Making a Test Strip in a Darkroom

Video Transcript

"So now this is where the real fun begins. Is that this is making a test strip. And doing this is very important and again, it's back to being, it's back to being a discipline thing. Because a lot of times where I came into the darkroom where I just had a negative off my contact sheet, I just wanted to guesstamite. But guessing is bad. After awhile you see that you waste more paper and you waste more time guessing than if you just do one of these test strips. To do this, I have my timer set at 15 seconds. I have my paper under the easel. And what I do is I use this filter kit box and i cover up about, maybe, from a 5 X 7 about 6 inches of the paper and I expose. And what I do is I make several exposures while moving the box each time the exposure goes up. Like this one would be the first one for 15 seconds. And then I would do it again, moving the box about an inch, and I go from left to right and I expose it again. And I do this several times and if you think about it, it makes sense. I never move the paper and I never move my timer. I only move the box and then I look at what my exposures look like once I pull my print out of the developer."