Printing the Image Step 2 &3: The Negative Carrier & Enlarger
Next, insert your negatives into the negative carrier and turn on the enlarger. This is your opportunity to change your image: you can enlarge a small part of it, crop it differently, change the exposure of the whole image or selected parts, or create other special effects. Keep in mind that these alterations may affect the quality of your photograph. For example, enlarging a photo too much makes the image grainy. The farther the light source from the paper, the grainier the image. Adjust the lens of the enlarger to about to about f-8. If your negatives are not perfectly exposed, opening the lens up to f-5.6 can help fix dense negatives and closing it down to f-11 can lighten the prints of thin negatives. Move the enlarger to the height you want, then focus the image. Look through the grain analyzer to ensure that the image is sharp.
