Today I was able to finally - FINALLY - make my first exposure.
all lined up in the plate holder
I took the advice of a number of folks on line and made a test strip. I found that my exposure should be around 4 seconds - however, I had accidentally opened up the aperture with the dark slide pulled before I started counting seconds. This is typical for me. So I tacked on another second or two. I'm very precise.
Plate one:
first exposure of about 6 seconds and developed at 30 +/- sec
Plate two:
Plate three: exposure - 10 sec / dark slide pulled almost all the way out / develop 1 min / wash 15 sec / fix 5 min / wash 10
Plate four: exposure - 12 sec / dark slide pulled all the way out to avoid black bar / develop 1 min / wash 15 sec / fix 5 min / wash 10
Problem:
last two plates are sparkly - why?
Answer:
pushing developing process for too long/far - results in sparkles or spangles