I spent most of last weekend working issues with the film I developed on Thursday night and attempting to make my first prints.
First, on Friday night when I scanned in the images I developed on Thursday I saw odd brown stains and such on some of the images. After some research and especially help from the folks on APUG (Analog Photography User’s Group) I determined that it was the issue with my process. More specifically, I read 30 seconds for fix….that was for paper … for film it should be 5-6+ minutes. I re-fixed, re-washed and re-photo floed the set of negatives. It did indeed fix most of the issues. You can see the images below and how the brown spots went away
Before
After
The second issue was trying to make prints. I tried to make some test strips and they immediately turned black….a sign there was too much light. Again APUG to the rescue. They suggested that I check the aperture of the enlarger…well I’m not sure what it was set to but I found how it is set. They also suggested that I try “exposing” the paper with the safelight…put something on the paper so I can shield some of it from the light and see what happens. Sure enough the paper was black except for the area I covered with a cloths pin. Thus the real problem was indeed the safelight. I was using a yellow bulb in a work light…it was too light. Consequently I needed to get another safelight. The light I”m getting is a light that can use different filters and I got it with the amber filter which is recommended for the paper I am using. We’ll try again and see what happens. BTW…there is a huge range of prices for safelights…35 on into a few hundred. For a home darkroom I can image needing more than a lower end model.
In conclusion I learned quite a bit working though these issues. I would also recommend if you’re getting into film join the APUG site and if you find it as useful as I have, become a subscriber to help offset their costs.