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Why print? When you can get excellent prints from your black & white negatives by sending them off to commercial processing laboratories, why make your own? For many photographers, making a photographic print is as much a part of the process as shooting the image itself. For a start, it is a creative process that is both enjoyable and fulfilling and, much like the role of a post processing tools such as Photoshop or Lightroom in any digital workflow, (although much more fun) a darkroom provides film...

The first stage of making a darkroom print is to determine the exposure time. If you have already created a contact sheet of your negatives, and they appear correctly exposed, then you should have a rough idea of the necessary exposure (provided you haven’t moved the enlarger head or aperture setting after exposing the contact sheet). Note: If you change the degree of enlargement you will also need to adjust the exposure. Some enlargers have scales printed on their columns to make this easier. Another...

What are film developers? Film developers are a photographic chemical that turns your exposed film into working negatives as part of a processing workflow. (You will also need a stop bath and fixer - for more information on how to process your film or which chemistry to choose read our guides). We offer a broad range of film developers that are designed to exploit the different characteristics of our films. Developers are available in either powder and liquid concentrate form and have a range of charact...

Having shot a roll of black and white film it now needs to be processed to create the negatives. At this point your film is still light sensitive so should not be exposed to light. Processing your own film can be highly satisfying and cost effective. It is also easy to learn. The most common method for hand processing film is undertaken by using a Daylight Processing Tank. This piece of kit needs the film to be loaded on to a ‘spiral’ or ‘reel’, in the dark, and then enclosed in a light tight co...

Contact sheets are a great way to review and record your images. They allow you to view all the negatives on a roll of film before deciding which ones you want to print and how you may want to crop them. They also provide a permanent record of those negatives for filing purposes. How to make a contact sheet To make a contact sheet we recommend using ILFORD MULTIGRADE RC DELUXE Set the enlarger head to a height that gives a 40cm (16in) wide rectangle of light on the baseboard Put a MULTIGRADE fil...

Silver halide has been used in photographic film and paper for over 150 years and remains a vital ingredient found in all high-quality products. Silver halide crystals in gelatin form part of an emulsion which is used to coat the paper or film. On exposure to light (i.e. in a camera or darkroom), the crystals react turning into silver and forming the image. Silver halide prints There are many ways to produce black & white prints with options varying in quality. Traditional black & white silver ha...

General health and safety advice This section provides advice to our customers on the safe handling, use and storage of our photochemical solutions, best practice for waste disposal and specific advice to women who are pregnant or breastfeeding a child. If you are looking for information on the chemical safety of HARMAN photochemistry solutions, please refer to the Safety Data Sheets (known as SDS or MSDS) 24 HOUR OHES emergency line for advice on chemical incidents Safe working practices It is essen...

Retouching is normally done to remove blemishes from the negative or the final print. It can also be used to change the tone or remove unwanted detail.  As retouching can be difficult, care is required. Advice for retouching The most risky retouching techniques involve removing parts of the image, by bleaching, cutting, or scraping with the edge of a sharp knife. The addition of density is generally less risky, and can be done using dye, paint etc, or a suitable soft pencil. When retouching prints from o...

A black border often enhances a print and does not involve any sort of mounting or overlay. Ink or tape borders The easiest way to produce narrow black borders is to rule them with a pen directly onto your finished print: an India-ink pen gives the most solid line, but most permanent (all surface) spirit based markers are much less expensive and will do the job. For slightly wider black borders, narrow, self-adhesive strips are available from graphic arts suppliers. Supplied in dispensers, of various w...

Split grade printing The version of split grade printing described here is that taught to me by the ILFORD head printers, Mike Walden and Terry Offord, and is the simplest, fastest way to make good darkroom prints from pretty much any negative. (The exception is really underexposed negatives to print these you usually only need high contrast). This is a very powerful technique that can be used routinely with variable contrast (VC) papers, such as ILFORD MULTIGRADE. It makes use of the differing performa...