Morning folks - it has been a while, I know, but Summer is a time for hanging about in the garden, reading, eating raspberries, y'know, that sort of languidity, but as the mornings are getting darker, I am getting back to a certain swing . . . so, without further ado - onwards!
Now, this may or may not prove interesting/dull however, if you're like me, and have a darkroom, you'll print a fair bit and probably (also like me) have boxes of:
a. Prints
b. Scraps
c. 'Work' prints
d. I'll do a better one next time
However fortunately (unlike dust bunnies, bags of documents to be shredded, receipts, bus tickets, etc etc) they don't breed when you're not looking at them; no, they sit, patiently, waiting to be admired, adored, framed, scanned or, most likely, tossed out in a fit of pique!
And whilst they're not exactly a problem, they become a problem of sorts.
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| Pigs, Piglets And Runts |
I was brought up short by this recently when I had reason to find some prints to take to a Saturday morning 'portfolio' session at Dundee's DCA.
"Hmmmmmm" is what I said to myself as I waded through paper sizes ranging from 6 x 4" to 9.5 x 12" . . ."just where does one start?"
The majority of stuff was printed on 8 x 10" and a mix at that, of Resin and Fibre all from different manufacturers; however the finer looking prints were, to my eye, on the smaller paper sizes.
I particularly liked a set printed on some really old Agfa MCC FB. It had a semi-warm look to the paper base and the gloss was JUST RIGHT.
The only problem though, was that the paper size was 5 x 7" meaning that the images (all squares) were 11 x 11 CM, or approximately 4½" square.
That is pretty tiny really, and all the more so when you consider that they were taken on one of the world's great optics - the Zeiss 38mm Biogon.
They were also all shot on a tripod, with the film (Ilford FP4+) being carefully developed in Pyrocat-HD.
There's no two ways about it, to my eyes this set-up produced a top class negative, with nothing being washed out, really good mids and shadow detail.
The negatives printed dead simply at Grade 3, with little hand-wafting.
Ideal is what I would normally say.
But then I printed them small.
Did I say small?
I meant to say dead small.
It seems a bit incongruous to me, that I take all that optical and image quality and condense it to sit proudly on a print not much bigger than yer oldy holiday snaps of yore, but with much less image space being taken up!
Bonkers actually.
These should be BIG prints and hung somewhere in my study, and yet . . . .
There's something about small prints that I like.
Apart from being considerably cheaper to produce, a 5x7" has a nice tactile quality. Even nicer is the old whole plate size of 6.5 x 8.5".
Where 5x7" feels small in the hand, whole plate feels small but substantial, and in fact in a strange way and to my faculties, actually bigger than 8x10". I've no idea why that is, but it is a lovely format, though very short on choices of paper.
Anyway, all this tomfoolery highlighted something to me - I need to get my arse in gear and print a portfolio of decent images I am happy with on consistently sized paper.
It's no good having some 9.5 x 12s' some 8x10s', some 5x7s'. some 6x4s' all dotted about the place with images taken on 35mm, 645, 6x6, 6x7, 6x9 and 5x4 - it all looks too bitty, and, inconsistent.
So, self soundly admonished, that's a project for The Winter.
I have a reasonable stock of fibre paper too, including a box of unopened Grade 2 Galerie and a box of Kentmere Matt (lovely stuff) from when Kentmere was still based in Cumbria.
So I could use that up, or, nail my trousers to the Fibre Only Mast, sell my kidneys and go all the same manufacturer - though my choices there are pretty much only Ilford MG, Grade 3 Galerie, Art 300, Bergger, Foma and possibly Adox - and that is it.
The old Agfa MCC fibre is wonderful stuff but I only have it in 5x7 - I would have happily printed everything on that. Adox's version isn't quite the same, but it IS a good paper.
In a world of choice, ye olde darkroom enthusiast is being painted further and further into a distant corner.
Of course, with the way energy is going over here, I might not even be able to turn the enlarger on . . . that takes me back to pre-enlarger days when I tried contact printing Rollei negatives using a sheet of glass and a snooded torch . . . yes, well, enuff said . . . .
Wish me luck.
Till next time, stop skipping and try hopping and jumping instead.
H xx
