My first attempt at retouching a silver gelatin print

I recently learnt that a majority of people who produce their own silver gelatin prints in the darkroom have to re-touch their photos.

Unfortunately, no matter how much care I take in keeping my darkroom environment as dust free as possible, it seems to be inevitable that dust marks still show on my prints.

The main issues I’m having with dust in my prints are largely down to using a Condenser enlarger (the Durst DA900) which show up any spec of dust so will need spot retouching afterwards.

There is also another type of enlarger called a diffuser enlarger and these types of enlarger give a slightly softer image than a condenser enlarger but they also don’t show up the dust the way a condenser enlarger does.

Since I belong to a community darkroom with only one enlarger, I don’t have the choice of being able to use the diffuser type of enlarger. However, I do like the enlarger I currently use due to the sharpness of the images it produces.

After researching online about how to avoid such marks, I realised that I would need to look at retouching them myself after the final stage of printing and drying.

I found some paints by Fotospeed which are made specifically for this purpose in black and white photos.

I also learnt that a sable hair brush would be best for applying the paint to the photos and I decided to use a 000 sable hair brush which I purchased from my local art store as I figured a finer brush would be more subtle for spotting/retouching my prints.

I unfortunately couldn’t find much information about the best way of applying the paint to my photos, although I did find one video on youtube but it wasn’t using the particular brand of paint I’m using.

I recently printed this Windmill photo which I took in Rye, East Sussex using my Hasselblad 500 C/M camera and Fomapan 200 black and white film.

As you can see, the sky is very grey in this photo and there are quite a few marks due to dust in the print. I therefore thought this would be a good print to test out the retouching technique.

The photo is printed on Ilford Resin Coated Multigrade IV Pearl paper and I printed a couple of copies to help me practice.

I learnt from the youtube video I watched that it’s best to put out the paints onto a white ceramic plate then slowly mix/blend until the shades match the part of the photo I’m trying to re-touch and apply the paint.

This actually was quite difficult to do on my first attempt and I’m not overly impressed with the results:

You’ll see that I’ve been quite heavy handed in areas and the paint is darker than I would have liked.

I’ve realised that whilst I started the process slowly, I began to get a little impatient and when I wasn’t seeing much progress in adding the paint, I started to make it darker too quickly which I think was my big mistake.

I also think I picked quite a difficult photo for my first attempt since there were quite a lot of marks on it to re-touch.

I still need to do some more research into the best way of retouching my final prints and I definitely need to practice a lot more to hopefully reach a skill level where I’m happy with the standard of the print re-touch.

Taking photos of my nephews with the Hasselblad 500 C/M Camera

I note the majority of my photos tend to be of still objects outdoors and I’ve recently been trying to push myself outside of my comfort zone and try other types of photography.

From a previous blog post, you’ll see I attempted to take some indoor photos of my cats which wasn’t very successful.

Next I thought I’d attempt to take some photos of my nephews using some black and white film.

So with my Hasselblad in tow, I headed to a local park with my sister and nephews.

I decided on a park setting as I thought this would be enjoyable for them and ideally, I wanted to capture some photos of them having fun.

I wasn’t sure how successful this photo session would be since my nephews are used to having photos of them taken digitally which is a very quick process.

Obviously, my film format Hasselblad camera was going to take longer.

I recently acquired a Hasselblad Lens Shade for my 80mm lens on the advice I had received from a professional photographer who used this exact model camera back in the 1970s/80s. It’s a lens shade made for the Planar C and F lenses (which mine is) and is provided with a bayonet mount. There is an alignment dot which helps facilitate attachment to the lens.

The reason I decided to use a lens shade was because it was a very bright, sunny day so I thought it would help reduce sun glare and reflections. It also helps protect exposed lens surfaces.

To my surprise, my nephews were really good at staying still and posing for the photos. They were absolutely fascinated by the camera and quite enjoyed the experience.

Here are some photos I took using the Ilford Delta 400 black and white film:

After I had used up the roll of film, my nephews wanted more photos taken of them which was really lovely. Thankfully I’d also packed some Kodak 400TX film so used this too. Here are some of the photos I took:

Overall I was really pleased with how the photos turned out as I didn’t know what to expect. I think it helped that they really enjoyed me taking photos of them and it was a fun environment to photograph in.

How different a photo can look from basic scanning to printing a copy of it in the darkroom

I suppose it’s quite obvious that there will be differences in a photo from being scanned onto a computer compared to if you print a copy of it in the darkroom.

I really noticed a difference in the contrast in a couple of my photos this week that I’d originally scanned using my Epson V600 scanner and then developed copies in the darkroom.

These photos were taken using my Hasselblad 500 C/M Camera and Ilford Delta 400 film.

The first image was of a close up of a tombstone in the shape of a cross with a tree in the background. Here is the original image that I scanned on my Epson V600 scanner:

I didn’t tweak the original scan as I was happy with the original exposure. As you can see, it isn’t high in contrast and there are many subtle shades of grey which is what I would have expected from the Ilford Delta 400 film.

I’m not sure what I was expecting when I decided to print an enlargement in the darkroom but I was surprised by how different the contrast and tones were:

I cropped the photo slightly as I wanted more focus on the tombstone and tree and I felt the extra detail on the right hand side of more trees took attention away from this. The biggest difference I noted though was how much darker the trees and shadow detail were. Also, the grass, tombstones and background detail were left with really nice shades of grey.

I next decided to do an enlargement of a tree image I’d taken on the same roll of film with the sun shining through the trees. I was keen to see how this would look in a print. Here is the original photo I scanned on my Epson V600 scanner:

I made no amendments to this photo at the scanning stage as I was happy with the exposure. As before, the photo consists of various shades of grey with no real contrast.

Here is the same image which I printed in the darkroom:

Once again, I cropped the image, this time on the left hand side because I wanted more focus on the two big trees with the sun shining through. You’ll notice that the greys are much darker on this print compared to the original scan. I’ve also lost the grey detail from the sky which was in the original scan. This gives the image a lot more contrast.

I used Ilford chemicals to develop both prints and also Ilford Multigrade IV RC Deluxe Pearl 8×10 paper. I exposed both images for 1 minute and I didn’t use any contrast filters.

Personally I prefer the darkroom prints over the original scanned images. I’m very keen on contrast in my photos as I feel this adds to the dramatic effect I wanted to achieve in these particular images I took.

Perhaps I could have achieved this effect too on the scanner by changing the contrast but I am just surprised by how different they look in print.

I’m very grateful to have access to a darkroom and I get so much satisfaction in seeing my images almost come to life in print instead of just looking at them on the screen.

I’ve also enjoyed messing about cropping my images to see how different it can make my photo look.

Needless to say, there are many more prints that I now want to develop in the darkroom to see how different they look compared to my original scanned images.

Lastly, the darkroom prints have also been scanned onto the computer using my Epson V600 scanner and they look the same as the actual print.

Shooting black and white film with the Lubitel 166B

Following on from my recent blog about using the Lubitel 166B camera for the first time and after being quite impressed with the photos I took with some colour 120mm film, I knew I wanted to try out some black and white film in the camera.

I had some Lomography Lady Grey 400 120mm black and white film in my stash so promptly loaded the camera with it and had a walk along Brighton Beach.

I’m still getting used to the camera so there were again some wonky photos but that aside, I was really impressed with the overall style of the black and white photos that the camera produced.

Here are some of the photos I took and you can judge for yourselves:

I’m definitely going to be shooting more black and white film with this camera, perhaps with some different makes of film to see the difference in the photos.