Well not all darkroom sessions need be successful I suppose. That’s part of the journey! I wanted much more contrast from this print, but “ran out” as I was already at a grade 5. I took this a few years ago at the beach and I over-exposed the film quite a bit, may have had a light leak in the camera, and it was also not super contrasty of a scene.

I can fix it by scanning the negative and manipulating things in Lightroom but even though it’s too flat, the print just looks so much more interesting to me. So much beautiful detail, given it was from a 4×5 negative.

So I’m going to keep at it! Next step is making a copy-negative using a lith or ortho film and something like Dektol or PQ to boost the contrast up to where I want. Should be fun as I’ve never had to do that before!

Another issue I ran into was scratches and blemishes on my condensers are coming through into the print :/ (it can be seen on the left side towards the middle). I don’t see this on 120 or 35mm as much because it’s a smaller image circle. But in 4×5 I definitely do. Going to try using the diffusor from my Aristo cold light with the condensers to see if that helps but I may need to buy another set of condensers, oof.

Oh well. Again that’s part of the journey! Even though I didn’t get the results I wanted, last night’s darkroom session was still a hugely enjoyable experience!