A tiny, cheap darkroom - is it possible?

bsignorelli · Sep 22, 2006

I'm moving to a smaller place this weekend and will be setting up in the only bathroom there. What are your concerns about chemical contamination of the sink or tub surfaces? How do you clean the tub after spilling chemicals in it or dumping them into the sink?

Bryan
Little Rock, AR

glbeas · Sep 22, 2006

A little soap and plenty of water. Flush it down good. Most photochemicals only stain if allowed to sit and dry. Good housekeeping to prevent the mess is the best solution.

grezs · Sep 22, 2006

You might keep an eye out for a Czech made Meopta Axomat or Opemus enlarger. They compact into a suitcase and are durable and their Anaret lenses are very good. While Nova slot processors can be pricey, they did make one simple version for up to 8X10 that consisted of 3 troughs that sat separately in a simple base. I've seen a few very cheap on eBay($30). Good luck.

glbeas · Sep 22, 2006

David A. Goldfarb said:
An office supply should have some rubber coated racks for sorting letters--these are really useful when you have lots of small RC prints to dry, for instance when you join the APUG Postcard Exchange and find that you need to print 40 postcards.

And to top that, I used to use the top rack in my old dishwasher to dry RC prints in, just left it hanging open while they dried. It even worked well for 8x10 prints if arranged carefully.

AgCl4ever · Sep 23, 2006

I am in the midst of doing the same dark/bathroom thing. I am using battens (1x2 boards) fastened to the walls to hold a 30 inch wide piece of melamine covered medium density fiberboard over the toilet that sits there from wall to wall and can be removed when the room returns to ordinary bathroom status, to take the enlarger. A piece of melamine board over the tub provides space for trays.

Ken

rkathleen · Sep 24, 2006

Thanks again for all of the extremely helpful information!

Judging from the photos in the Darkroom Portraits thread, my bathroom is probably about the same size as David Goldfarb's. I love the cart set up; I have seen carts at IKEA that look very appropriate, and using the cart would give me more flexibility when choosing an enlarger.

Using a cart would broaden my options to include whatever I can haul up to my 4th floor walk-up apartment with the help of a friend and can fit through the bathroom door (i.e. something 23" wide or less). There is an Omega D2 in my area...is that too heavy for 2-3 people to drag up a few flights of stairs?

TheFlyingCamera, I'd be very interested in those plans! I'd be most grateful if you could email them to me at krobel [at] berkeley.edu.

Nick Zentena · Sep 24, 2006

Depend on the people. I think personally I could move it myself.

Usually you can take things apart with most enlargers. Remove the head. Maybe the baseboard. It makes them lighter but also easier to move in a confined space. Plus if you take the head off you're less likely to drop the head with it's condensors.

srs5694 · Sep 24, 2006

Nick Zentena said:
Usually you can take things apart with most enlargers. Remove the head. Maybe the baseboard. It makes them lighter but also easier to move in a confined space. Plus if you take the head off you're less likely to drop the head with it's condensors.

This sort of thing can be useful in shipping an enlarger or in getting it to the 4th-floor apartment that rkathleen mentions. I wouldn't want to rely on it to get the enlarger in and out of a makeshift bathroom darkroom on a regular basis, though. (An exception might be a small enlarger that's designed to be broken down and reassembled quickly, like one of the "suitcase" models I and others have mentioned.)

David A. Goldfarb · Sep 24, 2006

I'm just using an ordinary rolling typewriter table (do they still make those?), but if you don't need to fit the enlarger over the toilet, I've seen some carts that people have built with the enlarger column bolted to the cart, a multi-level enlarging stage in the form of a shelf that can be set at different levels, and a storage cabinet underneath. I think there may be plans for such a thing in the old _Morgan and Morgan Darkroom Book_.

dancqu · Sep 26, 2006

TheFlyingCamera said:
...ie, a 16x20 processor has a smaller
footprint than a single 16x20 tray...

That may be though processing conventionally an eight
slot processor would be needed to duplicate what I
can do with one tray. That is, develop, stop, fix1,
rinse, fix2, rinse, hca, and rinse. If toning is to
be done it can follow in that same one tray.

A second tray is needed for holding and for use
when employing the two tray wash method.

Single tray and rotary processing are similar. Each have
in common the use of a single container for all chemistry
and it's in and out with each next step. As with rotary
the chemistry can be used again, or as some do, it
can be used one-shot. Dan

fotch · Sep 26, 2006

FYI "Federal 291 portable film enlarger in carry case "
check ebay # 140034280428

Currently $9.95

TheFlyingCamera · Sep 26, 2006

dancqu said:
That may be though processing conventionally an eight
slot processor would be needed to duplicate what I
can do with one tray. That is, develop, stop, fix1,
rinse, fix2, rinse, hca, and rinse. If toning is to
be done it can follow in that same one tray.

A second tray is needed for holding and for use
when employing the two tray wash method.

Single tray and rotary processing are similar. Each have
in common the use of a single container for all chemistry
and it's in and out with each next step. As with rotary
the chemistry can be used again, or as some do, it
can be used one-shot. Dan

Yes, but Dan, with the three-slot processor, I can have one print in each slot at the same time. I've never seen a tube that will let me process three 16x20 prints simultaneously. If you're looking for improved speed efficiency, single tray processing is NOT the way to go. If you put decent sized drains on the vertical processor, you can do what you're doing by draining the chems out of each slot between each print, and then refill. However, this produces two side effects- one, cross-contamination (still happens with tubes too, but to a lesser degree because you're using lower chemistry volumes) and greater chemical waste. Between what you lose to oxidation/evaporation and what you lose to spillage, single tray processing is far less efficient.

Monophoto · Sep 26, 2006

rkathleen said:
There is an Omega D2 in my area...is that too heavy for 2-3 people to drag up a few flights of stairs?.

No - it's heavy, but one reasonably fit person can schlep it.

Practically, a more significantly concern is transporting it. When I picked up my DII (precursor to the D2), I was driving a Saturn, and it wouldn't fit into the trunk. Had to removed it from the baseboard (easy to do), and even I had to go home to get my wife's station wagon.

MattKing · Sep 26, 2006

I do all my processing in light-tight tanks (film) or tubes (paper). My Beseler 67C sits on a microwave cart with two shelves below. Each of the shelves holds a rubbermaid bin - together they are almost big enough to hold all my darkroom equipment.

With the tubes, you lose the benefit of seeing the image on the paper appearing as if by magic, but you gain the benefit of doing all the processing steps in the light. In my case, that means the kitchen counter, complete with window view.

Matt

A tiny, cheap darkroom - is it possible?

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