Here’s the way I used to proof 35mm B&W negatives (I used plastic pages as a negative storage and proofing device, tolerating the loss of proofing sharpness and eliminating several potentially negative damaging steps using methods that permit direct negative to proofing paper contact):
- Turn on the safe light; let it warm up while doing the following.
- Dilute the developer with 68° water. Pour into the tray.
- Mix the stop bath and the fixer with 68° water. Pour into the trays, one for stop bath, and two for fixer.
- Fill a fifth tray with 68° water.
- Fill the sink with 68° water.
- Arrange the proofing frame under the enlarger.
- Set the enlarger to the proper height, marked by a piece of masking tape on the vertical.
- Set the lens to f/8.
- Set the timer to 10 seconds.
- Turn out the bright lights.
- Pull a sheet of paper out of the paper safe and put it in the proofing frame.
- Put the negatives on top of the paper.
- Close and latch the cover of the proofing frame.
- Make the exposure.
- Release the proofing frame, set the negatives aside.
- Take the paper over the wet side and put it in the developer.
- Develop for 2 minutes.
- Transfer to stop bath for 15 seconds.
- Transfer to first fix tray.
- Turn on the bright lights.
- Check the exposure.
- After 3 min., transfer to second fix tray.
- After 3 min., and transfer to water tray.
- Make sure water is running into the water tray.
- Repeat until all negatives are proofed.
- Tip developer and stop bath trays into the dump trough.
- Return fixer to the bottle.
- Wash the trays, set them aside to dry.
- Mix hypo neutralizer; put in tray.
- Put prints in hypo neutralizer for 3 min.
- Put prints in print washer; turn on water.
- Cleanup darkroom. Turn off safelight.
- After an hour, turn off print washer water.
- Remove prints from print washer and arrange face down on Fiberglas window screens for drying.
Then, the next day:
- Take the stack of contact sheets to a well-lit area.
- Go through the contact sheets, putting check marks with a Sharpie next to the interesting images.
- Set up the light table.
- Find the negatives associated with each checked contact sheet image.
- Examine the negatives with a loupe. If one is not sharp, go back to the contact sheets to find a similar image, then check that negative to see if it’s sharp.
- Mark suggested cropping on the contact sheets with a Sharpie.
With digital, my processes something like this:
- Start Lightroom.
- In Library mode, set the program to display only unflagged images.
- In Loupe view, set the program to fit the image to the screen.
- For each image, hit X to flag the file for deletion (it then disappears because it’s no longed unflagged), or hit the right arrow to look at the next image. Zoom to one-to-one if necessary to check sharpness.
- Tell Lightroom to delete the rejected photos from the disk.
- Assign stars to each image to indicate which have the most potential.
- In Develop mode, do preliminary cropping.
- Close Lightroom.
As in developing, doing things digitally is much less labor-intensive. It is also less physical. You can get a much better idea of the potentials of an image working in Lightroom’s Library mode than you can with a loupe and a contact sheet. The creative parts of the operation, deciding which images deserve further attention, and coming up with a preliminary cropping, require the same kind of mental processes in either process.
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