raquez

Wondering if there's anyone here that used to shoot color film. I am curious how prints were made from color negatives then. I know Kodachrome had to be processed by kodak, but what about prints?

Did you just put the processed color negative in the enlarger and dodge and burn the print as if it was black and white?

Thank you!

Pablo8 Loc: Nottingham UK.

There was a lot more technical issues than that. The orange/red safelight used in B&W printing, could not be used in colour printing. The chemistry was very different. The basic dodge & burn actions were possible. I have made hundreds of colour prints in a properly named 'Darkroom', but now, I would much prefer to print via computer and Digital process. Before the 'Magic' of computers, that was how it was, 'Working in the dark'.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Not quite, a lot more finicky (temps etc.) than B&W, plus the Very Dark Green darkroom light might as well have been inside a bank vault with no lights, you worked by feel/touch. So I got in the habit of laying everything out in a pattern around me and working in the dark.

And I sometimes worked with Reversal paper to make prints from slides. For a while the only thing I had done was Kodachrome - I even processed my own color negative and Ektachrome slide film. 35 mm and 120/220 film

All my darkroom gear I gave to a young guy who was visiting his aunt down the street from Mexico in about 2004. I was cleaning the garage and had the stuff sitting in the driveway. He saw it and stopped to chat - seems he worked for an Uncle in a small town photo studio/shop and had learned on the same model enlarger. He was going to set up his own shop in the next little town down the road and wondered if I would sell the enlarger and gear to him. I was going to give it to the local Salvation Army Store since I went digital about 1998 so I just told him the gear was his. I thought he was going to explode he was so happy.

Wallen Loc: Middle Earth

I just read your story and i'm exploding with happy.
I know not the kid but, Thank you.

camerapapi Loc: Miami, Fl.

As part of my photography school training I had to work with color negatives to make prints. It was a nightmare because working with color negatives was not easy and color correction was another nightmare.
Today printing at home is a breeze although it could also frustrate. Home printing could be a good source of wasted money. I use to print with an Epson printer but clogging of the injectors was a total frustration and I sent the printer for a better life to our municipal dumpster. Ever since when I have to print anything I just visit a professional lab that prints digital images.

cedymock Loc: Irmo, South Carolina

Just yesterday 6/15 someone posted a link to film processing, I don't remember the title name but maybe someone on the hog will. Good luck

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

Back in the day we did color but mostly B&W images of rodeo's. We had a small unvented trailer we used for a dark room. We would print right after a competition and then post B&W 8X10's outside our unvented trailer (which would approach 120 degrees and higher inside during the day). Our cute scandalously clad girl friends would sell the 8X10's to the cowboys at extremely high prices.
The only dodging and burning we did was when we did formal portraits between shows. And, yes, we would also dodge and burn color prints when needed, but we used fill flash so well be rarely had to do much manipulation afterword.
Oh, those were the days my friend, we thought they would never end.

medphotog Loc: Witness protection land

If you had the (ahem) excitement and (ahem) thrill of using the Kodak Rapid Color Processor then you cherish every moment you hit send to your computer printer. As stated, you were virtually in the dark and you had to take your photopaper (and being careful not to touch anything but the edges*) place it against a "net' like material that had a rod attached then hook this to the processor while this drum was spinning. You then (IIRC) poured the chemistry into a tray at the bottom of the drum and away you went through the development process. I'm a bit fuzzy on the particulars. I try to forget that particular time. We had to learn the additive color printing process first and print on the drum before we could use the subtractive process and the automatic machine. Two of the shops I worked at did do color printing and both had Nord automatic roll printers. The last shop was a nightmare QC wise because we had a Nord enlarger, Hope processor, Hunt chemistry, 3M paper and Kodak test strips. When things went hinky the boss wanted me to try to figure it out. Word of advice, don't call Kodak about 3M paper etc.

(Before I forget) * The "classic" folks (old timers is such an over used term) can tell ya that fingerprints on the color print emulsion results in really nice reddish fingerprints that the FBI could use for identification.

Stephan G

One problem with older age is that the grey cells do not work as quickly. Also, a golden glow arises the farther we have to dig back.

When I did my own prints, I remember becoming very adept at working a la Braille. As mentioned above, placement of equipment and ascertaining all being in place. Also making sure that there are no stray lights. I used a tube on a roller base for the processing the print. I kept a temperature water bath for the chemistry so that the results would be consistent. I used test strips to get a handle on time for processing. Then I placed the exposed sheet into the tube and relied on the timer for necessary time for processing. To help, I built a light tight room in my first home for the ease of processing. There was a learning curve to making the best result. What I recall the most is the need to blocking out a time for working in the darkroom.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

I got out of the Navy in 1075, bought a house in Seattle for $23,000 and built a dream darkroom in the basement. I had spent my Navy years designing it!

If I remember right (!) my wife an I invested in a Beseler system. It included drums and an electric roller base. Instead of complex Kodak chemistry, there was a two part system that worked at 'room temperature'. We had the color film processed for us in a lab. The enlarger had a 'dichroic' head so we could twist knobs instead of inserting thin filters.

