Contact Print

Contact Print

A contact print is a photographic image produced from a film, usually a negative. The defining characteristic of a contact print is that the photographic result is made by exposing through the film original onto a light sensitive material pressed tightly to the film.

Contact PrintIn the dark, or under a safelight, the printer places an exposed and developed piece of photographic film, emulsion side down, against a piece of photographic paper, briefly shines light through the negative, then develops the secondary paper into a contact print. The image in the emulsion has been pressed as close as possible to the photosensitive paper.

Contact PrintSince this process produces neither enlargement nor reduction, the image on the paper print is exactly the same size as the image on the negative. Contact prints are used to produce proof sheets from entire rolls of 35mm negative (from 135 film cassettes), and 120 (2 1/4 film rolls), to aid in the selection of images for further enlargement, and to aid in cataloging and identification.

Contact Print

Projection Printing or Enlarging

Projection Printing or Enlarging

An enlarger is a specialized transparency projector used to produce photographic prints from film. Prints made with an enlarger are known as enlargements. Typical enlargers are used in a darkroom, an enclosed space from which extraneous light may be excluded.

Projection Printing or Enlarging

The parts of the enlarger includes baseboard, enlarger head, elevation knob, filter holder, negative carrier, glass plate, focus knob, girder scale, timer, bellows, and housing lift. The practical amount of enlargement will depend upon the grain size of the negative, the sharpness (accuracy) of the both the camera and projector lenses, blur in the negative due to subject motion and camera shake during the exposure of the negative, and the intended viewing distance of the final product.

Projection Printing or Enlarging

Projection Printing or Enlarging

A condenser enlarger consists of a light source with mirrored reflector and a condensing lens. Alternatively, a cold light enlarger has a fluorescent light tube masked by translucent glass as its light source. The directional light then passes through a film holder, which may hold sheet or roll stock photographic negatives and transparencies, which have been previously exposed in a camera and developed.

Projection Printing or Enlarging

Color enlargers often have an adjustable filter mechanism between the light source and the negative for color correction with controls for the amount of cyan, magenta and yellow light reaching the negative. The negative image is then projected through an adjustable iris aperture and focusing lens to a flat surface upon which is mounted the sensitized paper to be exposed.

Projection Printing or Enlarging

Projection Printing or Enlarging

Projection Printing or Enlarging

Photographic paper is usually placed into a special holder, called an easel, designed to hold the paper perfectly flat. Some easels are designed with adjustable overlapping flat steel "blades" to crop the image on the paper to the desired size while keeping an unexposed white border about the image. Larger sheets of paper are sometimes placed directly on the table or enlarger base, and held down flat with metal strips.

Projection Printing or Enlarging

Projection Printing or Enlarging

As the image size is changed it is also necessary to change the focus of the lens. The enlarger is focused by moving the lens closer to or further from the negative holder by adjusting the length of a light-tight bellows with a geared rack and pinion mechanism.

Projection Printing or Enlarging

The enlargement is made by first focusing the image with the lamp on and the lens wide open and the easel empty, usually with the aid of a focus finder. The lamp is turned off. The photo-paper is placed into the easel, and the lens stopped down to a reasonable working aperture.

Projection Printing or Enlarging

If it's a color print, color correction is dialed in, or the variable-contrast filter selected if using variable-contrast black and white paper. While there are exposure and color meters available for the darkroom, most printers use the judgement of experience and comparative tests to find the optimal settings for each image.

Projection Printing or Enlarging

The enlarger's lamp or shutter mechanism is controlled by an electronic timer. The exposed paper can be developed right away, or placed in a light-tight container for later processing.