Early Work In Photography
A Text-book For Beginners

Development of Negatives. 87 nlate in the fixing bath for at least five minutes after the plate in apparently fixed. If we omit to do so, the plate will contain a salt of silver that is soluble in hypo, but not in plain water; this salt becomes yellow in daylight, so the negative would soon be useless. After well fixing the plate, it must be washed in of "clean water for an hour, or else in several changes onwards water in a dish; it must then be held film upwards beneath a stream of water, and gently wiped with a wadoh wet cotton wool to remove any sediment left from the washing water. It may then be placed to dry, the best position being on a shelf, glass side towards the wall and film outwards; the plate should stand on end with a piece of blotting paper beneath to pre- vent dirt climbing up the ne- gative by capillary attraction. A capital drying arrangement that we use is a series of nails driven in a wall, so fixed as to permit one end and one side of a negative to rest upon tliem, while a corner of the negative is downwards; of course the plate is put with its glass side next the wall., On no account must heat be used to dry a gelatine nega- tive, or the film will melt and leave the glass. A negative may, however, be Washing Tank for Negatives. quickly dried, containing enough alcohol to cover it to the depth of an inch. After ten minutes immersion remove it the depth on blotting paper. In a few minutes it will be surface dry and may then beheld about ve feet from a fire and fanned rapidly until quite dry. The film liable to melt in patches unless the fan is us FAILURES IN We will conclude this chapter with a few failures in Foggy Megalites.—These have a dirty foggy appearance without density or contrast. Causes: Over-exposure; white light in camera or dark room i defective ruby lamp; developer contaminated with hypo; developer too warm or containing too much accelerator (sodium or potassium