3.5x5 inch prints. For Fun!

[Torontoamateur]

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Has anyone tried doing many 3.5x5 inch prints in B&W for fun? I am thinking this would be fun because then I can have the prints " in my pocket" to share. Like people now share digital. I just will have high quality B&W prints to share. I guess I would use Ilford resin coated in Glossy to do this with some old school feeling of the Glossy. Have you tried this idea? I have one older Omega I can set up to do this and dedicate it to this size print.

[Doug A]

Not darkroom prints, but I have been doing this for years with 4x6 inch b&w glossy inkjet prints. The grandchildren enjoy going through the box of prints and selecting some to take home with them. And when I approach a stranger to ask permission to photograph them I hand them a 4x6 photo of myself with my contact information on the back and tell them that I will send them a similar print of their photo if they send me their contact information.

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Ilford do Multigrade postcard paper in 4" x 6" ready to stick a stamp on.

[Jeff S]

I’ve done it ‘for real’, as a fine print, displayed with my own custom cut mat and frame.  Individual images can often demand individual sizes, and some can be ‘jewel-like’.  I once almost bought a contact silver print, an abstract landscape, by Andre Kertesz that was about 2x3 inches.  It was stunning.  This is one reason that I dislike online viewing; it misses the fact that images often have an entirely different feel depending on size (and due to texture, luminance, etc).  One size doesn’t fit all.
 

Jeff

[Pyrogallol]

Making small prints is actually more fiddly than making something a bit bigger. I do occasionally make contact prints from 5x4 and 5x7 negatives and the images have a different look to enlargments. There was a time when I was printing rolls of negatives for our local council conservation officer, mostly old buildings and street furniture and I might print 100 5x7 prints in an evening, buying 5x7 paper in boxes of 250 sheets. Now small prints are just for friends who want some old family negatives printed. Much easier if they scanned the negatives and printed them digitally themselves.

The Kertesz print reminds me of a print I saw back in the 70’s in an exhibition, I think by W Eugene Smith, about the same 2x3 inch size, on a 20x16 mount, very impressive.

Edited October 4, 2020 by Pyrogallol

[Aryel]

I had lot of fun printing pictures from a lomo underwater camera. Had to print very small but I like it a lot. I used 5x7 ilford pearl rc and printed about half this size misaligning the paper on purpose.

 

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Edited November 9, 2020 by Aryel
Added crop info