From Camera to Paper: The Complete Photographic Process

Printing the Image Step 1: Contact Sheet & Test Strip

Now that you understand how opaque objects can keep an area white, you can make a contact sheet. When you develop a roll of negatives, the first thing you should do is make a print of all of your negatives on one page. This allows you to preview all of your frames without spending time printing each negative individually. Like the experiment with the opaque object, you are going to place your negatives on top of your paper and expose them to the light from the enlarger. The negatives will be in contact with the paper, thus called a contact sheet. This time however, you do not know how long to expose the paper or how wide the aperture should be. Each roll of negatives requires a different print exposure, so it is necessary that you make a test strip. A test strip is a thin strip of printing paper, about 1x 5. The test strip is the most important step into producing a quality print. When you make a print, you want to have excellent tonality. You need to find an exposure that is long enough to give you dark blacks while still keeping light whites. To do this, you will expose your test strip for different times.

1. Place your negatives on top of the test strip on the table below the enlarger
2. Take an opaque board and place it over the negative and test strip so that only ½ inch of the test strip is showing
3. Using the timer, expose the paper for a few seconds, let's say you chose 2 seconds
4. Move the opaque board so that only 1 inch of the test strip is showing
5. Using the timer, expose the paper for the exact same number of seconds you chose before
6. Move the board so that only 1 ½ inches of the test strip is showing
7. Using the timer, expose the paper for the exact same number of seconds you chose before
8. Continue this process until you have reached the end of the test strip

When you process your print, you will notice that one side of your test strip is very dark while the other end is very light. This is because the paper was exposed for 2 seconds on one side and exposed for 20 seconds on the opposite end. To help you understand more clearly, think of the numbers 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, and 20. The first time you exposed your paper for 2 seconds, you exposed it for 2 more seconds every time you moved the board. By the time you finished the strip, you had exposed it for 20 seconds all together. The very last exposure that you made was 2 seconds, making it the lightest exposure on the strip. Now that you know what your darkest and lightest exposures are, you can chose which exposure you like the best. For example, if you liked the exposure that you did for 8 seconds, there should be dark blacks and light whites. Now you are ready to place all of your negatives on your printing paper and expose them for 8 seconds.