Producing Large Negative For Contact Printing

Before knowing how to produce large negatives for contact printing let us know what is the meaning of photo negative? The picture obtained upon glass or other material in which lights and shades of the original image and relations of right and left are reversed.

An easy and economical way of producing large negatives for the contact printing is using the film which is not sensitive to the red light so that it can be handled in a dark room with a red light.

While making large negatives you should handle the film carefully, only by edges or else you will get the marks of your fingers are palm are over the final result. While transferring the print from dish to dish you should be careful as the forceps that you are using to transfer may damage the emulsion. I suggest you to use your hands with gloves to transfer the prints rather than then the forceps.

While producing the large negatives it is very difficult to recognize, which side is the emulsion so take the film and examine both sides with the safe light, the side which appears very shiny and reflects lot of safe light is not an emulsion side, so turn the film!

There are two methods of making large negatives

Inter positive Method

In this method, you place the negative to be enlarged in the enlarger and project the image on to the Adox Print film in the same way as you produce a normal print on a photo paper. After processing is over you will get a transparent positive film. Allow the transparent film to dry for a while then place the positive emulsion side down on some other sheet of print film with its emulsion side up. To place the films in place under the enlarger use a large piece of glass to hold the two sheets and then expose now process the film and you will get a negative. Obtaining large negatives from Inter positive method is not as easy as it sounds; you need a lot of practice to get the better results.

Print-Through Method

Place a normal positive print face down on a sheet of print film; make sure that the emulsion of print film is facing upwards. Hold it flat under a piece of glass. Expose for about 30 seconds in the enlarger with no negative in the carrier. Then process the film and the result will be a large negative. The benefit of using this method is that you need not use inter-positive film so it saves the extra film.

If you use this method you must concentrate on the contrast of the print. It is very easy to produce higher contrast films by using higher number of filters for example 3 or 5 in the enlarger.

There are some alternative methods from which you can develop larger negatives but for those methods you need the negatives with high density, high contrast so that you get the print of high quality.