Video: Darkroom Enlarger Filters

The filters in an enlarger control the contrasts of an image, blacks and whites. Learn to use enlarger filters to develop photographic prints in a darkroom in this free photography video.

Video Transcript

Again these are our filters that I have. And what these do, is they control the contrast of my print. Meaning that how black and rich my black is, to how white my white is and the gray scale in between. I see a lot of students that just really don't want to grasp the power of filters. And now people ask me, well how do I know what filter to print with what, with my negative? How do I understand this? And what it really comes down to, is how your negative looks. Everything that I'm doing when I'm printing comes down to how my negative is. Now I can have a negative that's really not so great, or I can have a negative that's amazing with detail in it. And that's how I choose what filter to print that. If I have a negative that's very over exposed, a lot of times I'll have to choose a filter that's on the higher end of the spectrum of three and a half or four. A negative that's under exposed and contrasty, I'll probably print with a filter that's a zero or a one. Sometimes I have a negative that I don't need any filter on. It's just a perfect total range. That's pretty rare, but that can happen also.

Darkroom Enlarger Filters

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