Search results for: 'work it'

General health and safety advice This section provides advice to our customers on the safe handling, use and storage of our photochemical solutions, best practice for waste disposal and specific advice to women who are pregnant or breastfeeding a child. If you are looking for information on the chemical safety of HARMAN photochemistry solutions, please refer to the Safety Data Sheets (known as SDS or MSDS) 24 HOUR OHES emergency line for advice on chemical incidents Safe working practices It is essen...

Retouching is normally done to remove blemishes from the negative or the final print. It can also be used to change the tone or remove unwanted detail.  As retouching can be difficult, care is required. Advice for retouching The most risky retouching techniques involve removing parts of the image, by bleaching, cutting, or scraping with the edge of a sharp knife. The addition of density is generally less risky, and can be done using dye, paint etc, or a suitable soft pencil. When retouching prints from o...

Mounting your Prints Even the most stunning print can look better when it has been properly mounted. Mounted prints are also better protected as they are kept flat with the image separated from the immediate surroundings by unobtrusive margins. There are no hard and fast rules about mounting prints; the most suitable results will depend on individual preference, the nature of the image, the intended use and other circumstances. It is recommended that only boards and other materials intended for the p...

The ILFORD PHOTO Archival Sequence, or Optimum Permanence wash system is a method of processing fibre base papers for maximum longevity while reducing the amount of water and time used. Whilst standard fixing and washing recommendations will give excellent print permanence for all commercial needs. When optimum permanence is needed, perhaps for archival storage of prints, the following fixing and washing sequences at 18–24ºC/65–75ºF (including wash water) are recommended using ILFORD WASHAID. Fi...

Split grade printing The version of split grade printing described here is that taught to me by the ILFORD head printers, Mike Walden and Terry Offord, and is the simplest, fastest way to make good darkroom prints from pretty much any negative. (The exception is really underexposed negatives to print these you usually only need high contrast). This is a very powerful technique that can be used routinely with variable contrast (VC) papers, such as ILFORD MULTIGRADE. It makes use of the differing performa...

What is the luminogram process? The Luminogram process is light, directed onto photo paper in the darkroom. About as basic as ‘photography’ can get. It has been with us for a long while. László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) started using it in 1922, while Gottfried Jäger described it as "the result of pure light design; the rudimentary expression of an interaction of light and photosensitive material… a kind of self-representation of light." And yet it has always seemed to sit on the sideline...

1992 - How I met Masterji Soon after leaving my staff photographer’s position on the local newspaper where I’d been employed for the previous 5 years and with the luxury of in-house film processing no longer a convenient option I began using my local city centre professional colour lab, in Coventry. During the accumulating hours I spent in that lab waiting for my 35mm films to process, watching small colour prints dropping from the conveyor belt from the end of the machine, I very watched a short In...

I always loved celluloid pictures. Maybe I was drawn in as a baby, while the 8mm camera whirred (and the handheld light blinded). Maybe it was being so thankful to my big brother for lending me a 35mm rangefinder and showing me how to use it at age 10. Might have been the Minolta-16 he gave me (as a graduation present?). What a sweet little 16 that is, and I’ve still got it. Can you get those cartridges now? I envied his Pentax Spotmatic as I shot 8mm motion pictures on the point and shoot family camera,...

 A lifelong hobby One of my lifelong hobbies is photography. I have been taking photographs since I was about 10 years old when I was given an old Kodak folding pocket camera that had belonged to an uncle, Bertrand Perrett, who was a professional photographer and painter in England. I learned to develop and print black-and-white film at school when I was a teenager back in the 1970s. The Slower Pace When digital photography came along I moved to that medium, but recently I’ve come back to film aga...

How I work I believe in self-learning, and I’m always up for something new to explore. I adhere to a strict code of conduct and don’t believe in photoshop, or do much if any post processing. It has to be an exceptional day for me to crop an image. I use Ilford’s Delta 400 for most of my work and use XP2 Super when I need my results fast. Changing times I was born in 1988, which meant that I got a first class ticket to experience the world converting from analogue to digital during m...