REDUCTION AND INTENSIFICATION These operations have heretofore usually been performed on negatives which have been pre viously dried and perhaps printed from. This practice is wrong. Negatives should never be dried without first being brought to the desired contrast. In the present method the work of re duction or intensification or both if necessary are considered as logical and legitimate steps in bringing the negative to the above-mentioned desired state. Although the majority of nega tives should need no after treatment when de veloped and fixed, the act of development proper should be considered in practice to be but the creation of a chemical base upon which by visible processes done in the light the perfect negative may be built. The mistake has been to consider the work of development alone as the complete or final act in securing opacity or in negative making. Plate XII (p. 121) illustrates conclu sively how little depends on the exact condition of the negative after development alone so long as the after processes are recognized and used in the normal work of making the negative.
To prepare for this work a stand should be made in which are involved the principles shown in profile in figure 10 on the opposite page.
The top of the arrangement, a, is clear glass on which the negative is placed for treatment. The line c indicates the position for a thin board or cardboard on which may be laid a clean white paper. The negative is examined and treated by looking through a to the lighted surface c. The line b indicates the position of
a shield for the eyes and for keeping the direct light from striking the negative and should be of tin or some other non-inflammable sub stance since the chimney of the lamp will be very near it. The glass should be somewhat larger than the size of the negatives to be treated and its edges should be well ground off in order not to injure the film when a whole roll is laid across it in order to treat the various negatives in it. This grinding may be done sufficiently well with the edge of any other piece of glass. The glass may rest on a simple frame made by nailing four small pieces of board together and attaching four legs so as to raise to a height of about 8 or 10 inches. The glass should be level so that the solutions will not run on being applied to the negative. Use a low lamp or any other convenient light and nail the tin, b, so that its lower edge will come even in height with the top of the lamp flame or other light. By nailing a stick across from leg to leg at d, the carrier for the white paper may be laid across it, the inner end resting on the lamp globe or in a like position for any other light, as seen in the figure.
Some such device is necessary in order that the two hands be left free for the work. It is impossible to see the quality of a negative by looking through it toward a flame; hence the necessity of using the reflecting surface c.