Let me tell you a little story.
I was preparing (mostly mentally I think, like – can I even do that?) for this moment for quite a long time and between gathering information and materials I was dreaming about how my first print is magically slowly materializing in developer solution and how it will look like in the end.
At one point I realized that I should probably correct myself a little bit to not have too high expectations.
At another point I was kinda visualizing the print procedure and realized I have no idea how long I should expose the paper. Who needs to know this stuff anyway right? I mean, I saw those fancy exposure aids, but let me tell you something – if I’m gonna wait until I’m this ready, I’ll never start (I’ll be talking about this more I suspect).
Oh, did I mention that my enlarger is made from junk I found at home? And that it has some kind of bulb that I have no idea how to calculate exposure time for?
Well, whatever, just spit it out! Right?
And indeed I did. Now, do you want to see my historically first ever darkroom print that I made?
Behold!
Let me tell you, when I saw this on the light for the first time I had a one good loud laugh. I mean I had some suspicion already in the developer but result surprised me anyway. Yep, it is just a nice black plane with one little brighter spot (and very skewed frame borders attempt).
It turned out my enlarger bulb is pretty powerful – this was around 8 seconds exposure. To get usable print I have to expose for around two seconds.
But anyway, now you tell me if I had such a good laugh if I had all those fancy toys and researched everything to every little boring detail, like exposure time for example. Blah!