Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2008/09/08
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Several points: First, dark room work is not for everyone: many photographers detested it back in the day when it was the only game in town and farmed it out. Other guys quit doing photography as they loved dark room work. It is an individual choice. Second, go for the 23C but get a late one. These have a dichroic head which permits the ready printing of black and white single-grade papers, multigrade papers, and color prints, whether RA-4 negatives or Ilfochrome prints from chromes. Leitz V-35's are dirt cheap now -- I bought mine for less than $500 around 1993 when the local paper dumped nine of them. They have gone down in price since then. Third, get the BEST enlarging lenses possible. Nikon makes adequate enlarging lenses and some swear by them. In my experience, the Schneider lenses are better and the best are the Rodentock APO-Rodagons. I paid less than $100 on eBay for two of them (50mm and 80mm) around 2002. The Leitz Focotar-2 does have an epic reputation: I have owned two and used them both but was not overly impressed with them and sold them, but, then, I got both of them for less than $10. Fourth, get QUALITY stuff as it changes frustration and disappointment into happiness. Get King Concept reels for developing film. Get Kindermann tanks. Try to find a Leitz printing easel. Get a quality timer. Get a decent LED stopwatch to time the processing. Get a Beseler roller drive and a variety of their drums if you want to do color work. Fifth, do NOT get the sort of red safelight shown in even current Hollywood films. Those only work with orthochromatic films: you need a dark yellow-green filter for black and white panchromatic films. Color work is best done in the dark until the film is in the developing drum, when the overhead lights come on. Sixth, it is best to avoid fluorescent lights in a dark room as they continue to emit radiation which can fog the film even after they are turned off. This is more of an issue with VERY bright lights and VERY low ceilings and I have never had the problem but the former guru of all things dark room, Ctein, used to warn us regularly of the danger. Seventh, ENJOY the experience. It is a miraculous joy to bring an image from nowhere, to turn film into negatives and negatives into a print. It is a joy to select the tools used, dodging and burning and so forth, the grade used, the interplay of exposure and f/stop. (Hint: for REALLY dense negatives, I use a 1.5/5cm CZJ Sonnar in LTM for miniature-format (35mm) printing and a 2/8.5cm CZJ Sonnar in LTM for mediaum-format work, generally wide-open. Both work like a charm as printing lenses but, then, didn't Carl Zeiss invent optics? Marc msmall@aya.yale.edu Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!