This is How You Make a Massive 4×5-Foot Print in the Darkroom

What’s the largest print you’ve ever made in a darkroom? If you’ve never done anything larger than the most common sizes, then you may find the video above illuminating.

Over the course of 3 minutes, we get to see how Norwegian photo assistant Oystein Gronvold recently went about creating a massive 120x150cm (~4x5ft) silver print from an 8×10 negative for photographer Dag Alveng.

Screenshot (106)

Screenshot (107)

Screenshot (108)

Screenshot (109)

Screenshot (110)

“Not many people make darkroom prints this size these days, and its quite a tedious process, taking around 5-6 hours per print,” Gronvold tells PetaPixel. “All that work may in addition be wasted at the last step, which is the most difficult, namely to wet mount the print on aluminum.”

Mess the mounting up, and you get start the 6 hour printing process all over again.

Discussion