Some Procedures for Proper Printing 35 mm Negatives in Our CA Darkroom

1. Place the sheet of old photo paper at your station in the easel with the white side of the paper up – facing the enlarger light.
2. Carefully place your strip of negatives, with the one you want to enlarge, in the negative carrier with the shiny side (base) up.
3. Turn on – by the switch, not the exposure button or lever – the enlarger light and open the lens to its brightest output.
4. You’ll have to either raise or lower the enlarger (based on who used it before you) to frame your image properly. I would not do any significant cropping. Try to use all or most of your original camera composition.
5. Focus carefully the image on the white paper in the easel. You should be able to find one of the focusing magnifiers around the room – at other stations, if not at your own. Put your hand on the focus knob and focus your image as best you can. It will NEVER get any better focused than you got it in the camera, but this is an important step. It’s easy to get the prints out of focus.
6. Once the framing and focus are to your liking, turn the aperture of the lens to F/11. That is usually one full “click” from the DIMMEST setting. So, with the light on, close down the lens to that dim setting, then go to one full click brighter. (Sometimes there is a light click before the full click to F/11.)
7. TURN OFF THE ENLARGER LIGHT!!!!
8. AFTER turning off the light, get a new sheet of photo paper from the paper safe over the counter. Put that in your easel in place of the old focusing sheet you’ve been using to get ready to make a print. Try not to move anything: lift up the easel arm(s) carefully and place gently into the slot. The SHINY side of the paper (emulsion) should be up, facing the enlarger light.
9. Make a TEST SHEET: With an opaque piece of cardboard, cover all of your photo paper but a strip of about 2 inches wide. Hold the cardboard still and make an exposure of 5 seconds. After the light shuts off, pull back the card another inch or two and expose for another 5 seconds. Repeat this pattern 5 times with the last 5 second exposure using no cardboard at all.
10. Process the paper as you did for the contact sheet and UNDER NORMAL ILLUMINATION – NOT SAFELIGHT - evaluate the test print to determine which is the best exposure. Look mainly at important light areas to determine what the best time should be.
11. With a new sheet of paper make a print with the time you determined as best.

There are many other elements but these basic instructions should get you a fairly good print.