Hi, I'm Rachel from Little Vintage Photography, and Ilford have
asked me to create this series of bite-sized videos to help introduce
you to some dark room techniques.
In this video, we will be looking at contact printing.
Contact printing is a quick and simple way of creating prints from your
negatives at their original size.
It's called contact printing because you take your negative and your photographic
paper, and literally put them in contact together, like a sandwich,
rather than putting your negative into a holder or carrier of the enlarger.
You may have heard of contact sheets, which look a little bit like this.
They're effectively a way of making a contact print of a
whole roll of film in one go.
To make a contact sheet, you arrange your negatives, in this case 35 millimeter,
on top of the piece of photographic paper under red light, and then expose
them to light from the enlarger.
You can use a contact printing frame like this to do so, or for an even
quicker option place the cut strip of negatives into a totally clear
negative file and simply lay it on top of the photographic paper.
If you have slightly curvy negatives, you might want to add a sheet of clear glass
over the top to ensure a good contact between the negatives and the paper.
As with creating any photographic print, you'll probably want to create a test
strip first by using black card to cover or uncover the photographic paper
in incremental steps during exposure.
This is more economical way of checking for exposure before making
a final print with all the strips and negatives on one whole sheet of paper.
You could of course create some individual contact prints from 35mm or medium format
negatives a little bit like this one here.
Just remember that your final contact print will be the same size as your
original negative because it hasn't gone through that enlarging process.
Where the contact printing process really comes into its own is with
large format photography as a way of creating a positive print
from your large format negative.
If you don't have access to an enlarger that will take a large format negative,
this is a perfect way of creating a positive version of your image.
The technique for creating a launch format contact print is much the same
as for 35 millimeter or medium format.
First you'll want to cut your photographic paper to the appropriate size.
For example, one piece of 10 by 8 paper will allow for four
potential 4 by 5 contact prints from a 4 by 5 sheet film negative.
Helpfully, Ilford also create precut multigrade resin coated paper in a 4 by 5
inch size, which comes in a box like this.
Next you'll want to lay the large format negative on top of your
photographic paper under red light.
Ensure you have clean, clear glass over the top to create a good
contact between negative and paper.
Use black card to create a test strip to check exposure.
Develop, stop, fix, and wash, then create your final contact print with
a fresh piece of photographic paper.
Develop, stop, fix, and wash as usual.
As well as creating contact prints from film or sheet film negative like
these, you can also use this technique when working with paper negatives.
A paper negative is where a piece of photographic paper is used in camera
to create an exposure and produces a negative impression on the paper itself.
Here's a couple of examples of paper negatives that I created using
my Harman Obscura pinhole camera.
In order to produce the final positive versions from the paper negatives, I
again use the contact printing technique.
Under the red light, lay a fresh sheet of photographic paper
emulsion side up under the enlarger.
This can be cut to size, or you could use another pre-cut piece from
the same box of 4 by 5 paper that you used to create the negative.
Lay your paper negative emotion side down on top of the bottom
sheet as a direct contact sandwich.
Lay clean, clear glass over the top, or use a frame or contact printing
frame as before to hold them in place.
Use black card to create incremental steps as a test.
Develop stop, fix and wash the test print and choose the
best exposure time from this.
Repeat with a fresh piece of paper and develop, stop fix and wash as usual.
So that was contact printing.
I hope you found the video useful and that it's inspired
you to have a go for yourself.
We'd love to hear from you in the comments and if you've got any of
your own work or your own images, you'd like to share, please do that
in Ilford's social media channels.
You can also check out Ilford's YouTube channel for other darkroom techniques.
Thanks very much for watching.