PhotoHistory

From: THE PRACTICAL PRINTER
A COMPLETE MANUAL PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINTING

By Charles W Hearn, 1874

THE PRINTING-ROOM

For good success at printing, it is necessary that the printing-room should be convenient to work in, and well supplied with those materials, &c., which are so necessary for fine work.

A good printer, like a good surgeon, may do very well with a few conveniences, but he will more likely do better with more. A good draughtsman may do very well with his pen and parallel-rulers, but he can do much better by the use of a set of instruments, and that necessity, a “T square.”

The term instruments, in the general sense of the word, is applied to anything by which an effort is brought about, and consequently our printing-boards, vignette-blocks, &c., &c., are instruments in the case of the photographic printer, as well as the case of surgical tools are instruments in the hands of the surgeon. A skillful workman when once asked, by the foreman of an establishment, what was the instrument he had used to enable him to do his work so nicely, replied: “My hands are the best instruments I have outside of my brain.”

So it is with the photographic printer, for his hands are subordinate to that mightier and more valuable instrument, the brain; and consequently “a thinking man” is far more successful than a merely mechanical one (although the latter may have all the conveniences possible), for “the brain conceives what the hands execute;” and if a person does not use his brain to good advantage, verily his work will show it.

Now, the whole attention of the brain can be used very advantageously in the printing-room of a gallery, as well as in the “skylight and the dark-room.” There is a great mistake often made in the “fitting out” of a photograph gallery, in placing about all of the money in “the reception-room,” and leaving a few dollars to go into the printing department, and a few more, perhaps, in the dark and operating rooms. A good housewife does not commence at the parlor and furnish down to the kitchen, but she commences first at the culinary department, and after she has furnished that (her work-room), she then commences to furnish her sitting-room, and finally her parlor. This is the way it should be with the photographer: he should look first to the skylight and then to the nicely fitting out of this, the operating-room, which of course includes the cameras, lenses, backgrounds, &c., &c. He then sees to his darkroom, and next, but by no means least, he sees to the printing-room, and then, finally and lastly, to his reception-room, which he furnishes as his means will permit.

An elegantly furnished reception-room does not vouch for good work, although it may indicate that the proprietor had money, or that he had found somebody who would trust.

A customer, when she wishes her “likeness taken,” does not look to see if the reception-room is nicely furnished, and thus decide as to whether she will be suited or not; not at all, she wishes to see samples of work, and then decides. And since this is so, should we not endeavor to have conveniences, &c., in doing our work, so that the samples and work in general will be excellent, since it is this, and not the elegance of the reception-room, that brings in the customers?

Another illustration that the elegance of the apartments, &c., is not the criterion by which the customer judges the work of the photographer is very well illustrated in that of a well-known Parisian gallery, where the patrons of the establishment are obliged to leave their carriages at the entrance, and walk through a narrow lane, up three flights of stairs, and directly into the operating-room, as the gallery has no reception-room whatever worthy of mention. The ladies usually make their engagements through a gentleman friend, and then proceed, all attired, in their carriages to the studio, and are then immediately posed. It may be well to mention here that the patrons are obliged to keep their engagements to within five minutes, or so, or they lose their appointment for that day.

The general opinion among photographers is, that any place will do for a printing-room, and it is on this principle that printers are so well known to have very inconvenient rooms, &c., where they almost invariably are obliged to labor under extreme difficulties.

Printing-rooms should be so arranged that the poor printer will not freeze in the winter nor roast in the summer; and, outside of the printer’s own personal comfort, the temperature of the rooms is a matter worthy of the strictest attention on the part of the photographer, or else he cannot expect good work, and if he does expect it, without proper attention being given to the conditions under which the negatives are printed, then he is sure to be disappointed.

The negatives should no more be printed out of doors in the winter-time (more especially if the day is very cold) than they ought to be taken there, posing and all being accomplished, while there is light sufficient to enable the photographer to “take a picture.” As before said, the fitting out of the printing-room is a matter of the utmost importance, and although it has not been recognized by the many photographers, yet it has by the few.

