I have panoramic negatives taken in the teens and twenties (8inches by 20 inches). Is there a way I can use light source other than an enlarger to contact print them? I know my grandfather printed this way, but I don't know the particulars- time, source etc. Thanks for any help. Rusty

-- Rusty Tews (tewsranch@pmt.org), February 14, 2001

Answers

You can use just about any light source that you can turn on and off - the general illumination in your darkroom, for instance. Lay the negative on the printing paper under safelight illumination, cover it with glass, cover that with a sheet of cardboard, then swith on the room light and uncover for a few seconds or use the light switch to control exposure time. You'll obviously have to do some tests to find the right time.

-- Keith Nichols (knichols@iopener.net), February 14, 2001.

You might consider doing Kallitypes or the more expensive Platinum Printing and just use the sun!

-- Scott Walton (f64sw@hotmail.com), February 14, 2001.

Kodak Azo paper, designed for contact printing, will give you longer exposure times (and therefore more control) than enlarging papers. I develop it in Agfa Neutol WA 1:11 for 2 minutes.

-- David Goldfarb (dgoldfarb@barnard.edu), February 14, 2001.

Try POP !

-- Manuel Gomes Teixeira (punctumgt@netc.pt), February 14, 2001.

When using any of the old photographic processes like cyanotype, kallitype or whatever, you may print out the image using the sun as your light source. A source that can be switched on and off may be convenient, but it's not necessary for the old processes. For details, I recommend William Crawford's "The Keepers of Light". Usually, old negatives are quite contrasty, and modern papers may have difficulty in dealing with that. So old POPs are often preferable.

If you wish to stick with recent materials, you can use a strong household light bulb at sufficient distance from the negative and paper. In this context, "sufficient" means that the illumination is more or less uniform over the whole area of the negative, or the print. I would estimate that a distance between the bulb and the negative of at least five times the longer side of the print would be a good starting point for experimentation. Be sure to have a really dark darkroom as exposure times may become somewhat long, and any light leaks are likely to cause fogging.

When experimenteing to find the right exposure time, start by increasing exposure times in whole f-stops (such as 30/60/12/240 seconds). For fine-tuning, use half, or quarter f-stops. Find the interval in which the "correct" time lies - say 60 is too little, and 120 is too much), then multiply the shorter time (60 in the example) by 1,4 (for half f-stops, 1,2 for quarter f-stops) to get the time for the second test.

Regards, Thomas Wollstein

-- Thomas Wollstein (thomas_wollstein@web.de), February 19, 2001.

An old contact printer (not a glass frame) is nice for this too. I'm talking about the ones with multiple bulbs, a hinged lid and platen. You can get alot of control out of one of these, as far as switching on & off certain bulbs to handle different densities, and making masks out of opaque materials, or tissue to hold back areas. Burke & James used to make these (Rexo, I think), I have an 8x10 model with 9 bulbs. I think Arkay, and maybe Pako made larger units as well. There's at least one manufacturer still making these. Azo works great like this. I occasionally see these used, I picked mine up a few years ago pretty cheap. I use it mostly for making neg. dupes of old nitrate film. Good luck however you plan to do it.

-- DK Thompson (kthompson@moh.dcr.state.nc.us), February 19, 2001.

Occasionaly when I'm too lazy/busy to set up my enlarger I'll do contact sheets using the room light. With a 60W bulb, 2.1M above the paper, I use a time of about 1.3seconds... the time it takes me to say "one cat and dog". To do it more accurately (for a contact print rather than a contact sheet) I'd say you'd need a much lower wattage globe to make the time long enough that you can accuractely turn room light on and off. In your situation, I'd wack a 15W globe in and do some test prints on little bits of paper to get in the ballpark, then finetune on 10x8, then print the 8x20's. Sounds like fun!

-- Nigel Smith (nlandgl@unite.com.au), February 19, 2001.

Rusty,

I alwasy got the best results when I fired an electronic flash above the contact glass. You just need to "calibrate" the exposure by firing the flash off any number of time, usually no more than 10 seemed to do it quite nicely. You can gain a lot of exposure control in this manner. Also covering the flash with a light coloured cloth will reduce it's output. This method is very accurate (simply by counting the number of flashes) and usually very fast.

PD

-- Paul Draper (pdraper@miltek.com), February 28, 2001.