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Darkroom Shoot

So I need to see a print come up in developer tray in the darkroom. 16mm, prime, probably 7277.

Can think of several ways to do it, including some post effects work. But seem to remember something about putting it in the developer and waiting for it to almost come up, then turn on (red) light enough for exposure and watch it the rest of the way.

Anybody done this? What's the best way?

Harry Dawson

Portland. OR


>...Need to see a print come up in developer tray in the darkroom.

16mm, prime, probably '77. But seem to remember something about putting it in the developer and waiting for it to almost come up, then turn on (red) light enough for exposure and watch it the rest of the way.

Harry -

If you're talking about a black and white photo - B&W photographic paper is not sensitive to red light at all. You can have all the red light you want and not expose the paper. Red light is, however, very difficult to focus in. If all you have in the room is red light, you're libel to end up with an image that looks (and probably is) soft. You might try a little white edge, carefully kept off the paper itself and underexpose the paper with the enlarger (hoping that any white spill will flash the paper a bit) and see how that works.

As a crazy idea, you might try UV light and have UV sensitive objects around the developer tray that will retroreflect the UV light and give you something to focus on and something other than red light. I don't think photographic paper is sensitive to UV light, but I could be totally wrong there - I'm sure someone here will correct me. Be careful, however, because any retroreflection that happens will fog the paper before it's developed. In other words, don't have a neon colored developer tray because the light bouncing off that will affect the paper.

Another crazy idea - maybe use red dyed water? Thinking that the red water will help filter out any white light that would be around and since the scene will be primarily red anyway you might not see the red in the water or notice that the paper would be stained that color...

Hmmm... Probably time to go to sleep... I'm gettin far too crazy here...

Jay Holben

Director of Photography

www.imaging-the-future.com


>So.need to see a print come up in developer tray in the darkroom. 16mm, prime, >probably '77.

I did this on my last feature. We shot Vision 800 on 35mm. We shot in a practical location and for some reason I can't remember, I didn't have a red gel on hand. I think I used a magenta color instead and it worked out perfectly. We had an 8x10 B&W picture develop before our eyes in the bath. I shot it wide open and it was probable down a couple stops from normal, but that was OK since it was supposed to be dark in there anyway. One thing I would do if I could have was to shoot at 12 fps to gain extra stop and reduce the time it took to develop, although the timing of it worked out well for the scene.

Ken Glassing

CamOp/dp

Los Angeles


Of course amber safe lights work equally well, and easier on the eye then red. There is also a (new?) photographic paper that develops in a mere 10 seconds. No wait time there.

Chris Mosio

DP/Seattl


>So.need to see a print come up in developer tray in the darkroom.

You don«t need a developer bath, you can take your B/W copy and, after bleaching it, you can put the copy in a "sepia toner" bath (or another kind of toner). The picture will appear under any kind of light. Try to find some toner without rotten eggs smell. I hope this helps and despite my english.

Speed (JosŽ Luis Sanz)

Cinematographer

Madrid Spain


>So I need to see a print come up in developer tray in the darkroom. 16mm, prime, >probably '77.

You could also use a bleach and tone kit to bleach an image out and tone it back up to expose--as if it were in a developing tray. Gel the light red for effect but no worries about exposure or if the image will come up dark enough. Toners can be safer than developers to inhale, though you have to watch out for Selenium and gold. Sepia is pretty safe, but the toning bath is yellow. I'm glad to know that it works the straight way as well.

M. Jamieson

N. California


With a modern LED-based safelight, you can just get outrageously high light levels in the darkroom and still not fog the paper. You could actually shoot the real thing, though you might want to undercrank a little bit.

I have seen as much as 50 footcandles in the darkroom, with high intensity LED lighting. For someone who grew up using #1 filters, it is a miracle.

If you overexpose the print a little bit, it will come up faster. Also if you use undiluted Dektol, it will appear to come up a lot faster (the shadows still don't get a good solid black for 2.5 minutes but the image appears much more rapidly).

