I am not fortunate enought to have space or equipment to process my own b/w pictures. So...i have to rely on "Process One" or sometimes even Wal-Mart. I am currently shooting with an Canon Elan II. Most every shot that I get back is either overexposed or has a white haze over the subject. I know that C41 processing is not the best for b/w and Process One has b/w processing. I recently shot some ballet dancers on a stage for a poster for their upcoming production. I set my time to 60 and my apt was 4.0 or 4.5, so I figured if anything it would be underexposed.

Any tips would be appriciated.

-- Jeff S. Wasson (bad-doc@aristotle.net), April 24, 1999

Answers

There is simply no other way to obtain black and white negatives the way you want them except by processing your own film. If you have the space to make a cup of coffee and operate a toaster, you have enough room to develop film, and produce contact sheets of your negs that will serve to fine tune your techniques, and will provide a lab with a good reference as to how you you want your prints to look. This can all be done for an outlay of less than a couple dozen rolls of film. Even if you are using the C-41 process "black and white" films, you can still make your own proof sheets to adjust your exposure techniques to the lab that is processing your film.

-- tony brent (ajbrent@mich.com), April 24, 1999.

I agree 100% with Tony.

Jeff, you say the shots are 'either overexposed or has a white haze over the subject'. Are you judging the prints or negatives? You can't tell if your shots are overexposed by looking at the prints. I would suspect that a good lab could get much better prints from your negatives than you are seeing.

The 'white haze' puzzles me. It could be poor quality printing, or perhaps camera lens fogging or something.

-- Alan Gibson (Alan.Gibson@technologist.com), April 26, 1999.

So can either of you who responded please tell us what exactly we need to setup such a simple b&w processing lab in our house? How do I make the contact print without an expensive enlarger?

-- Mani Varadarajan (mani@best.com), April 28, 1999.

Various sites have information on developing films. Basically, you need a changing bag, film tank and spiral, and chemicals.

For contact prints, you need a sheet of glass, photo paper, processing trays, a white-light source, safelights and a darkroom. Ideally, the light source should be small, and low power. Many people have rigged up electric lighting for this. Conventional room lighting is usually too bright, and throws the light all over the room. An enlarger is an excellent light source for contacts, and cheap enlargers with cheap lenses are just as good as expensive ones. In the current state of the market, you can probably find a second-hand one for $20 or so.

Someone must have a web page that describes making contact prints, but I can't think of any.

-- Alan Gibson (Alan.Gibson@technologist.com), April 29, 1999.

Jeff, getting good B&W processing is always a problem if you don't do your own, especially if you don't live near a fair size city that has professional labs. However, don't judge C41 process by the B&W prints you get from Walmart or your 1hr lab. The processing of the negatives is identical to that for color prints, and is machine controlled. If the lab gives good color print film results, the B&W negatives should be good. The printing is a whole other matter. Printing XP-2 or T400CN requires different filters and times from color printing. Most labs don't know anything about this and as they get few requests for the B&W, they don't worry about it. Make sure you judge your results byu the negatives, and get a professional printing lab to do your prints. The results should be much better.

-- Richard Newman (rnewman@snip.net), April 30, 1999.

Tom Halfhill has a good article on making contact sheets at http://www.wenet.net/~halfhill/archive.html

-- harikrishna (hariki12@hotmail.com), May 03, 1999.

Too bad in this age of technology people forget how it used too be done. The old timers did not have fancy gear and some of the stuff they got still stands today.. No reason everything you need done at this point cannot be done in a kitchen or bathroom. A chunk of plywood over the bathtub and voila a workspace with running water and small enough too make light tight. I had a buddy once that used too just get the negs laid out over the paper, covered with a sheet of glass you can pick up cheap. Sometimes glass places have bits of plate glass lying around. An 11x14 peice will do nice and they willl even sand down the edges for you. Cheap. Anyway back too the buddy. Once the stuff was laid out he would fast flick the room light and process. He got pretty good at guessing the flick rate. Hey they are contact sheets. Anyway worked good and cost almost nothing. good luck and stay away from one hours if you can. Question???Why the hell are they all soooooo bad?? Is it a prerequisite that all of the printers in 1 hours be color blind...?

-- tim swanky (tswanky@home.com), May 05, 1999.

I would not recommend a kitchen as a darkroom. The consequences of food/utensil contamination are too great. Why are one-hour labs so bad? It's a widespread attitude problem that pervades many service industries. If one cares and does a decent job at anything there's plenty of money to be made.

-- Tim Brown (brownt@ase.com), May 06, 1999.

Unless you do it yourself you are at the whims of the minimum wage worker. Or worse yet "the machine". You never know if you are at the beginning of the chemical batch or the end. And if they really print with B&W chems. The main reason labs have such bad reps is the cost of labor at a good lab makes it expensive to get good prints and processing at a decent cost. Learn to do it yourself. It is fullfilling and fun. It takes very little room and equipment. James

-- james (james_mickelson@hotmail.com), August 07, 1999.