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Pooper Trooper posted:Aw man, this thread reminded me that I actually have a darkroom set up at my parents' storage room that I can't use because, after I bought everything and set it up, I discovered that there are no power outlets in the room  improvised workspace buddy. I am planning to run an extension cord + power strip under the door and seal it with a towel when I'm working. Using some break time from work to make some more concrete moves on finally getting my darkroom up and running. I've spent a couple years slowly building it up from free/cheap secondhand purchases, which has been a bit of a fun challenge. Ultimately I want to do wet plate but figured a standard darkroom was a more accessible place to start, as I don't even have an LF camera anymore.  The disused closet I am planning to convert is small and has a sharply sloping roof on one half. This is the slopey side where I am planning to put the sink in (spare motorbike gear is going to be boxed up and put in the attic). The sink is going to just be a jerry can/gravity feed above, with another jerry can under the drain to catch the runoff - a guy I know who does wet plate professionally uses the same thing at his studio. Only planning on using it for quick rinses/as a splash zone to pour, will do washing downstairs once the print is fixed. I reckon between the sink and the low roof I'll probably have a square meter to actually stand/turn around, but luckily I'm not claustrophobic.  Dry side on the other hand has a relatively high ceiling which helps it feel less like a standing coffin. Tomorrow's project is going to be vacuuming and cleaning all the spider webs and other gross stuff up at the top, and getting some black mat board (or painting some existing MDF I might have in the shed) to put around the enlarger space to decrease reflections. The enlarger is a 6x6 Meopta I found at the tip for $20 - it's fitted with what I assume to be a very mediocre Meopta 75mm f/4.5 lens for 6x6, but should do for now. I got lucky with the height of the horizontal supports, and happened to have a kitchen bench offcut from a standing desk project a few years ago that fit the gap perfectly. Used some 20 and 50 cent pieces to level it  A bigger project is going to be installing the vent fan - I bought an inline fan and some ducting for this, and I'm lucky again that there's that MDF panel crudely screwed in where a chimney flue used to be. Since I rent, I'll just cut my own panel with a hole for the fan/ducting, and replace it with the original when we move out (0% chance my landlord cares, but I like to be a good tenant). An additional challenge is going to be integrating a grate so that it's possum proof, as at least one of the local residents is known to romp around in the attic. I've also got to block the louvred door in a way that allows airflow - might build some light trap/vent things for it. It's also a stupid munchkin door that only comes up to my nose, but there's no fixing that  Some questions: -Best way to test paper? I've got fresh paper developer and fresh-enough fixer, but wanted to take a punt on what feels like a mostly full box of 8x10 Multigrade IV Deluxe RC paper before I shell out for new stuff. At the moment I'm just messing around as proof of concept so not too fussed on results yet. -Can I get by with an enlarger timer that only does 30s max? I assume it's a darkroom timer and therefore 30s is fine, but could be wrong ($10 tipshop find, not a brand I recognise). I have this transparent wheel thing with different levels of grey on it for checking a paper's speed that calls for a 1 minute exposure, which had me wondering. -Any other tips or suggestions, especially for a small workspace?
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Apr 13, 2021 12:59
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I have to get around to have someone fix it at some point, it's a shame to have all that stuff collecting dust
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 07:20 |
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Very pleased to have an update: finally put together darkroom stuff and did a print!  In the end I decided I'd opt for the downstairs bathroom, as opposed to the cramped utility closet from my previous post. More work to set up and take down, but OTOH there's running water, plenty of room to move around, not to mention a toilet. It took more effort than I thought to lightproof it using a combination of cardboard, blackout fabric, and duct tape, but got there in the end.  Need to get a proper lamp for my safelight, using my partner's lighthouse lamp as it's the only one in the house compatible with the bulb. Or wire up a red LED strip, they work for wet plate, should be fine for paper as well.  First print! Not actually very good, but feels great to finally get started. Nearly all my negs are at my parents' place overseas (this shot comes from an orphan roll I took like 8 years to get around to developing) so I guess this is motivation to get out with the Hasselblad and shoot some more.