One of the common ways this used to be done in the early days was to make a print and fix it, then do the darkroom shot in full lighting, putting the print into ferricyanide bleach and making the image disappear, then reversing it in post.

--scott


>Need to see a print come up in developer tray in the darkroom....(snip)...seem to >remember something about putting it in the developer and waiting for it to almost >come up, then turn on (red) light enough for exposure and watch it the rest of the >way

Nope... by the time you get enough light to expose your shot, you will probably "solarize" the photo paper, giving you perhaps a cool looking "artsy" photograph, but undesireable cinematic results.

The best method is to start with a piece of blank paper and a finished (fixed image) print of the same size. With the camera is locked off (or mo-co rigged) place the blank paper in the tray and shoot it. Next, take a shot of the finished photo (without disturbing the photo tray). A slow lap-dissolve will give the appearance of the photo developing. To add reality, you may have the actor dab the blank paper with rubber tongs, and do the same with the submerged photograph, so upon editing, it gives the impression that the photo is being manipulated in the developing bath. Ripples in the water wil disguise the dissolve even further, and, if your developer tray and the photograph are lose in size, the effect should be fairly invisible..

However, if you are a purist, I believe there is a certain kind of photo paper (somehow sulfur salts come to mind) which does not require complete darkenss to develop. Perhaps our former lurker and Art Department member, Nesdon Booth, can offer some advice.

Joe Di Gennaro

Director of Photography

Sherman Oaks, CA

PS, somewhere in the archives, there was a thread about shooting under "red" light... (for your darkroom effect) containing some very good advice, including a tid-bit from me about using "off color" gel (Magenta) instead of primary red, in order to excite some silver in the blue layers of your filmstock.. The color can easily be corrected back to pure red in print or telecine, and the result you will see is a much sharper image thanexposing only the red layer of the negative.


>...Need to see a print come up in developer tray in the darkroom. 16mm

I have forgotten the chemistry but I am sure some bright spark on CML will know ...

When I did this goodness knows how many donkys years ago I made a print then developed it in the normal way ... then bleached it ... then you can turn on all the white light you want .. then redeveloped it.

I get brown fingers even thinking about it

David Samuelson


>Nope... by the time you get enough light to expose your shot, you will probably >"solarize" the photo paper, giving you perhaps a cool looking "artsy" photograph, but >undesireable cinematic results.

I don't understand what all the fuss is about regarding this procedure...? I've done this very shot before...using a red-ish gel on my one light source...and it came out perfect. We needed to develop about three different photos, trying each time to get the blacks in the photo just right, but we never had a problem with the photos not developing right. Remember, when I exposed my shot, it was about 2 stops under...which is about where you'd want it anyway, since the room is supposed to be almost completely dark in real life.

Mo-Co for a shot like this seems to me a little overkill.

Ken Glassing

CamOp/dp

Los Angeles


If you're shooting a B&W print coming up in the developer, fake it with props. The real safelight is tough to get an exposure under.

Prepare the final black and white print you want. Make sure it's thoroughly washed. Buy and prepare "chromium intensifier" solution, a chrome-based bleach that converts the black silver in the print back to pale silver halide; now it looks like a piece of undeveloped photo paper.

Under any lighting you want, you can redevelop the print in a tray of print developer (like Dektol) and control the speed at which the image appears by dilution and temperature of the developer. You can even reset the gag by re-bleaching and washing the prints over again.

One formula for "rehalogenating bleach" for this effect (from the Darkroom Cookbook) is: Potassium ferricyanide 8 grams (about a teaspoon full) and potassium bromide, 12 grams (a teaspoon and a half) dissolved in a liter (quart) of water. Bleach five minutes, wash five minutes and re-develop at will. Both these chemicals are cheap and relatively safe.

Skip Roessel NYC


Actually, UV light is the light B&W paper is MOST sensitive to! But deep red light is pretty safe, maybe even a 500-watt gelled primary red would be paper-safe if thoroughly sealed with blackwrap. Boy, it'd heat up fast though.

