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Shooting in photo dark room


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This is actually quite difficult given the common desire to see the photo develop through the rippling fluid in the developing tray. Assuming you're talking about black and white processing, which you presumably are otherwise there's no safelight to see by, what you can do is light the scene in green light from a colour mixing LED, and print the photo in green ink on white paper. If you do a reasonable job of matching the LED light go the ink colour, the photo image will be invisible. Then, dissolve the LED to red, and the image will become visible. Finally, push it all to monochrome then tint red in the grade and you have a photo apparently developing.

Note you can't use an inkjet print for this as they're usually not waterproof.

 

P

 

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5 hours ago, Phil Rhodes said:

This is actually quite difficult given the common desire to see the photo develop through the rippling fluid in the developing tray. Assuming you're talking about black and white processing, which you presumably are otherwise there's no safelight to see by, what you can do is light the scene in green light from a colour mixing LED, and print the photo in green ink on white paper. If you do a reasonable job of matching the LED light go the ink colour, the photo image will be invisible. Then, dissolve the LED to red, and the image will become visible. Finally, push it all to monochrome then tint red in the grade and you have a photo apparently developing.

Note you can't use an inkjet print for this as they're usually not waterproof.

 

P

 

 

Yes you can use inkjet. As long as they are aged. Sorry can't give aging data, but possibly aged 1 week. Agining is for you to test. I've only tested water resistance of well aged inkjet prints. 

nsfw

Inkjet Print Water Resistance Tests – Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Archival Collection (wordpress.com)

Also note these are pigment based inkjet prints, not dye based. I don't work with dye based inkjet as they have poor fade resistance. I'm thinking maybe make a series of prints from light to dark and keep cutting to the new print. But I don't know. I was always amazed at seeing it when they had the print developed in front of your eyes in the movies. It will make a good YouTube tutorial if you pull it off!

Lippincott%20Seed%20Catalog%201896%20D.D

Cover 1896 Seed Catalog

D.D.Teoli Jr. A.C.

 

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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Shoot in full white light with a chromakey colored "print" square in tray.  In post, corner pin match track the photo, pull a luma key to get the water ripples, drop in your image and slowly cross dissolve from a full white matte patch to the image.  Grade entire image to orange/red with primaries.

No method of shooting was stated; film or digital or film to digital.  Makes a difference...

Edited by Frank Wylie
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  • 2 weeks later...

I was interested in finding out how water resistant dye based inkjet prints are. I had some extra well aged dye based inkjets sitting around that were for sun testing and used one of them. They were aged about 2 years. After about 10 hours in the water the dye bleed noticeably into the white print border and water.

I think you could use dye based inkjet prints for darkroom shoots. But if the shooting dragged on too long you may have some issues with dye based prints. You would just need a few dupes of each type you used. And I don't know if things would be that critical with a darkroom shoot anyway. You would be doing quick shots in low light. I will put photos of the dye inkjet prints tested in water at the link I posted previously when I get a chance.

Just for the record...Eastman Kodak dye transfer prints start to lose dye noticeably within 30 minutes of water submersion. Within 24 hours a dye transfer print submerged in water is about 70% gone.

IBT Dye Transfer film is more water resistant. I don't have the notes in front of me, but from what I recall it took a few days for noticeable dye loss in water.

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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  • 10 months later...

Maybe go the infrared route with infrared lighting and no visible light. Mixing infrared and visible light may soften the image. You will have to do some post work with hues. It was customary for vision of print work being done in a B&W photo lab to be red hued in depiction of the safelight. I understand that it was also possible for the developing print to be photographed under light although it could become ruined.

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  • 5 months later...
On 8/31/2021 at 4:52 AM, David Mullen ASC said:

A sensitive camera? Assuming you are willing to live with the look of something shot under a yellowish narrow wavelength lamp. See:

https://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?65779-Building-a-Sodium-Vapour-Safelight

 


Lots of interesting answers here, but all are unneccessarily complicated. 

Actually there is a very easy trick, courtesy of your local lab consultant: Expose a photo on bw paper, process it, fix it, then use a rehalogenizing bleach to reconvert the silver into soluble halides, and you'll have a white piece of paper. Now, in broad daylight, you can process the photo again, and oh boy it's not magic but only smoke, mirrors and some chemistry, the image will reappear, and only the image atop that. You can repeat that cycle as well a few times. So then light your scene as you want and carry on shooting. 

cheerio

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  • 2 months later...

 Adjusting the ISO on your digital camera will determine how sensitive your camera’s image sensor is to light. For example, if you increase the ISO to 400 or 800, you will allow more light to reach the camera’s sensor than if the settings were at ISO 100 or 200. So then, why not have higher ISO settings all the time? A lower ISO will produce sharper images, and the higher the ISO, the more image noise (grain) will be present. For low light photography, try setting your ISO to 800 and adjust accordingly.

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Actually increasing the ISO does not increase the amount of light hitting the sensor -- that's only determined by light level, f-stop, and shutter time (and, I guess, the size of the photosite and any use of microlenses over it). The ISO setting just determines the amount of gain applied to the signal.

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