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Apr 23, 2022 09:28
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Megabound posted:Hell yeah, that's rad! Those LED strip's can be hit and miss as far as safety goes. Broadly they're fine for unexposed paper but can be an issue once exposed. Ah, so might fog the paper during development? I have some spare LED strips lying around (I have a bit of a problem with starting new darkbox projects for wet plate without finishing old ones) so I'll try and test one next time I get everything together. I was having an issue with overexposing: even stopped down to f/11 or so I was only getting 4-7 second exposures with the 150w bulb. It's not a huge deal right now as I was only doing basic, single-filter exposure prints, but I could see it being an issue in the future if I was trying to get fancy with doging and burning, etc. Is the bulb too powerful, or is there something else I'm missing?
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Apr 25, 2022 12:58
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Messed around for a while yesterday. I had what felt like a nearly full box of 8.5x6.5 paper that I got for nearly nothing, which I assumed was not going to be any good. It seems like it actually works fine, but the catch is it's Grade 3 so can't use any filters. Maybe not ideal for learning, but the price was right! Also I forgot to stop down for literally every single thing I did. Ah well.  Nothing very interesting and the centre one is out of focus (maybe on the negative too, dunno), but still having fun. Megabound posted:Other than stopping down further changing your bulb would be the way to go for sure. It sounds about right in comparison with my enlargers where I usually get 9 - 12 seconds around f/11. You could also use an ND filter if you happened to have the right thread already. Ah, gotcha. From some of the Youtube videos I'd been watching it seemed like they were getting longer exposures, but that may have been with 75W bulb, or (realising this as I type it) the fact they were doing larger prints, so the lamp was a lot further away from the paper and the inverse square law kicks in. I've got an ND filter for my X100, but don't have the right adapter for it to fit my enlarger. I did just order a set of Chinese Cokin knockoffs for landscapes that include just about every filter ring adapter I size I can think of, so should have the option in a month or so when they arrive. In other news I think I am going to bite the bullet and buy that Ilford pop-up darkroom tent thingie from B&H. It's currently on backorder and will probably be the better part of AU500 when it's all said and done, but having something I can use both at home and in the field for wet plate is probably worth it.
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Apr 30, 2022 00:03
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I was on a Zoom call with a fellow goon/photographer last night and was inspired to hustle through the last legs of getting my more permanent darkroom (located in an otherwise unused closet space) set up. It's nowhere near as nice to work in as the big downstairs bathroom from my last post, but on the plus side is always ready to go, as opposed to the better part of 20 minutes hauling the enlarger in from the shed, fiddling with the blackout curtains, getting everything lightproof (and usually a few minutes/more tape every time I want to go out and back in). There's basically enough room to stand up and that's it, the roof also annoying slopes down over the sink, might get a little stool or something. From earlier this weekend - used a bunch of silicone sealant to glue this big funnel to the bottom of this $5 sink. I previously used an angle grinder to cut the sink free of its surround and then deburr the edges so it's not so stabby to handle. It dumps everything into a 15L jerrycan  Entry - door only comes up to my nose (the closet wasn't really meant for regular use, there used to be a wood stove flue that ran through it, now gone). You can see my 10L water source on its shoddy wooden stand. Lighting is generic red LEDs from eBay leftover from an old darkbox project, wired it back up to a USB cable and running it off a battery for now.  More of the sink setup. It's admittedly pretty jank but it does work. This is mostly just for rinsing stuff off quickly/filling my various rinse trays, the final rinse is done in daylight downstairs in the bathtub.  Not gonna pretend I came up with this clever vertical tray system using a plastic set of filing drawers, saw it on a YouTube video. Works well, I did have to use my Dremel to nip off the ends of the drawer stops so they were easier to pull out when it's time to drain everything. The developer I decided to put in a separate tray on top, nice having the print pretty much at eye level as it develops. I still need to install the exhaust fan that vents into the attic (there's a handy piece of MDF where the flue used to be I can take down, cut a hole in, and replace whenever it is I move out), as well as tidy up the wiring and 3D print a few quality of life things, but tried it out just now and it works. Pretty easy to get in and out of as well; hopefully this is going to be the start of a lot more darkroom stuff now that it's not so inconvenient anymore 
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Jun 19, 2022 10:59
