After I learned a bit about using my Polaroid camera to take pictures on paper negatives, I made up a little kit that included a Polaroid camera, tripod, a dark box with paper negatives loaded into empty film cartridges, and a changing box in which I could swap out the cartridges as I took pictures. […]
Category: Darkroom
Find all of EMULSIVE’s darkroom-related articles right here, including advice on technique, process, gear, and building your own darkroom and tools.
Posted inArticles, Darkroom, Developing Film, Featured
Found film: “EXPOSED. Tri-X. APOLLO 11” or, developing film shot on July 20, 1969, ~20:17 UTC
I like collecting old film as much as I like collecting old cameras. So, when I came across an auction for an interesting film container and exposed film from Europe, I bid on it…and I won.
Posted inDarkroom printing
My Quest to make art for the living room wall – Part 2: Paper negatives
In part 1 of my Quest to make art for the living room wall, I went over the process I use to make black and white 8×10 prints in the darkroom. I want to make bigger prints though — 16×20 and bigger. Although silver gelatin darkroom paper is available in big sizes (especially if you’re […]
Posted inBest Of
EMULSIVE’S most popular darkroom-related articles of 2021
Here’s listicle #2 for this year, and it’s 100% focused on the darkroom. From pricing your prints to cyanotype printing or building a camera, this list has you covered…the list goes on. Darkroom and darkroom-related work continues to increase through our community as more and more photographers find themselves coming back to traditional film development […]
Posted inOpinion
Benefits of ample exposure in black and white film photography: Or, let there be light
Detail of a component on one of the very few operating steam locomotives in the United States, Oregon Rail Heritage Center, Portland, OR. Hasselblad 503CX, Zeiss Planar f3.5 100 mm. Kodak T-MAX 100 developed in HC-110.
Posted inDarkroom printing
Elevating the humble cyanotype…with a UV-enlarger!
I’ve been shooting black and white film for over 18 years, and since a few years ago, I have had my own darkroom set up in the basement. I love to do some uncomplicated printing on RC paper every now and then. When I built my own XPan-format panoramic camera, I was confronted with a […]
Posted inDarkroom printing
My Quest to make art for the living room wall – Part 1: Iterating contact prints
In this article, I talk about my progress so far on my quest to make art for the living room wall. In this, part 1, I cover making an initial contact print, and through my process of iterating test prints to a “final” outcome. I put “final” in double-quotes because, well, you’ll see! I hope […]
Posted inWet plate collodion
Building an 8×10″ wet plate “Lockdown Camera”
It must have been getting close to Christmas 2019 when I first started to sketch the rudimentary designs of what would become my first homemade wet plate camera. I’d previously built an Afghani Box Camera for my friend and fellow wet plate photographer, Simon Riddell, so I had some sense of how to go about […]
Posted inDarkroom
How I transformed cyanotype prints into a video for Vivienne Westwood
Cyanotype — also known as the “blueprint” or “sunprint” process, among other names — is a photographic process that has been practiced by photographers for ~180 years. Through the magic of combining two chemicals — ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide — you can produce a striking blue image in a matter of moments. Coated […]
Posted inDarkroom printing
It all comes out in the wash: a cheap DIY print washer for darkrooms without water
I left an essential item off of the shopping list for my sub-$500 darkroom article: the print washer. As much as I am very proud of my less-than-$500 basement darkroom, it is a dry darkroom. I’m lucky, the water pipes are visible in the exposed ceiling, and plumbing parts are relatively inexpensive. I could run some plumbing and […]
Posted inOpinion
Pricing your work: Economies of print, or “assigning worth when value is subjective”
When looking back on my photographs, even as “recently” far as 2019, I feel an abstraction in what my role in these images ought to be. In the moment of pressing the shutter, I feel I am the photographer, I have taken this picture.
Posted inFeatured projects
Northern Sustainable Darkroom: A green revolution for analogue photography
I stand at the edge of the forest, my dilapidated Canon in hand. Mist rises from the trees, as two pigeons snap their wings in hasty exit. A path snakes ahead, deep into the wooded dark. Raising my camera, I peer through the scuffed lens. I hold my finger to the shutter, waiting for the […]
Posted inFeatured projects
My new portrait project: “Inspired”, passionate artists and a 145-year-old Dallmeyer 3B 290mm f/3 Portrait Petzval lens
I have been looking for this historical artwork for some years – a useable Dallmeyer 3B Portrait Petzval 290mm f/3 lens made during the 70s — the1870s. Finally, I got it (with some help). The lens is at the heart of my project, “Inspired”, which will be published in a book — you can register […]
Posted inArticles
Announcing the new 35mm & 120 format Intrepid colour Enlarger: coming March 19th 2021
News just in from the folks over at Intrepid Camera: a new model of their Intrepid Enlarger that can make colour and black and white darkroom prints from 35mm and 120 format film (up to 6×9!) According to the folks at Intrepid, the new enlarger comes after “more than a year of extensive testing, designing […]
Posted inDeveloping Film
My approach to Rodinal semi-stand film development
My film development workflow shifted in 2020 and became almost entirely based around semi-stand methods. Previously I had used ILFORD DD-X and taken great care over timings and chemistry – including for stand dev, but as I’ve found more of my projects start to come together I have not been able to dedicate myself in […]
Posted inOpinion
Seasonal Reflections of an Analogue Photographer
“It’s Christmas Theo, it’s the time of miracles”Hans Gruber, Beloved Christmas Terrorist Christmas is a piece of family-orientated theatre, rich with idiosyncratic traditions that only exist within our own eccentric little bubbles, along with the shared, large scale infectious hysteria of a nation psyching itself up for some overly indulgent festive respite. The glittery extravagances […]
Posted inArticles
A deeper dive into CineStill Simplified Cs2 chemistry: ECN-2 + CINESTILL = ?
We are the Brothers Wright, the photographers and creators behind CineStill. Ever since the beta tests of CineStill 800T processed in C-41 chemistry, and especially once we began designing simplified chemical processes, we have been asked many technical questions about motion picture processing and still photography. Over the years, we have done our best to […]
Posted inDarkroom printing
Printing from slide film using RA-4 reversal processing
Being partial to shooting some slide film where financially possible has always left me with a big frustration when it comes to viewing my precious slide film photos. I own a slide projector and a very good 35mm scanner but with the last real darkroom process for printing slide film: ILFORD’s Cibachrome having been out […]
Posted inArticles, Darkroom, Developing Film, Featured, Featured projects, Wet plate collodion
Introducing MentalCollodion: Shining light on mental health struggles
In the Summer of 2021 something special is coming to the Scottish Highlands (and hopefully elsewhere), courtesy of Simon Riddell, a van, a large camera, and a lot of chemicals! No, it’s not a sequel to Human Traffic, it’s a bold and exciting project from the man who helped bring us One Shot: Inchindown, the film […]
Posted inWet plate collodion
Visualising the Unspeakable: Exploring Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder with wet plate photography
Even when the camera is focused on a single subject, photographic portraiture rarely, if ever, speaks with just one voice. It is this multifaceted layering, be it intentional or otherwise, that generates intrigue and keeps us coming back for another look, drawn to some inexplicable detail that refuses to sit quietly on the page. Historical […]
