Happy Thursday film people! 🫡

You know what always makes any day better? When a box 📦 of new film arrives! 

I’ve got a bit of a random assortment, and they are:

• Adox CHS 100 II - I’ll be honest, I don’t know much about this B&W film. I got it because it was from the same company of the developer I use. 😳 

• Harman Phoenix - Like we talked about on Tuesday, I’m looking forward to trying this in 120. Expect a report soon. 📋

• Cinestill DoubleXX - I’ve shot this before and really liked it. It has a very cinematic look to it.

• Neopan Acros 100 II - Another B&W film I don’t know anything about. 🤷‍♂️

Here’s what we’re getting into today:

• 🧂(Mis)adventures in salt contact printing

🧂(Mis)adventures in salt contact printing

I have a confession to make. I’ve never done any darkroom printing. 😱 Despite there being local darkrooms and my countless eBay searches for an enlarger I just never have. One day…

Somehow, I stumbled upon salt contact printing. It’s one of the oldest photographic printing techniques (from the 1830s) and it involves salt, silver nitrate and the sun. With no need for a darkroom I decided to give this technique a try.

What is salt contact printing? 🧐

It is a printing technique where you take paper that you’ve made light sensitive and place a negative directly on it and expose it to UV light. After it’s been exposed, you fix the paper so it’s no longer light sensitive and then you have a photographic print.

What do you need? 🧾

• Sea salt

• Silver Nitrate

• Hypo Fixer

• Some chemical bottles

• Watercolor paper

• A brush

• A picture frame

• The sun

• And of course, a negative.

What do you need to do? 🖌️

The basic steps are:

1. Coat watercolor paper with a 2% salt water solution. Let dry.

2. Brush on the salted paper with a 12% silver nitrate solution. Let dry. 🚨At this point the paper is sensitive to UV light. 🚨

3. Place a negative onto the light sensitive paper

4. Place the paper and the negative into a picture frame. The negative should be touching the glass—You want everything nice and flat.

5. Place the picture frame outside. In direct sunlight is good. Development times will vary, but you will start to see the paper get darker. ~10 mins.

6. Remove the paper from the frame and place the paper in the fixer

7. Rinse well. Hang to dry.

That is a very simple outline of the process. Here are some wonderful tutorials and videos that go into much greater detail. If you are interested in trying this, I recommend checking these out.

Some gotchas. 🫵

• This is contact printing. Meaning your print is only going to be as big as your negative. 4×5 (which is what I used) or 8×10 are going to give better results than 120 or 35mm.

• The Fixer needs to be Hypo Fixer, not rapid fixer. What’s the difference? 🤓

  • Hypo fixer is sodium thiosulfate.

  • Rapid fixer is ammonium thiosulfate.

• As the name suggests, rapid fixer is faster but is too strong for the silver nitrate.

My results 🫠

While it was a fun process, I struggled. I had a really hard time getting an even amount of silver nitrate solution on the paper.

I tried foam brushes, fine brushes, even got a glass rod and tried rolling it on. The glass rod definitely provided the best result, but even then it wasn’t fully even.

But the biggest issue I had was the paper darkening prior to being exposed. I think it’s referred to as fogging, but no matter what I tried I couldn’t avoid it. I sensitized the paper in low light (no UV) and let it dry in complete darkness, but no luck. I think the issue may have been the particular water color paper I was using. Or maybe my silver nitrate solution was off. 🤷‍♂️ If you have some advice on troubleshooting, reach out, I’d love to hear from you.

I still enjoyed the process, and I’m glad I tried something new. Even if I got it completely dialed in, I don’t know if it’s something I would do often. However, I would like to try it again sometime. It’s crazy that people back in the 1800s figured out that this processed worked. There is definitely an appreciation you get from experiencing it for yourself.

That’s going to be all for today. I will see you on Tuesday (hopefully with some Phoenix photos).

Go turn a negative into a printed positive!

Ben Henschel

📷 Mamiya RB67 / 🎞️ Phonenix 200