yes, yesh, YESH… i’m still alive, somehow. my photography activity went far below zero during the past few months, but things will change soon! a few months ago, my brother moved out of the house. i claimed his room and had it transformed to my very own darkroom. well… i came up with the plans and ideas and my dad realized them, so big thanks go out to my dad for his major efforts!
i took some pics of the darkroom with my crappy digital camera. image quality isn’t that great, but good enough to give you an idea of what the room looks like…
below’s a picture of the wet side of the darkroom. the walls aren’t really in the “traditional darkroom colors”(black, red, grey, …) though. i first wanted to test whether the current colors(in combination with the safe light) caused any fogging. after doing some tests, it appeared that no fogging occured(not even after more then ten minutes, so i should be safe). no need to have the walls repainted then…
at the moment, i’m using this part for drying my prints, but that’s just temporary. later on, i’ll have a complete drying rack underneath the sink…
“zé chemikals!”. looking forward to experiment!
the sink is completely made out of wood. metal cools down chemicals pretty fast, so i opted for a wooden sink painted with epoxy paint(the same paint is also used for boats).
on the other side of the room is my brother’s old desk, which i’m using to put my enlarger on;
a lovely Omega enlarger.
never liked color enlargers before, but i’m definitely lovin’ this one!
so, now i can finally print my negs again… that’s a pretty big motivation for me! this room will definitely be my new home where i’ll be spending entire weekends…
-bert
*mouth falls open*
…
waw!
Woewie. Sjieke dinges!
gelukzakske!
da’s wel het minste dat ge kunt zeggen, ja :D
Nice! You’ve made quite an effort. Now you only have put it to use ;)
Don’t understand much about building darkrooms, but I know that in my bathroom there’s some kind of plastic layer on the color (or below it, or something in the color) to prevent humidity from getting into the walls. You might want to consider that for this room too.
And if that is really XTOL in that one canister, then get the air out or it will oxidize. Especially if you don’t use it too often you’ll see how it will weaken.
How do you seal the windows? How do you control the temperature?
Anyways, have you read Ansel Adam’s “The darkroom”? As much as I remember he has a chapter on building a darkroom, the ideal setup, etc. Not saying that one has to do as he does, but I’d think you might find some good advice there.
Well, good luck! Looking forward to some actual work ;)
The walls of this room were already pretty humid, before i even used it as a darkroom, so yeah… maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to look for something to prevent humidity from getting into the walls. Thanks for the tip!
The canister with XTOL written on it, once contained XTOL. Now i’m just using it to store used chemicals in. No worries :D
The windows are sealed with ordinary shutters on the outside and with two big wooden panels(which i can put in front of the windows) on the inside. A picture of the windows can be found here. On the left side, you can see the wooden panel(inside) and on the right side you can see the shutter(outside).
To control the temperature, i have these large heating elements. The sink, where i put my trays in, is filled with water and then the heating elements are put in the water. The temperature of the heating elements can be adjusted from 18°C to 32°C…
Ansel Adams’ “The darkroom”? Do you maybe mean “The Print”? No, i haven’t read it yet… his “trilogy” is sitting on my bookshelf for so long now, but i haven’t found the time to read them all. I’m starting with “The Negative” soon. Superb lecture!