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Megabound posted:Nice murder box you've got there It'd have to be suicide, there's not actually enough room to fit another person in there, let alone kill them  Ergonomically it's actually pretty comfortable to use, the platform with the enlarger is kind of at standing desk height so you don't have to bend over to look at the easel, and the tray of developer is basically right at eye level. I didn't really pick the height, just took advantage of where the horizontal supports were (and used some 20 and 50 cent pieces to level the platform since they were definitely not even). It does kinda suck because there's not enough height to accommodate my 6x7 or 6x9 enlarger as it stands, but I don't have any negs that big anyways, and I probably can't be bothered trying to track down a set of condensor lesnes for the 6x9 anyways. Ethics_Gradient fucked around with this message at 10:54 on Jun 20, 2022 |
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Jun 20, 2022 10:50
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rockear posted:Megabound is that your Durst in the OP? How do you like it if so? I'm kinda shopping for an enlarger and I like the look of the Dursts. Particularly the rotating heads and the tilt / shift functions. I don't know how much practical use that stuff has but it seems like it would be fun to play with. Living in the USA it seems like a Beseler or Omega might be the practical choice for parts availability and such, but I do like the Durst neg carrier with adjustable masking also. I have two Dursts out in the shed, a 6x7 and 6x9. They are both really solidly built. I have limited headspace in my darkroom so currently have a 6x6 Meopta on deck as the 6x7 Durst is just a teeny bit too high. One of my projects for the upcoming spring holidays is to see about extending the headspace a bit and setting up the extractor fan I bought ages ago. Like any enlarger, be sure if you're getting one it comes with everything you need. Stuff like lenses, timers, easels, etc are fungible, but the individual enlarger parts can get expensive to buy individually. The 6x9 (which was free, tbf) did not come with the condensors or the spring loaded drawer thing (IIRC for filters), so it's probably several hundred dollars that I'm not gonna spend away from being operational*. Neg carriers are usually not too hard to bodge together, either 3D print or out of foamcore or whatever. With Durst in particular, they seemed to really like creating new parts for different models rather than trying to keep stuff interchangeable, so be careful when buying accessories. I thought I'd found an affordable set of condensor lenses for 6x9 last month but a deep dive through Google suggested they were most likely not going to work on my 805 BW. *The main reason I'm keeping the 6x9 around (other than being a horrible packrat) is that I'm planning on using it as the base for a digital enlarger. Hopefully I'll have some progress to share in a month or two.
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Aug 14, 2022 06:08
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rockear posted:Yeah that's one thing that's tempting about that Omega is I think the guy has been using it somewhat recently and everything needed is already there... except for an easel though I don't think that's part of the deal. They're one of the easiest things to get (seem to always be tripping over them on Marketplace), and you can do without one, really. I'd probably just buy some foam board and cut masks in the sizes you want to print until I happened across a cheap one. I would probably grab that Omega kit assuming it has all the sizes you want/see yourself wanting. Depends on your area, but it might be years before a nice Durst or whatever turns up in driving distance to you, and that's time you could be spending getting your feet wet and learning. I spent literally years procrastinating on setting up my little darkroom, which I definitely regret. It turns out there's an iffy Bimacon 80 (the condensor my 6x9 Durst needs for >6x6) for sale in Japan for about $150 that has some haze or something. The handful of condensors I've played around with have all been easy to take apart, but not sure if I want to risk it. OTOH, I now have this drat Rittreck 6x9 SLR...
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Aug 14, 2022 07:31
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Hey Megabound, does your 6x9 Durst carrier look like something that could be 3D printed, or nah? The 6x6 glass one I have has some springs I wonder if I could duplicate (or re-use). Also if you wanna do a road trip to Tassie mid next year, I am moving overseas and have nowhere to leave my enlargers... rockear posted:That's the "mixing chamber" referred to in this ad right? Yeah, I would jump on that!
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Aug 14, 2022 21:29
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Megabound posted:Yeah, I'll just bring em back on the ferry, the wife will love it. I'm Tasmanian myself actually, would love to pop back down sometime for a photo trip. Nice! I am planning on quitting my job at the end of this year and will have 6-7 months of relative freedom before I ship out (eyeing a metalworking course at TAFE, and doing relief teaching to keep the lights on), so let me know if you're in the area. Sludge Tank and I do wet plate every now and again. Definitely keen on details for the neg carrier; kinda tempted to take a punt on that condensor if I can get the other half of the puzzle. Megabound posted:This happens every single time you go to buy darkroom gear. Oh you want to print? Have my entire darkroom for no extra money. Haha, it do be like that. I am picking up some wet plate gear from a guy up in Launceston at the end of the month 
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Aug 16, 2022 09:55
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Is the head able to rotate? Doing extra big prints horizontally is common practice.
