[Leica] Daddy, that print is too dark!

[Peter Klein <pklein@2alpha.net>]

At 05:09 PM 08/13/2001 -0700, Mark Rabiner wrote:
>A Photoshoped image you open up at the next day and you can tweak it if 
>need be.
>
>But in the darkroom with the lights going off and on and picking stuff off of
>funny contact sheets and watching stuff slowly come up under the 
>safelights you
>can print for hours and everything is too dark.
>If there was just anybody to ask, a ten year old kid...."daddy that's dark!"
>than you'd be OK. But NOOOOOO we just go on and on and the next day look 
>at our
>dry prints and wonder where are minds were.

And that, dear friends, is why God invented Potassium 
Ferricyanide  :-)  When I was 16, I loved to scare my friends by showing 
them my can of the wonderful orange stuff.  They tended to skip the "Ferri" 
and concentrate on the "Cyanide."

For those that don't know, Potassium Ferricyanide is a bleach for 
photos.  You can vary its effect by concentration or mixing it with a 
Hypo.  It can brings back details in your print shadows after you get 'em a 
nice, rich black.  Sort of like dodging or un-exposing after the fact, 
though the effect is not entirely the same.   I found it an indispensible 
tool for those inky black available light photographs.

It can also make your highlights whiter than white, just like "Cheer!"

- --Peter