The fixing is important, as upon this depends in a large measure the permanence of the prints. The bath should be freshly made up, 3 ounces of hyposulphite of soda to 16 ounces of water. Prints are placed in this bath face down, and one under, instead of on top of another. The tray should be occasionally rocked. With a fresh bath prints will fix in ten minutes, but where many prints are made at one time it will be well to use a second fixing bath. The emulsion of an unfixed print will appear a yellowish tinge in the unfixed portions when examined by transmitted light; but this is not an easy or certain test. It is better to make absolutely certain of thorough fixing by continued immersion, occasional rocking and, where many prints are made, a second bath. The fixing bath should not be allowed to get too warm in hot weather. Blistering, staining and frilling will result in such a case, and I have known a print which was left in a warm fixing bath for an hour or more to be reduced beyond redemption. With freshly made hypo baths at a suitable temperature there is absolutely no danger of the paper frilling or blistering.
The final washing must be thorough, as the hypo is difficult to eliminate from both the emulsion and the paper. Care must be taken to see that the prints are well separated while washing. This ensures uniform washing.
It frequently happens that a negative may require more or less dodging in printing. With bromide paper this is particularly easy. We will take the simple case of a negative with dense sky which will not print out in the ordinary way. All that we need in this case is a piece of paper cut roughly to the sky line and kept moving during part of the exposure over the part which is to be held back. If necessary, cut down the light in order to prolong the exposure, or expose at a greater distance from the light. One or more test-strips will be required for this purpose in order to ascertain the relative times of exposure. A modification of this method is when a small portion of the negative only needs extra printing—a face or hand for instance. Here we take a piece of paper a little larger than the negative and cut a small hole in it, moving it in front of the light so as to throw the latter only upon the portions needing the extra printing. Still another modification is where a portion only needs holding back. Here we use a small piece of paper or cardboard stuck on a knitting needle, moving the latter so that it will not intercept the light too long at one place.
In all these and similar instances which will occur to the reader, the dodging should be done during the first part of the exposure. The subsequent exposure seems to obliterate traces of such dodging better than when it is done at the end of the exposure, just as in cloud-printing better results are achieved by printing the sky first and the foreground afterward.
It is quite possible to make bromide negatives in the camera. They have their advantages in classes of work not requiring the finest definition, are much lighter, cheaper, more easily stored and less liable to breakage or other mishaps. They are best made on a thin, smooth paper, a soft paper being better than the hard. They are placed in the plate-holder by means of the ordinary cut film holder. The exposure required is ascertained by a trial or two, but roughly speaking is about one-twentieth that of a rapid plate. After development in the usual way—it being carried only a little further than usual—and after fixing, washing and drying, the paper negative can be spotted or retouched, after which it is waxed.
Chapter IV
ENLARGING—DAYLIGHT METHODS
In taking up enlarging a full knowledge of what has been said as to the manipulation of bromide paper will be necessary, as the principles governing exposure apply here as in contact printing, errors being even more serious, owing to the greater waste of material.
For the illuminant used in enlarging, we may employ either daylight or artificial light. The former is cheap, but variable; the first cost of the latter is quite a little sum, but the light is uniform. A daylight enlarging apparatus can be made for a dollar or two, and hence is within the reach of all; and if the process be given up, the loss is not serious.