We had drums for 8x10, 11x14 and 16x20. The reason for the drums was that they used a very small amount of (expensive) chemical.

Exposing the color paper and getting it in the drum was done in complete darkness.

Color work was VERY time consuming. We rarely could get it right the first time, so it could make a day's work getting one print.

Seabastes

I got out of the Navy in 1075, bought a house in Seattle for $23,000 and built a dream darkroom in the basement. I had spent my Navy years designing it!


Not about color printing, but I couldn't help comment about buying a house in Seattle for $23,000. In 1970 we bought a house in Kirkland for 27,500 and sold it for 375,000 in 2005 and bought a house in Monroe for 255,000
which is now worth about 400,000. Buying a house in the Seattle area is very difficult for young people now days.

When I was a staff photographer for the Seattle Post Intelligencer, 1966-1970. we shot 4X5 color negs which we processed in the darkroom at the paper. The engraving department took the print through the process to print in the paper. We did dip and dunk processing with the negative film, then used a color enlarger

I really don't remember what we did different in processing the color negs and making prints but it was more difficult than B&W.

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

My only color darkroom work was done when I took my second semester photography class about thirty years ago at the local community college. We had a dedicated "loading room," where we loaded our film onto reels and placed it into individual developing tanks/drums for processing. Lab staff would process our film for us, and we would come back later and find our processed film hanging on the drying rack in one long strip, ready for our attention. I would always cut mine in strips the correct length to fit into the transparent "negative pages" that were readily available at the time. The next step was to make a contact sheet with the full page of negatives.

The color enlarger room was completely dark, except for a tiny safelight in a very distant corner of the room. It didn't do much except allow the school to say that there was lighting in the room. Enlargers were very nice, with dichroic filters providing color correction. Burning and dodging were done the same was as for black and white, but because the paper was so sensitive, the projected images were much less bright on our paper in the easels. After exposure, we carried our paper to the input slot of the enlarger, which was built into one wall of the room. Finished, dry prints came out the other end, which was in a regular lighted room.

I don't know how commercial processing was done in the 1970s. I doubt that it was the highly integrated, automated process that we saw in the corner drugstore in the waning days of film, where unprocessed film went into one end of the machine, and "finished" prints came out the other end, never having to be touched by human hands. Perhaps Bill or Ed or some other person who was there will speak up and let us know. I do know that whatever the process was, it was pretty good, even if not perfect..

E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

Been shooting colour-negative films, professionally, since the late 1950s- Ektacolor, Ektacolor Professional type C (CPS), Varicolr VPS VPL all the available ISO speeds and both daylight and Type "L". My studio included a fully equipped colour lab for C41 film processing, proofing on Kodak S printers and 6 Color enlarging stations each equipped with Chromega 4x5 enlargers and 1 8x10 Chromega unit.

All finished prints were custom made- dodge burned and cropped where required. Prints were processed in roller-transport processors up to 30x30 inches. Larger sizes were outsourced.

Commercial work was done on large and medium form transparency films and the E-6 process was done in-house.

I usually shot colour negative and transparences where prints were required on commercial l jobs. I did not lie the results on Type R papers. colour negatives were best for prints and Duratrns display transparencies. We used Kodad and Fuji papers.

Sometimes we outsourced Cibachrome prints to mbe made for Kodachrome slides.

I now do all my work in digital. The darkroom and lab are long gone!

Strodav Loc: Houston, Tx

Had a full basement darkroom when I lived in Illinois. Developed B&W film (mainly Tri-X 400), color negative and slide film, then printed them. Developing film is fairly straight forward. Place your rolls of film in a light proof reel tank, mix the appropriate chemicals and bring to the right temperatures, process step by step then hang to let dry. Printing is what took a lot of time. I had several types of textures and color papers in the 3 main categories of B&W, color negative, and color slide photo paper. I generally pulled contact sheets, i.e., using a frame put the film strips directly on a sheet of photo paper, expose in an enlarger then process. It might take a couple or 3 tries to get the exposure right. Look at the contact sheet with a magnifying glass to decide which shots you want to print. I was pretty good at including a gray card in every sequence of shots, which helped set the white balance (adjusting the filters on the enlarger). I was fortunate enough to have a photo multiplier tube light meter to use on my enlarger, which helped set the filters correctly. I'd start by making a small print to get exposure, decide if I needed to dodge and burn, fix any negative imperfections (Google nose grease in photography) then make some bigger prints. I would blow a whole weekend in the darkroom on just a few prints. I was very happy when digital started to equal and surpass the capability of film.

Every once in a while, I still pull out my Mamiya 645 camera loaded with good old Kodak Tri-X 400 120 and process it with Kodak HC110, but I scan the negative film with an Epson V500 photo scanner and process in LRC / PS. A much, much better workflow IMHO.

BebuLamar

The most difficult part in color printing is getting the correct color balance. The second part is that you have to do it in total darkness no safelight like B&W.