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Replacing The Negative In Exact: The "developing" is done with a brush or less commonly by pouring a "soup" of sawdust and hot water over the print again and again, a technique devised by Victor Artigue in 1892. If very hot water is applied to the print, all of the pigment can be removed. Weak areas can be strengthened simply by recoating the paper, carefully replacing the negative in exact register, and repeating the process. In this way different colors can be applied on the same sheet of paper.
Although almost all photographs of the nineteenth century were printed by contact, and were thus the exact size of the negatives, enlarging was not infrequent. Solar cameras, as daylight enlargers were called, came into use in the late 1850s. The optical system was analogous to that of a slide projector.
A condenser lens, the size of the negative, was illuminated by direct sunlight; the image was thrown by a second lens on an easel to which albumen paper was fastened.
5. Never be too proud to reshoot a poor negative. Did you make an error in exposure? Did your tripod slip and cause a fuzzy negative? Or did you make one of the other dozens of errors which can almost but not quite ruin a negative? If so, do not try to cover up by struggling with the negative by means of darkroom trickery, but instead shoot the picture over again if that is at all possible. To reshoot is to confess a measure of failure to "your client, of course, but you can make up for that by going all-out for a masterpiece on your second try. |
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