Small Newspaper Darkroom (Darkroom Procedures)

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Get a cup of coffee (or tea, or a glass of soda, or...) and sit back as this might take a while, but I really need the help...

Several months ago the newspaper where I am the production manager (as in computers and graphics) was bought and our entire system was switched from in house printing to a sister-paper'sprinting facility. AS such we lost all of our darkrrom / pressroom presonnel and I was handed the keys to the darkroom and given a quickie course in basic black and white. All has been working fine, but I want to find a way to make it work better (and reassuring myself that I am not screwing up anywhere along the way sure wouldn't hurt). Here is the process and products we use:

Kodak TMax 400, TMax 100 and 3200 film, D76 developer, Kodak rapid fixer, photo flo 200 (?) Kodak Polycontrast RC papers and an RC processor (the papers and processor are only used for contact prints and resale prints as all of our news photos are scanned on a Microtek Scanmaker 35t+ or Nikon 3200(?)).

Film is bulkloaded at ~20 frames per roll. All chemicals are heated/cooled in a waterbath to ~68F Pop roll, remove film, clip ends ts to round and elimiate rough edges which interfere with loading on reels. Load film on reels. Place film on rods into canister, and cap. Add mixed D76 at 68F to canister til full, and cap. Set timer to 5 minutes. Rap canister on table to dislodge bubbles and continue to agitate for one minute, then 10 seconds every 30 seconds. (to agitate, I tell the canister it's fat and has an acne problem :-) No, really, I give the canister a rapid circular shaking motion, using mostly my wrist. At 5 minutes, drain the developer (discard) Add rapid fixer, recap, reset time to 5 minutes. Rap canister on table and agitate 30 seconds, then 5 seconds every minute. At five minutes, drain fixer back into jug and recap (I discard the fixer when it begins to have a yellow cast to it). Wash 5 minutes, changing water at least 3 times. Ad squirt of Photo flo (like the precise measurement there?) and fill fill water, agitate a couple seconds and drain. Remove film and hang to dry. When film is dry, we cut to lengths of 5 frames and insert into a printfile sleeve. Place printfile sleeve on one sheet of Polycontrast RC weight with a clean sheet of plexi and shoot under enlarger for 5.5 seconds. Run contact print through processor and rinse with water. Hang to dry. Take a coffee break. Return to normal production chores.

What I want to know is: 1. Is this procedure all right? If not, what am I missing? 2. A. Kodak Polycontrast RC paper is relatively expensive. Is there a lower cost RC paper I can use without sacrificing quality (we tried a lower cost, lighter weight RC paper whose brand name escapes me, and it curled so bad as to make it almost unusable. B. Should I consider switching to a fiber based paper and a tray processing system? I realize that this will take a little more time, but believe it will save a lot of money. 3. I want to switch to a liquid concentrate developer (mixing D76 to temp on deadline is a real problem). Can anyone recommend a good product? 4. I want to cut costs in this area. Should I use a replenisher rather than dumping the developer? 5. In the same vein, what other films are available for general B&W photography that are comparable to what I am using that would cost less and behave the same? 6. Same...What chemistry could I use to achieve the same results and save a penny? 7. Finally, could somebody give me a clue as to the chemistry needed to tray develope regular paper as opposed to RC? All I've been trained on is RC and really want to broaden my horizons. I have a box of Gekko in house and am willing to order small test quantities (or accept donations of the same) to determine usefulness and capabilities of almost any system that will accomplish the same tasks, cost less, and improve quality.

Any advice, tips, tricks, hints and helps are welcome.

My sincerest thanks if you've made it this far...

Shawn

-- Shawn Hoefer (skhhome@cmn.net), November 09, 1997

Answers

Response to Small Newspaper Darkroom

Being a newspaper, perhaps you don't care about negative permanence, but I don't like your fixing technique. If you only replace it "when it goes yellow", you may well be underfixing.

Kodak make a T-Max developer, in liquid form. It works well for me. People do say it is more sensitive to temperature variation.

Regular (Fibre) paper uses pretty much the same chemistry as RC. It takes longer to process and wash, so you'll probably find it is much more expensive.

-- Alan Gibson (gibson.al@mail.dec.com), November 10, 1997.


Response to newspaper d/r

Hi Shawn: Whew, a bunch of questions! Suggestions: 1. Use a water rinse or stop bath between developer and fixer. 2. Wash for 30 minutes instead of 5. 3. Fill a squirt bottle with distilled water and, while squirting water from it, move it from top to bottom of washed film, both sides. Dispense with Photo flo. 4. Try Freestyle or Adorama house brands of vc paper, both are about $25/100 8x10. I've never found any fb paper to be cheaper than rc. 5. Continue using D76 stock solution but at 1to 1 with water, dilute with cold or hot water as needed to bring to temp. Toss it after one use. 6. Same chemistry to tray develop fb as rc paper. No savings there. 7. Put in a cd player and a selection of your favorite cds. Have fun with it whatever else you do. Mike

-- Mike Langford (mike5@21stcenturyaccess.com), November 19, 1997.

Response to Small Newspaper Darkroom

At the weekly paper I work at in rural lower Michigan, we use T Max 400 and 3200, T Max developer and Kodak Polycontrast RC. Film is developed three or four reels at a time in long plastic tanks sitting in a waterbath, but no real temp control. We just wing it according to how cold or hot the room is. Usually we develop about 8 minutes at an average temp of 65 to 75. We found that T Max seems to like a bit longer time. No real grain problems.

Our prints are conventionally done with a Beseler 23C. The standard size is a 5 x 7 3 column or a 5 x 5 2 column with s few odd sizes from time to time.

We make sure to fix the film in FRESH fixer (Kodak Rapid Fix for both film and paper, mixed according to directions) and wash the film adequately. We still get the purple, but just live with it, and throw a higher contrast filter in the enlarger slot.

Our problems are not with the materials and the wet processing but with getting the editorial staff to make the selections so we can get them printer in time to go to pre-press and make the deadline. Since the editor is also the owner of the web house that does the printing we have to take what we can get.

We get everything from so thin you cant find an image to so thick you cant see through it. We just do what we have to to make it work. Usually we get something we can use.

Hope this helps. Feel free to e-mail for more discussion. Tony

-- Tony Brent (ajbrent@mich.com), September 22, 1998.


Response to Small Newspaper Darkroom

I suspect that Tony's experience of negatives varying from very thin to very thick is a consequence of slapdash temperature/time control. For a given film and developer, a consistent pair of temperature and time should give very consistent results. If the temperature can't be readily controlled, then at least create a table showing the correct time for a given temperature.

In addition, developers tend not to work very well at low temperatures. 20 deg C (68 F) is the usual minimum.

-- Alan Gibson (gibson.al@mail.dec.com), September 23, 1998.


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