>When I did this goodness knows how many donkys years ago I made a print then >developed it in the normal way ... then bleached it ... then you can turn on all the >white light you want ...then redeveloped it.

You would proabably have fixed it first, David. That removes the unexposed silver halide, to prevent it from fogging the second time around. Then bleach (ferricyanide +

bromide is still used in standard formulae, it's quite different from household bleach which isn't appropriate). This converts the silver image back to silver halide. Then develop it again, in white light. Finally colour grade the scene to look like the popular impression of a darkroom. (Traditionally darkrooms are shown red, although safelights for print are usually yellow. Who wants reality though?)

But since the paper is only blue-sensitive, you could shoot in a bright yellow or red safelight (LEDs are narrow-pass and _very_ safe if you pick the right wavelength) and not fog the image.

I like the idea about sharpening the image a little with the blue layer (i.e. using a magenta filter) but there's the risk of fogging the image at the same time.

Steve's right about the difficulty in visually focussing on a red image - wouldn't you focus your shot with a tape measure though?

All this assumes we are talking about developing a black and white print.

Skip Roessel

NYC


> I made a print then developed it in the normal way ... then bleached it ... then you >can urn on all the white light you want ...then redeveloped it.

Just hopped onto this thread - so shoot me down if this has been mentioned already. Years ago Ian Wilson [BSC] talked me through how he'd done the darkroom development shots in Ian Softleys 'Backbeat'. He used the above method but instead of fiddling around with redevelopment they simply ran the camera in reverse when the finished print was popped into the bleaching solution (it was transfered out of a tray of water to mimic a tray of fixer Ð yellow fixer solution looks like clear water under a red safety light after all).

Hey presto when projected - the optimum print appears.

Despite the hand movements and the liquid in the trays moving backwards, you'd never notice. Though obviously a cut around synch dialogue is required.

Tom Townend,

Cinematographer/London.


>When I did this goodness knows how many donkys years ago I made a print then >developed it in the normal way ... then bleached it ... then you can turn on all the >white light you want ...then redeveloped it.

You would proabably have fixed it first, David. That removes the unexposed silver halide, to prevent it from fogging the second time around. Then bleach (ferricyanide + bromide is still used in standard formulae, it's quite different from household bleach which isn't appropriate). This converts the silver image back to silver halide. Then develop it again, in white light.

Finally colour grade the scene to look like the popular impression of a darkroom. (Traditionally darkrooms are shown red, although safelights for print are usually yellow. Who wants reality though?)

You are correct. Unpacking more of my old memory cells I realise that the process I used was the one for sepia toning ... what ever that is.

David Samuelson


Tom Townend wrote:-

>I made a print then developed it in the normal way

Actually it was David Samuelson who wrote that, Tom. But your point emphasises what a great range of tricks can be used to get this shot.

Then David wrote:-

>the process I used was the one for sepia toning ... what ever that is.

Sepia toning is quite similar - removing the silver image in the same way, thenreplacing it with a silver sulphide image, which is a brown colour. This technique was also one of a range of techniques used early last century to add colour to b/w motion picture film prints. There was also iron toning (a cold greeny tone), copper toning (a much richer copper-brown colour) and even uranium toning (yet another shade of brown) among others. (This is in addition to the range of tinted bases).

Dominic Case

The Atlab Group

http://www.atlab.com.au


Thanks to everyone who posted methods for getting a developing print to come up on film. I studied them all, and went over the pros and cons with the director.

For this particular situation, a very short piece in a ten minute film posted on tape, we decided to do it the simple way, with dissolves.

With a locked off camera we did a shot with the photographer dunking the blank paper, stepped out of frame, water settled, rolled extra, then cut and replaced it with finished print, and rolled some more. This shot included the tray.

Then we did the two shots "inside" the print, finished and blank. They'll be dissolved, probably on the closeup.

Since this shot is part of a short sequence in a short film I think this will work fine. We got the rest of the darkroom shots done, and an interview, and some establishing shots and had a civilized day!

Again, this CML is a worldclass resource! Thanks!

Harry Dawson

Portland, OR


 


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