nate.m]

Before I had an easel, I had some MDF cut out into different sizes which could then be placed on the baseboard. So you could get a MDF board cut at 8x10 and then move it around the baseboard to fit the image you want, then turn the light off, align the paper to the board by feeling the edges of it and expose.

I hope that makes sense.

 

[Jerevan]

The biggest problem as I see it is the handling of the paper, both during the developing and after. If you don't have a border, you'll always be grabbing the pictorial parts, subjecting it to possible damage.

If you want borderless, I would work with a slight white border and would trim it away afterwards.

 

[baachitraka]

Oh yeah, I did not really think about that.

 

[baachitraka]

I may pick 24x30 easel...

 

[MattKing]

I may pick 24x30 easel...

I'm assuming you are referring to centimetres when you say that

EDIT: an 8"x10"/24cm x 30cm 2 blade easel in reasonable shape should be fine to start with. Keep your eyes open for an 11" x 14" 4 blade easel - they are definitely worth looking for.

 

[baachitraka]

I picked 30x40cm easel for EUR 20. I hope this is sufficient to the prints upto 9"x12". Thank you all.