| Processing black and white paper is a magical thing. While working in safelight conditions, we are able to watch the process while it is happening. Although this adds to the interest while creating a print, I would refrain from altering your process because of what you are seeing under safelight conditions.
The chemicals of photography and their use can be a very involved subject. I am not a chemist and my opinion on this subject is that it is not necessary for you to be a chemist either. Most of the chemical agents used in black and white photography today have been around for at least 50 years and quite honestly there really isn't any magical secrets about their use. Learning what is needed to create the images that you desire is all that I would recommend you attempt to learn. There are many dozens of photographers whose work I admire and most of them are using same chemicals that you find at your local camera store. Learn to use the chemicals properly and also learn that there is no real economy in using cheap chemicals or using your chemicals past their capacity. In this section I will share a my basic processing procedures. I will not claim that these procedures are the "best" approach or the only right way of processing black and white paper. My procedure is sound, repeatable and I hope that you are able to learn from my experience. The first step in processing black and white paper is developing the paper. It is good that they chose to call this chemical "developer", makes it easy to remember. I use Kodak Dektol as my standard developer. Most of the time this chemical is diluted 1 part developer to 2 or 3 parts water. Development time varies from 2 minutes to 5 minutes depending on the paper. Like film developer, paper developer is very temperature sensitive. The recommended working temperature is usually 68 degrees. For higher temperatures you might consider reducing the development time slightly and increasing the development time for those cold winter days when things might be less than 68 degrees. I would advise that you arrive at your "normal" development time and stick with it. Standardizing on a set process helps to remove variables that would other wise cause problems that might be miss diagnosed. When development is complete, the paper is placed in a stop bath. The stop bath is an acidic solution that stops development. Time in the stop bath is usually around 30 seconds. From the stop bath the paper goes into a fixer bath. I use Kodak Rapid Fix mixed to film strength (1:3). The time in the fixer bath is 1 minute. The image is now somewhat permanent so you can turn on the lights. After removing the paper from the fixer I like to place it under running water to remove most of the chemicals. If this is only work print, it will go to the print viewing area and get wiped off. For RC paper the paper could go to a 5 minute wash and then squeegeed and placed to dry. For Fiber paper and archival processing, the paper may go to a water holding bath while other prints of the same image are made. From that point there is usually another fixer bath, a toner bath and some time in a hypo clearing agent. A long wash of up to an hour and a half completes the process. |
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