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Oct 4, 2022 20:37
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I blacked out the bathroom this morning to do some prints/develop some film today, but only really did the latter. I had a mix of 4x5, 120, and 35mm to develop and having two tanks on at once was enough to keep me too busy to do much printing (did a test strip or two). Still, felt good - I had a roll of 120 I was trying to load in daylight with a changing bag that I spent 20 aggrevating minutes wrestling with, as soon as I took it out in the darkroom it went on the reel first go. Any tips for printing dense negs? I had some Tri-X I pulled to 100 last year (only film I had on me, bright summer day) and stand developed.
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Apr 12, 2023 09:25
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Double-posting, but I've since sold my darkroom, moved to the US, and as of yesterday, bought another (mostly complete) darkroom: Have been scouring local Marketplace sites for weeks looking for something suitable (either a 6x6 or 4x5 enlarger with a complete setup; piecing together a darkroom individually is a losing proposition financially), and found something "close enough", an "enlarger and darkroom stuff" mentioned in a Marketplace ad for a garage sale with no pictures. After messaging the seller and getting a few pictures of everything, I decided it looked complete enough to take a punt at $100, and drove across town to pick everything up.  This enlarger is not the best fit for me since it only came with a 50mm f/4 Componon and 35mm neg carrier, but I decided to buy the lot anyways since I was already there and it still seemed like an OK proposition at first glance (more on that later). I have a decent 80mm lens on its way over from Australia that I saved from my old darkroom, and a 6x6 negative carrier isn't ruinously expensive. Wish I still had my 3D printer. I know you can print B&W with a colour head, and even found an table with equivalency values for Kodak's VC filtration system in the documentation, but trying to figure out Ilford equivalents took a bit of digging and dealing with dead links before I found these tables (further research indicated Beseler uses the same values as Kodak, so I added that). It also came with the fancy stablised power supply, and a digital timer that mostly works (the fraction-second function may not be working, need to investigate further).  It also came with a colour analyser, as well as some 4x5 tanks with hangers for doing 4x5 colour prints. I have been a bit curious about RA4 since watching that In An Instant video of 20x24 RA4 reversal process, so this another reason to keep an eye out for some cheap print drums I guess. Because I need another rabbit hole to go down, of course.  Big stack of paper that is probably about the same age as me. I'll play around with it, but plan is to buy some fresh 8x10 multigrade with my next B&H order.  Two easels, including a big boi.  The lady said there was a safelight and I saw a little Brownie safelight box, but it looks to only be the dome (for an obsolete screw mount). Fortunately it also came with a 4x5 contact printer that has an integrated safelight, so I can just put that on its side with the top open and get by for now. Am actually hoping to use it for contact printing at some stage, but Google tells me it'll need a lower wattage printing bulb to work with modern darkroom paper. Print dryer:  Also came with a bunch of books, some of which look pretty useful. There were two stock photography books from the very early 90s which have some  early computer graphics. And this one, about which my first thought was "this is basically a paedophile's Rolodex": Came with another box containing the usual assortment of ancient chemicals, a broken selenium meter, and other assorted obsolete/useless doodads. There are a few things that look like they might be useful for wet plate, which is a nice bonus. But what's this...?  Did not even notice it when I was having my very casual paw through the goods before handing over the hundred bucks, but inside is a pretty much pristine Leica III rapid winder, which completed eBay auctions tell me is worth at least $600. Score! I don't have a Barnack or plans to get one, so this one is going to be sold to fund more paper/chemistry/a future 4x5 enlarger. Ethics_Gradient fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Sep 17, 2023 |
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Sep 17, 2023 16:37
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Megabound posted:Hell yeah good find. I found dichro heads more hassle than they're worth for black and white printing, filters were just easier and quicker, but I also have no desire to do RA4. Am I correct that I could just set it to no filtration on the head and use the Ilford multigrade filters below the lens? It does seem a lot easier, I definitely don't need the super fine controls with a dichro head at my current skill level. I am a real sucker for (good) instant photography because I like the quick feedback* so am kinda keen to try RA4 reversal at some point; since I'd have the chemicals on hand in that case I could see myself having a go at printing colour from negatives while I'm at it. *Tonight, that feedback was "no, idiot, you actually haven't figured out what is wrong with your plate holder and/or workflow."
