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| A selection of dodgers |
They are darkroom tools to help bring out all the detail
from your negatives when printing.
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| Holding back |
No matter
how well you expose and develop your negatives, when it comes to making a
positive you will need to equalize the exposure by holding back and burning in
to keep the detail in the highlights and shadow areas. In a lot of cases it is
not possible to alter the overall exposure time to take these deficiency's in
to account. In these cases dodgers as the name implies will help you get round
this problem. You can use your hands, fingers, pieces of card, a length of wire
with a cut out of card stuck to it and
cards with holes in them.
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| Burnning in |
Dodgers work
by casting a shadow over the area that needs less exposure than the rest of the
picture. Likewise dodgers with holes in them are used for burning in areas that
require more light than the rest of the photograph. This is also a type of
holding back as it stops the correctly exposed picture from becoming over
exposed. When using a dodger you must keep it moving otherwise it will produce
a hard outline to the area you are trying to correct. It can be moved from side
to side or up and down to stop this happening. The amount of time you use your
dodger for will depend on what your test strip shows. If you have not got a test strip then it will
be trial and error taking a number of prints before you get it right. With
experience the amount of error will diminish.
Dodgers are
not just for correcting problems, they are there also for creative purposes for
example to bring out some extra drama in the scene, add a shaft of light where
there was none or to bring two pictures together where one maybe lacking any
sky detail.
