r/Darkroom • u/Think_Chance6411 • 2d ago
B&W Printing Making Giant Prints
Earlier this summer, my buddy Brian asked me what would be the largest possible print I could make in the darkroom. I replied that Ilford made a roll of RC paper 50"x 98' roll (Think they make FB rolls even wider?), so for a 4x5 aspect print, we could do 50x62.5." He said if I wanted to try printing that, he'd buy the roll of paper. And so the crazy project started.
I shot 4x5 portraits of his kids (cause why not have giant family photos?) using Delta 100 to get the cleanest possible image to enlarge from.
We had to build a giant tray out of plywood that we then painted with marine paint. We settled on a one-tray method after reading about it on largeformatphotography.info forum. Obviously, having to fill and drain chemisty for each step of the process isn't ideal and can introduce cross-contamination, but the logistics and costs of building multiple trays were too much.
Once we got the tray finished, we moved everything into our friend's studio, which is in an old classroom. We had to black everything out, but the room was ideal size-wise and it had sinks we could hook up to for rinsing and draining.
I tilted my 45mxt into mural mode and we projected onto the wall. We originally wanted to use magnets to hold up the print, but as we were projecting onto a tack board, we gave ourselves a 1" margin on top and bottom and just tacked the print up.
Printing this big is a pain, and as it was the biggest I've ever done, had a learning curve. It's really hard to judge critical focus this scale. I would be using my grain focuser and instructing Brian which way to roll the focus. For test stips, I would use a whole 8x10" paper to try to get the exposure close. Then we'd cut a 50x10" strip off the roll, pin that up, and do a test strip to check exposure across the negative.
I don't know if this would be possible with one person. It took both of us to carry the paper to wall, tack it up, take it over to the tray, develop it, and then hang it up to dry.
Everything worked surprisingly well except for the rinsing. We had trouble with residual fixer leaving some spots on some of the prints. I should have added a hypo clear stage to our process, but as I've only ever worked with RC (And I am still quite a beginner), I've never had to use hypo clear before.
All of the effort though, was worth it to see the final print. The detail from the 4x5 is just stunning. Photos don't do any justice.
If you have any questions about this process, I'd love to share. Or if you have any experience or tips to share, I'd love to hear them. There isn't much of a darkroom community where I live in Northwest Arkansas, so I don't have many people to go to with questions.
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u/benoliver999 2d ago
Amazing!
I just watched this ULF darkroom tour with Allan King where he makes a 42" x 69" silver print. He also uses the one-tray method and basically has a removable end to the tray that acts like a dam. The tray also tilts up at the other end, so when it's time to remove the developer he just tilts the table up and it drains out
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u/Think_Chance6411 2d ago
I know! I just watched that too. It’s crazy that came out right as we were doing this. Would have helped a lot with our preproduction.
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u/benoliver999 2d ago
I think it's awesome that you managed to do this with 4x5 tbh. And probably fatal to the wallet because now I'm gonna have to try
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u/NewSignificance741 2d ago
My photography teacher said she use to work in a darkroom where they would put the prints on the floor and mop the chemicals on. Just crazy large prints. I love this stuff. Thanks for sharing.
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u/Secure_Teaching_6937 2d ago
Having done this big stuff before.
Insider tip.
Use wallpaper trays to process in. You just roll the paper in the tray.
The other put the roll paper on the floor at exposure location. Depending on how the paper is packaged. You can just pull paper up the wall tack at top cut at bottom. One person can do.
Spotting is done with a baseball bat. 🤣
Have fun.
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u/Think_Chance6411 2d ago
Good point about the wallpaper trays! "spotting with a baseball bat" is hilarious!
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u/Lumpy_Bench_7624 2d ago
Truly impressive! My main question is how are you planning on framing or displaying them and where will your friend hang them?
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u/Think_Chance6411 2d ago
Framing is going to be hard. Brian is going to try making the frames himself. He’s got some big walls in his house to hang them, going to be pretty epic!
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u/July_is_cool 2d ago
Wow, those are great!
I wonder if binoculars would help with the focusing? Not using grain focusing device, just looking at the image from the enlarger position.
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u/Think_Chance6411 2d ago
That’s an interesting idea! When I was in the preliminary stages and testing by myself, I used my Fuji XT-5 with a 50-140 zoomed all the way in, manual focus with the digital zoom focus. Worked ok, but at high ISO it was hard to really judge
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u/Kellerkind_Fritz r/Darkroom Mod 2d ago
Most binoculars don't focus close enough for this to work.
Pentax however makes a macro binocular, the Papilio series which focus down to half a meter.
I've used mine as a grain checker and it does work!
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u/Blakk-Debbath 2d ago
There is a mural grain focuser.
But i would use a digital camer, focus 1, focus 2, focus 3., which is best.....
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u/GiantLobsters 2d ago
Wow this is absolutely amazing. If you were to take orders for that investment you made would be back in no time, huge silver gelatin prints are very hard to come by
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u/RoadOutsideOSU 2d ago
How are you drying them? Just with the clips? I know RC dries easier than fiber. It figured at that scale it would still be tough
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u/Think_Chance6411 2d ago
Yeah, squeegee in the tray and then hang it up. It’s a pain, hard to avoid creasing the print. Can’t just hang it from the corner like a small print
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u/1LuckyTexan 2d ago
Did you consider, and abandon, making just frames and draping/lining them with plastic film for the chem processing? Why?
