Fig. 14.
Fig. 15.
When large negatives are to be printed, the plate glass front should always have at least an inch clear all round. For smaller negatives (say 12 by 10 and under) half-an-inch clear is sufficient. This allows a certain latitude in the position of the negative, and enables the fingers to get at the paper without inconvenience. In the frames in which the front of the negative is unsupported this cannot be the case, and for this reason (as well as those given above) they are not recommended for large prints.
[CHAPTER IX.]
PREPARING A LANDSCAPE NEGATIVE FOR PRINTING.
Landscape negatives are rarely ever in perfect harmony for printing, and much may be done by judicious doctoring of the best of negatives to secure the best of prints. With moderate negatives it is absolutely essential that they should be improved. Let us take the example of a hard landscape negative, which if printed so that the deep shades should show detail, would show none in the high lights.
A piece of thin tissue paper (the kind known as papier minerale is the best), of the size of the negative, is damped evenly with a sponge, and carefully pasted on the back of the negative. The negative is then held up to the light, and the high lights carefully traced with a faint line by means of a pencil. These are then cut out by means of a sharp penknife, and a trial print taken in the shade. If it be found that the shadows still print too deeply when the detail in the high light is visible, another thickness of tissue paper may be applied, cutting out this time, perhaps, the high lights and the half tones. Another trial print will show whether the object is attained. If still not satisfactory, crayon in powder from the scrapings of a stick of crayon, or blacklead, may be applied by a stump to the parts requiring it. It may happen that the effects of the tissue paper may be seen in the print by the light penetrating beneath it, and causing the edges of the shadows to print too dark. In this case, which may arise from the negative being taken on a thin glass plate, the parts covering the high lights, and which were cut out, should be indented with a jagged edge such as this, the dotted line showing where the cut would come if it had been cut out in a clean sharp line. Another mode which we have sometimes found successful, though care is required in employing it, is to coat the back of the plate with a very dilute emulsion of a quarter the ordinary consistency, then to expose it, through the negative, and develop with one of the ordinary alkaline developers (we prefer the ferrous oxalate),[19] and then fix. This last film may be protected with a layer of albumen 1 part of albumen to 25 parts of water. By this means the shadows become subdued and the contrasts diminished, and there is no danger of any sharp demarcations in the shades being apparent.