So you've finally decided to start printing. Congratulations. Most people don't.

Printing is expensive. Film, on the other hand, is cheap. A pack of 25 8x10 sheets runs about $16 in these parts. Add to that the high cost of chemistry for tray development, and it becomes a pain.

But it looks so very good. And that's what it's all about, isn't it? Making a good looking print, all yourself. From shooting the film, developing it, and on through printing.

It's also very satisfying.

At work it's not very satisfying to sit down and make a print. At home, it is. To view, select exposure, cropping, burning, dodging; to sit and hand develop the prints one at a time. It's magical to watch your first image appear in the tray... under the safelight, the developer strikes the paper and the dark areas suddenly grow.

I'm hooked.

Starting out

You'll need an enlarger. Don't skimp; you need a good one. The lens has to be GOOD. The head needs to be easy to use. The column must be stable.

I do recommend a dichroic color head. A dichroic head will save you the pains of buying various filters for multicontrast papers, and should you ever decide to do color work, you'll have a majority of the equipment. Right now, there is a Nikor system 6x7 enlarger in my darkroom. It's made by Rollei (NOT Nikon, that'd be Nikkor. Nikon does make the EL-Nikkor enlarging lenses, however). I don't know if they still make them; all the area shops seem to have Omegas and Beselers only. Of the setups I've seen, I really really REALLY like this one the best. I don't think there will be any on the used market any time soon; they're just too fantastic. As for the controls; there is a little white knob that gets pulled out when you want to use it as a color head; otherwise the filters stay out of the way and it's just a plain old cold light head.

You'll also need some way to develop your exposed paper, and probably a safelight as well.

Safelight, you ask? Yes, a safelight. It's a light that doesn't expose paper. Paper is generally orthochromatic; that is, not sensitive to red light. Because of this, a low-output red light is safe to use under certain conditions (i.e. it has to be at least 4 feet from the paper, less than a certain output, etc etc etc). This allows you to see what you're doing in the dark, rather than working blind. Working blind is a pain.

Developing paper

Photographic paper is basically the same as a photographic film; only instead of being on a clear base, it's on a paper base. It requires very similar chemistry to develop it (in fact, paper developers DO work on film, and film developers DO work on paper. The stop is identical, and fixing is very similar. In testing my equipment I used the last of my ID-11 (Ilford film developer) to develop some test prints. They came out... ok. At least I know that the equipment is all right.). However, since it is not sensitive to red light, it is safe to develop by inspection under a safelight.

I must say at this point: I don't recommend tray development for anything larger than a 5x7 print. The reason is simple: chemistry. It takes an insanely HUGE amount of chemistry to give adequate working depth in a large tray. I have a set of trays for 11x14 prints; they take about 1.2L of chemical each for a comfortable working depth. On the other hand, a drum developing system like the Beseler Color System requires almost none (my independent research shows that it takes about 75 mL of each chemical for an 8x10; and they are, of course, reusable chemicals provided you observe the exhaustion rates for the chemistry religiously.).

Pretty straight forward... Develop, Stop, Fix. The Developer forms the image, the stop stops the residual developer from contaminating the fixer (and also stops the "lingering" developer from continuing to make silver from your paper), and the fixer dissolves away the undeveloped photographic material on the paper.

Nothing to it.