Black and White Photo Processing

in my b&w photo class, there were many many steps to get a photo enlarged. first off, after exposing your roll of film to the capture your view of the world, you will need to get into a pitch black darkroom. in this room you will need a your roll of film, bottle opener, scissors, and developing tank with reels. be sure no light can get into the room, after sealing up, open up the film container with the bottle opener, then separate the film from the plastic spool, roll the film on to the reel, and place the reel into the developer tank. make sure the tank is sealed tightly, when done so, it will be safe to turn on the lights

next step, get by a sink, pre-soak film with water at a temp of 68 degrees, empty water after 60 seconds, then put in the developer, followed by stop bath, then fixer, water rinse, clearing agent, hurricane washer, photo-flo, and lastly hang dry. all that usually takes me a half hour with loading the developing tank.

then for the actual enlarging, first off is your test strip, but before getting to it you need to set up your station. load film carrier with film and a photo of what you want in place, turn on enlarger, adjust photo to desired size centered in easel, sharpen photo to your eye's sharpness, then use grain focuser to sharpen grain. then with enlarger off, place photo paper, with emulsion facing up, into easel. using cardboard or something large and dark enough to cover the size of the photo paper, cover a portion of the photo paper, then turn on the enlarger for a couple seconds. uncover more of the paper and turn on the enlarger for the same amount of seconds. continue to do this until all of the photo paper has been exposed to the enlarger.

now for the chemicals, place the photo paper into developer for the appropriate time (it depends on the portion of chemical to water to temperate is used), then into the stop bath, fixer, and water rinse.

and that is where i am going to stop. there are just too many steps...