First Print ~ New Darkroom

My absence has not been for naught. Not completely. I was busy making the custom darkroom I spoke of ad nauseum over the past months. Apparently, such an endeavor takes much energy and even more time. It is done, just in time to be whisked away to Puerto Vallarta upon the invitation from old friends who have a time share. It was splendid, as painful as it was to be away from said yet unused darkroom. Just too easy to digress over fond memory experiences.

Not all the chemistry has arrived, and what is missing is needed for mixing fixer for negatives. The film did arrive, and my choice to begin was Arista EDU 200ISO 5x7 sheet film. One of the things I liked about that film was the ISO rating. I have used FP-4 and found it to be a very good film. But then again most modern films are high quality, with most having certain characteristics that make it someone's choice. I will be developing using compensating developers, thereby shooting a stop over the rating. That puts my metering at 100 ISO. The only two avenues I'll either be using the original negative for contact printing a portfolio in palladium, or scanning it for enlargement to an 8x10 digital negative, scaled for whatever printing medium desired.

Until I can begin shooting again, I will be printing with digital negatives. Very soon I will begin printing in palladium, and when I do, I will be using 5x7 negatives. First, I know the densities of the negatives I have, along with a full portfolio of salted silver prints from those negatives, so will be able to compare what the same density range looks like in palladium, compared to those silver prints.
Until then, I continue to print with silver, tone in palladium, for this portfolio anyway. I will be using a gold toner for the next portfolio to achieve the deep black and crisp white images as expected from silver prints.
First print out;

Palladium toned Salted Silver Print
"Horse Head"     ~ 8x10     ~ 2.5
Tombstone, Arizona