Topic: Channeling Edward Weston

[Adam Doe]

I'd recently grown comfortable developing all manner of black and white film at home when the urge to create prints at home surfaced suddenly. Not having an enlarger I decided to have a go with bare bulb contact printing a la Edward Weston.

Some googling turned up links on people using 7.5 watt night light replacement bulbs. These are handy as they fit a standard light socket I picked one up for a couple of dollars as well as a cheap metal bowl reflector work lamp, for about six dollars and a pane of window replacement glass to hold the negative down on the paper. Total cost of all three items was around eleven dollars.

My first attempt had the bulb about 3 feet above the paper but I found that distance did not leave me enough time to properly control the exposure. When I increased the distance to about five feet control times improved considerably. I used a metronome app on my phone (placed face down and shielded from my work area to avoid excess light) set to 180 clicks per minute so I could track thirds if a second. I would have preferred fourths but the app wouldn't go to 240 bpm.

My results were promising, though not yet something to display. I plan on honing the process.

Does anyone else do bare bulb printing? Any thoughts, tips or wisdom to impart would be appreciated.

[Urban Hafner]

Great idea I'm still setting up my darkroom, it's just not quite light tight, yet. Also, not time

[Adam Doe]

Mine is not light tight, just mostly light tight. I do have to wait until the sun has set fully. One might I was working on tray developing some ortho litho film and a lightning storm blew by outside. There was lots of panicky covering things up as flashes of light came into the room.

[Francois]

Well, the hard thing is getting exposure correctly. In the old days, they used to use paper that had very little sensitivity so it gave them a lot of latitude when it comes to exposure.

If you find the bulb too bright, you can always put it on a dimmer like I did for my enlargers. This lets you have long enough exposures for proper results. Look at charity shops and church basements; they almost always have some for very cheap.

[JoeV]

Better than a dimmer switch is enclosing the light source in a housing and using a small aperture to control the exposure. The problem with dimming an incandescent lamp is that the color spectrum shifts to the red as the filament cools, which entirely changes the exposure and contrast of the paper.

My light source for pre flashing, which also works for contact printing onto conventional enlarging paper, is a metal soup can with an aperture designed to give a moderately long exposure time.. I use a low wattage bulb to minimize heat buildup.

As for contact printing, Weston often used paper made for contact printing, whose emulsion was primarily silver chloride. Kodak's Azo was the last of the fiber based silver chloride papers made, but now Michael Smith has Lodima contact printing paper in manufacture.

Silver chloride papers require a UV-rich light source, though many brighter incandescent lamps will provide UV if the wattage is sufficient. People today are experimenting with grids of compact fluorescent lamps for printing Lodima paper.

~Joe

[Moiz]

Hi Adam, I've done similar experimentation using both tungsten and led bulbs but have found that, even with multigrade filters, I was struggling to get the sort of contrast I wanted.

I had a set up like what joe suggested, bulb in a can with a 10mm hole at the bottom, covered with a piece of tracing paper.

Unfortunately, I don't think this system is suited to multigrade papers. Like joe said, azo papers had a much longer exposure time and were, if I'm not mistaken, graded rather than multigrade.

My solution was to pick up a really cheap small enlarger from the bay and an enlarger bulb (cost £40 = $60?) and have had much better success contact printing 5x4 negs.

[Urban Hafner]

An enlarge is of course the best solution. Unfortunately there's no space here. As for the fact that I want to have the room completely dark: Loading 18x24 film holders probably won't work in my tiny darkbag

[Mike Crawford]

You may well have it, but if not, highly recommend the book Darkroom 2 published by Lustrum press. Long out of print but second hand copies are easily available;
http://www.abebooks.com/products/isbn/9780912810218/9888284815
Big section on Cole Weston on how he printed Dad's negs. Also features photographer's such as Aaron Siskind and Lisette Model.

Volume 1 very good too!

[Francois]

If you're having problems with contrast being too low, you can always use a green colored bulb. For dropping contrast, use a blue bulb.
I know it sounds counter intuitive but on cold cathode and VC enlargers, they mix blue and green light to make up for all the range of grades.