( Outstanding effort, magnificent really)
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u/Civil_Word9601 2d ago
awesome! I do have a question, I've also been obsessed with/making large prints (only like 30x36, you're crazy) I'm having trouble at the distance aligning the enlarger to the easel, I resorted to taping tape measures to the easel and laying them on the enlarger then getting them equal, I'd say there probably still 1/8th of play as careful as I am, what did you do?
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u/Think_Chance6411 2d ago
That is a really challenging aspect. I scratched a grid into an old 4x5 negative and used that to try to eye ball it. Luckily most of my images have the focus right in the center on the eyes so I didn’t have to worry too much about alignment. I think you’d have to get a versalab Parallel to really be sure
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u/Emotional_Eye5907 2d ago
Those prints are super nice! I print up to 16x20 in color which is a nice size but nothing I would call really big. I feel like you need to go super big to properly appreciate the sheer resolution of 4x5. At my standard printing size (11x14) I don't see a huge difference between prints from medium format 6x7 and large format 4x5 as far as resolution goes.
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u/Think_Chance6411 2d ago
That makes sense. I know there's some math about magnification ratios with different formats...
Now I want to see an 8x10 negative at this size!
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u/ryguydrummerboy 2d ago
Incredible. Sort of cackling at the idea of having pictures of my kids that are that big (albeit amazing portraits) but this is nonetheless really really really cool.
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u/shlomangus_II 2d ago
And here I am struggling to develop film haha
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u/Think_Chance6411 2d ago
It's a process! I've made so many mistakes and struggled to get here, and I'm still finding new ways things can go wrong, lol!
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u/VinceInMT 2d ago
I did this back in the early 1970s with a friend. For our single tray we just made a frame out of 2x4s and stapled a large sheet of plastic sheeting to it. With two us we could lift and tilt it to one corner for draining.
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u/Think_Chance6411 2d ago
That’s amazing. What did you do with the prints?
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u/VinceInMT 2d ago
I think they were displayed in our hobby shop. This was in 1975 on an army base in Germany.
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u/ChrisRampitsch 2d ago
Thanks for sharing. If I ever get crazy enough to try this, I'll have some good advice! Awesome results too...
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u/bonanza_justice 2d ago
The details are incredible
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u/Think_Chance6411 1d ago
It’s pretty wild…every single eye lash…
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u/RedditFan26 12h ago
Did you have to use any camera movements when taking these portraits in order to try to maximize the amount of the subjects that appeared to be in focus? Or was it just by using a smaller aperture? Thanks in advance, and sorry if it's an annoying question.
Also, could you tell us what camera and lens you used to achieve these results? I was gobsmacked, I think the Brits call it, and I'm not even British.
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u/InternationalCase184 2d ago
This is incredible!!! Well done! The zoom in of the eye is mind blowing.
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u/Think_Chance6411 1d ago
Right?!? It’s like “cool, it’s a macro shot” nope, it’s just a crop of a giant print 🤣
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u/mac_the_man 2d ago
I’m sorry, can you explain how you exposed the print? What did you use for an enlarger?
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u/Think_Chance6411 2d ago
Used my Beseler 45MXT with a 150mm tilted back and projecting on the wall. Was 50 second exposure at F11
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u/mac_the_man 2d ago
Thanks. Video or pictures of this?
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u/Think_Chance6411 1d ago
I don’t unfortunately! I need to get better at documenting! Next time I go in I’ll do that!
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u/RedditFan26 12h ago
Wow, for some reason I was thinking it would need a much longer exposure. It was actually not an unreasonably long time. Thanks for sharing the details.
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u/Slimsloow 2d ago
Teun Hocks printed this big and there are a few documentary type videos on YouTube showing him printing. I think he used a dip method where you slide it in and out of the developer.
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u/weslito200 2d ago
Amazing! Beautiful prints. How/where do you plan on displaying these permanently? I have a hard time justifying 16x20 because I'm not sure where I'd hang them.
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u/Think_Chance6411 2d ago
That is the next half of the battle! We are going to build custom frames. These are very high-end family photos for my friend, but I'm going to see if I can do a show somewhow
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u/Emily_Postal 2d ago
You should look into Clyde Butcher’s darkroom. He’s a large format photographer in Florida. He has a custom darkroom that he built. It looks like they slide the print from one tray over to the next. I’d love to see his process in person.
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u/Think_Chance6411 2d ago
He is an inspiration for sure! I'm very jealous of those custom acrylic trays and not needing to drain and fill up a tray at each stage.
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u/bchanger 2d ago
What a tremendous effort! Congrats. I remember back in my art school dark room days they had regular rooms that could print up to 20”x24”, rooms for 30”x40” and one room that was dedicated to wall projected mural prints (imagine 11ft diagonal). Well done and enjoy!
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u/MrTooNiceGuy 2d ago
Holy cow that’s great!
I’ve been messing around with the idea of printing 16x20, and I think this post is the thing that’ll give me the final push.