Experiment - LUMEN

Paper used for the experiment:

ILFORD MGIV MULTIGRADE IV RC DE LUXE

Colour : Pearl

I assembled the picture in the darkroom under red light, and I exposed it to UV lights at 11:01. It was a sunny day in London, but also October, so the sun is not as strong as it would have been in the summer. I did my first check at 11:11 and the paper started to change its colour, meaning that the sunlight was processing the paper. My second check was at 11:25, but I was not pleased with the contrast, so I left it outside for more time. At 11:57 I decided to end the exposure, and I brought it into the darkroom to process it.

Exposure time: 56 minutes

Darkroom process:

stop: 30 seconds

fix : 3 minutes

wash: 20 minutes

NO DEVELOPER USED

I assembled the picture in the darkroom under red light, and I exposed it to UV lights at 11:11. It was a sunny day in London, but also October, so the sun is not as strong as it would have been in the summer. I did my first check at 11:25 and the paper started to change its colour, meaning that the sunlight was processing the paper. My second check was at 11:57, but I was not pleased with the contrast, so I left it outside for more time. At 12:14 I decided to end the exposure, and I brought it into the darkroom to process it.

Exposure time: 1 hour 3 minutes

Darkroom process:

developer: 1 minute

stop: 30 seconds

fix : 3 minutes

wash: 20 minutes

DEVELOPER WAS USED

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CONCLUSIONS:

Using developer darkened the paper, and gave a less contrastant effect. Where the sunlight touched the paper, even a little bit, it made those parts black, and just where no sunlight has reached the paper was white.

In the first experiment, where I did not used developer, I got a bigger contrast and the flowers came out in more detail.

Comparing the two experiments, the one without the developer gave a much wider range of shades of grey, and it even shows some pinkish-brownish shades. The developer darkened the paper, and absorbed many shades, leaving just a few shadows.