Posted by Ed Kiser on October 09, 2003 at 05:08:20 from 205.188.208.8 user Kisered.
In Reply to: Photography in Coot Club posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on October 08, 2003 at 23:51:39:
Don't know what photography was like in the '30's, but my darkroom experence began around 1942. It was black and white, using ROLL film, of type "120" that held eight exposures of slightly larger than 2x3 inches in size.
The film I used was of a type called "Orthochromatic", which means it was not sensitive to RED light. A different type of film back then was called "Panchromatic", and it did respond to red light. The difference was that since the Ortho film did not "see" red, a girl's red lipstick would show up very dark as compared to how the Pan film would record it.
The nice thing about the Ortho film was, I could use a RED safelight to see what I was doing, since the film was not sensitive to that light. The development of the film was a very manual process in that I would hold the strip by both ends, with the film hanging down in the middle like a capital "U", much as one would hold a skipping rope. A tray of developer was used by dipping one end in the soup, and then lifting that end and feeding the rest of the loop through the soup, coating it from end to end with the chemical developer. The film was rocked back and forth in the soup, see-sawing it back and forth, holding the ends, one in each hand, one hand going down while the other goes up, and thus keep passing the film through the solution about one inch deep in a shallow tray container.
After a certain time, calculated from the temperature and type of film, this strip was then moved to a SHORT STOP bath, and this see-saw process repeated. This was to STOP the development action, or the film would just continue to get darker. The SHORT STOP back was essentially acetic acid.
Once that step was considered to be sufficient, the see-saw process was moved to the third tray, the HYPO, or sodium-hypochlorite (hope I remember that correctly), which was also referred to as the FIXER. The white, milky parts of the film, which was undeveloped yet still light sensitive parts, were thus dissolved from the film. Once that was gone, the light sensitive property of the film was all gone, and the rest of the process could be done in normal light.
The WASH step was done in a basin of running fresh water, where I gently coiled the strip of film around on its side in the water and let the faucet run on it to wash away any traces of HYPO which if left on there, could cause fading of the image.
I used a clothespin to hang this film by one end from a string to let it drip dry, after carefully wiping down both sides of the film with a squeegee (very clean sponge) to be sure no droplets of water were sitting on the film.
Once dry, the negative could be cut with scissors into individual frames, suitable for printing. The tones here are reversed, with bright areas being dark, and dark shadows showing up as almost clear in the negative film.
In printing, I used a process called CONTACT PRINTS, where the resulting print was the same size as the negative. I had a metal frame with a glass front, and a removable back that was held on by spring clips. I put the negative on the glass, then the print paper on the negative, then pressed the backing on them to hold the paper firmly against the negative, held by the spring clips. This of course had to be done in a darkroom, as the print paper was sensitive to white light, but could be processed under a very dim red-orange safelight. I turned the frame over, and could see the negative with the clear print paper under it. I exposed the paper using a desk lamp for a certain number of seconds, a judgement call based on the apparent density of the negative. That done, and back in a safelight environment, open the back of the print frame and remove the paper. This is now slid into the same trio of baths, similar to those used for the film. The developer was a somewhat different chemical, but the shortstop and fixer were the same as for film. With the print under the surface of the developer, I could observe it starting to darken in places as I observed it in the safelight, which was a very dim light at best. When the proper darkness quality was judged to have been achieved, the print was fished out using print tongs, and slid into the short stop for a few swishes, then onto the hypo to FIX it. After the fix, these prints had to wash in flowing water to remove the hypo. I dried them by rolling them out face down onto a sheet of glass, squeezing out as much water as I could. As they dried, they popped up from the glass, ready to go into a photo album.
In Dick's situation, his processing of the film was not all that different from mine, but his printing was quite different. He used a different kind of paper, that is much like blueprint paper. He put his negative and the paper into a print frame much like mine was, but just exposed it to ordinary sunlight. There was no trio of chemical baths that I used for my print paper; the sun just darkened the paper according to the relative density of the negative shading it. Since it was still exposed to light after he took it out of the print frame, that print would continue to darken, and eventually would black out the image. To stop blueprint paper from being sensitive to light, one would simply wash it in ordinary water, and it would dissolve out the light sensitive chemical in the paper. It is a much simpler lab process than what I used for photographic print paper. It took much longer to expose and make prints that way, but Dick was just making tha one print, and it did not have to last all that long. If needed for some future hearing, he could still make another print as he had the negative.
I was but seven years old doing that darkroom work. I am sure Dick was also capable of performing his procedures quite well at his age.
I had a good teacher. My mother was an architect. She knew all about blueprints, and how to make them. She showd me how to use a bit of blueprint paper in the back of a Quaker Oats box, with a pinhole in the lid, and set it down outside in the sunlight for a while, then when I recovered it (and washed it to "fix" it) I had a negative. We got a decent print by putting the negative together with another sheet of unexposed blueprint paper, and leaving this out in the sun under a pane of plane window glass until it darkened, and voila had a print. Mother knew how to make it fun. I progressed from that to the darkroom messes.
It was a lot of fun. Sorry this retelling got kinda long, but I was enjoying reliving that adventure from my childhood.
Ed Kiser, South Florida