I will, in the first three figures of this book, illustrate what may be termed model printing, silvering, and toning rooms. The original rooms may be recognized by those persons who are acquainted with the gallery of Mr. J. H. Lamson, Portland, Me., as they are almost similar to his; indeed, they were originally intended to be exactly like them, but were afterwards changed a little, as I wished to give a model suite of rooms rather than to copy any particular ones.

The size of the main room, Fig. 1, is 10 x 15 x 10 feet. A is the printing-shelf, upon which the negative-boards are placed out to print. B is the sash of glass, through which the light enters on the shelf, and which sash is kept in place by the hooks C. D is a window which swings back and forth by means of the hinges D’. This window, when closed, is fastened by the button E. This window was arranged to permit the printer to open it in the winter-time and sweep the snow from the glass, without the trouble of removing his frames and then taking the sash of ground-glass in. There is another sash of plain glass made which is placed out, in place of the ground one, when it is so desired by the printer. F is the windowcord by which the curtain is pulled up or let down, as occasion requires. G is the drawer in which the albumen paper is placed when it is ready for printing. H is the drawer in which the prints are placed when printed, through the little aperture K, which is cut in the bench and supplied with a cover of tin or zinc, so as to avoid opening the drawer so often as to discolor the whites of the prints therein contained, L is the drawer in which the albumen-paper is kept. M is a drawer in which the plain salted paper may be placed; and K is another drawer in which the unsalted paper can be placed. P P are negatives which are to be printed, and which, when they are printed, are temporarily placed as at F, until they are filed away, which is done in another room.

The shelves K K R are also negative shelves, which are used for special purposes, such as “the family negatives,” &c., &c. The wide shelf is made for the storing away of negative-boards, vignette-blocks, porcelain printing-frames, &c., all of which are kept in order. The filling of the boards, &c., will be spoken of further on; suffice it, for the present, to say that this filling is done on the bench T. U is the door leading to the “silvering and toning rooms.” V is the fuming-box, which will also be explained further on. W is the box in which the old or used hypo bath is poured, and zinc is thrown into it. X is a bench which is used for one thing and another, also for keeping bottles, &c., upon.

THE SILVERING AND TONING ROOM

The principal use of this room is to sensitize the paper after it is albumenized, or in the case of plain paper, after it is salted, and then later in the day, when the sensitizing is through with, to tone and fix, as well as to wash the prints in, all of which things can be done without at all interfering with each other.

A is a dark curtain, which in the figure is partly raised, but during the silvering and toning processes it is brought down to A’, and the white bleached cloth screen B (which is shaded in the figure so as to show it more distinctly) covers the rest of the glass, and thus, in the toning, a soft and diffused light is given to that part of the room (the shelf C) where the toning is done. D is the silvering-dish, and D’ is the place where this silvering-dish is kept when not in use. E is where the kettle of potash is kept for the purpose of cleaning old plates. F is where the nitric acid tray is kept. G G are two sinks. H is a shelf on which the toning-bath bottles may be kept. K is a rack with three overlapping pieces of wood, to which there are a number of spring clips attached which hold the pictures while draining, as they are removed from the water. L is a washing-tank which has a perforated false bottom through which the water passes into the lower part, and thence into the waste pipe L’. The stopcock M is adjusted after the tank becomes three-quarters filled, so that it will permit the water to flow out as fast as it enters through the pipe N. P P is an overflow pipe, which conducts the water, when it reaches that place, into the waste pipe L’. R is the place where the hypo dish is kept. S is the place where the two-gallon hypo bottle is placed. This bottle is always kept full of a saturated solution of hyposulphite of soda. Y is the door that leads into the drying-room.

THE DRYING-ROOM

This room was intended originally to only dry the paper, but it has finally been used for a variety of purposes, mostly all connected with porcelain printing.

A is the gas stove by which the room is heated. B is the paper as fastened to the clips for drying. C is a shelf on which the silver-bath bottles, as well as the collodio-chloride bottles, are placed. D D are porcelain plates each hung upon two nails.