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Sep 18, 2023 04:22
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a dingus posted:I just bought what seems like almost an entire dark room off Craigslist for $50. The only thing I'm missing is chemicals. It's been almost 20 years since I've used an enlarger or made prints. Nice! The 6x9 enlargers seem fairly common here, 4x5 is a bit harder to come by. I’ve found that the random red LED strips that are 100% fine for wet plate do fog paper, I’d err on the side of a proper safelight. I wouldn’t worry about the lens too much. As far as a darkroom, the Ilford tent is p decent and B&H may still be running their special on it.
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Oct 6, 2023 07:06
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Speaking of fogging paper, today I answered the question of whether a random red safelight (a 4x5 contact printer that came with my darkroom setup) was compatible with Kodak OC (amber) - nope!  For fellow apartment dwellers, I can definitely recommend the Ilford Pop-Up Darktent I mentioned in my last post. This is actually my first time using it for its intended purpose (wet printing with an enlarger, I mainly use it for wet plate collodion), it has a reasonably small footprint and isn't too bad to put up. You'll want a 4' folding table for setting things up on.   If you have the room to leave something up permanently, a hydroponic grow tent will give you more space and be cheaper, but the Ilford tent is lot nicer to set up/break down.
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Jan 16, 2024 00:13
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Welp, I bought two 4x5 enlargers this weekend. I've been trawling Marketplace for a reasonably priced one with enough relevant accessories (lenses and neg carriers for the formats I shoot) for ages, and finally found one about an hour and a half away from me. It was a bit more enlarger than I wanted as an apartment dweller, but the price was right, so I decided to go for it. I wound up having to break it down into three pieces to get it into the back of my Prius with the seats down, and it was still a very tight fit. I reassembled it this arvo without the castors but it's still like 190cm tall. It's got a lot of cool features: motorised column, dimmable lamp (if you want to more dodging and burning), easily tilts 90 degrees for big enlargements on the wall, etc. I'd swear there was a 150mm lens on it for 4x5 in the pictures, but they couldn't find it when I turned up. There were enough ancillary freebies that I didn't mind, these aren't necessarily the most valuable, but I thought they were interesting:  I have like 3 of these things now, also useful for wet plate (knocking dust off the plate before doing collodion pour). I googled it and the polonium has long since decayed.  This is a clever idea I'm surprised I haven't come across before. I wish it had a flat internal bottom to be a little more economical with chemistry (would like to use it with wet plate) but still should be handy for prints.  The Beast (with other two parts enlargers next to it). Don't @ me about the flag Megabound: it was free, and helps Australianise my sanctuary (nobody but me and the cat use this room) while I am in exile. The next day I decided to hit up a local camera collector swap meet hoping to find a 135 or 150mm enlarging lens. The only one I could find was attached to a battered Omega D2 sans baseboard. The seller was keen not to have to load it all back in his car, so he said I could have the lot (blackout curtains, cold light head, condensers, column, lens) for fifty bucks... and there was a dumpster at the back of the car park, he wouldn't judge. The cold light head definitely interested me, so I brought the lot home. I am kinda torn as the MCRX is luxurious and cool, but even without the wooden stand it's too big to fit through the door into my bathroom (and takes up an unreasonable amount of the limited space in the Ilford tent). If I want to use it, I'll have to black out the big window in the spare bedroom its in now, which will be a PITA to do every time I want to print since I rent and can't sink anything into the walls. OTOH the D2 feels like a rickity piece of poo poo by comparison and has no neg carriers, although I do have a 3D printer. I've already pulled the Beseler 67 I was using before off its baseboard to drill some new holes and see how the D2 sits on it. Maybe I keep both...? In addition to the 6x7 and 4x5 holders, the MCRX also came with a Beseler Negatrans for 35mm (I also see one in a dingus's post!). It's pretty neat; you load a strip of 35mm negs in one end and can use the little knob to precisely feed it in and get it into position, scroll to the next one, etc. By no means a necessity but a nice little quality of life thing I wasn't expecting. I was also pretty stoked to nab a Fuji FBD-12 for $30 that was hiding in a corner, something I've been low key keeping an eye out for since I found out it existed a few years ago. I reckon there's enough headroom that I can probably load and develop 8x10 wet plates with my vertical tank, which will be a lot more portable than my current setup.  
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May 20, 2024 02:36
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