Englarger Problem (maybe)

[darin3200]

I was making some prints the other day using the same techniques as always, I went and put an exposed sheet of Ilford RC in my developer and the print came out severly underexposed. I tried with another sheet, this time frying it at f/3.5 for about 20 seconds and the sheet came out still slightly underexposed.
I was busy then, so I went back to the darkroom today and made a new batch of developer. Same results as last time after 1.5 minutes in the developer. With the underexposed print still in developer I turned on a large lamp and the paper immediately turned black. So that makes me think it isn't a chemical or paper problem but something with my enlarger.

Any help is appreciated

 

[Christie Photo]

Well.... could be simply that you have a very dense (overexposed) negative.

Has anything fallen into the enlarger... between the negative carrier and the lens? Did you double-check the aperature of the lens? Are you using a condenser enlarger? Are you printing from the same size negative? Whew!

We figure this one out.

 

[KevinR]

Knowing that your using a 23c. I would say that as stated above, it might be a dense negative. I was printing an overexposed neg that took 1min 30sec and then some burn in to get it right.

Some other options:
Need a new bulb. Fairly cheap fix if thats the problem.

Voltage. This is a long shot. If this is plugged into a circuit that has some big appliances, and there running, that could through voltage off some.

I would start at printing something that you have printed before and see what happens.

 

[darin3200]

Yeah, it was the negative. I was using an older negative of C-41 black and white kodak which is much more opaque than the Kodak T-Max. I ended up doing about a 45 second exposure instead of 5 seconds.