Developing Darkroom/Technical Skills

First roll of 35mm film I developed and processed in Vernon Street Darkrooms.

Although I have worked in a darkroom before in college it was nice to refresh my memory on developing 35mm film, and get used to working in a new (and much better!) darkroom. These are some photos I took around Leeds city centre, we were given a roll of Black & White 35mm each and told to take photographs of people. I headed straight to the market to do this as I thought it'd be a good opportunity to get some candid and posed shots of people. When working in the darkroom there was a lot of new equipment to get used to, making me realise just how basic the previous darkrooms i'd worked in were! This included the filters on the enlargers to increase or decrease the contrast of the image, which i put up to number 4 for this contact sheet to increase the contrast.

120mm Film & Test Shoots
I took some test shots for my portrait brief using black and white 120mm, the medium we have to use to take the images. When developing the 120mm film I found it a lot harder to get the film onto the spool before the developing process, as expected, because of its difference in side and tendency to bend and curl up a lot more. However since then I have developed a few more rolls and improved slightly. When making test strips for the exporusre of the negatives I noticed that becaue half of my roll was shot with a white background and half with a black background, there was a split difference between exposures, so I decided to split the negatives up and do a test strip for each background. I shot these images in a studio which was my first time shooting in a studio using film, also with a camera I had never used before so I had my doubts about how the negatives would come out but I was pleasantly surprised by the punchiness of them.
Notes & Improvements

• Experiment & get used to using the filters on the enlargers
• Record all details for each print/contact sheet
• Be more careful with fingerprints on negatives & clean them