Darkroom country sayings, platitudes and homemaker's golden rules

#13 Don't eat or drink in the darkroom

#14 Wash you hands well before you eat or drink anything

Martin

JBrunner said:

Own enough darkroom and camera equipment that your wife or girlfriend could not possibly tell that you spent money on something new.

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#15 : Don't drink neat fixer. Put some whisky in it, it tastes better.

Stan160 said:

Ilfostop changes colour from yellow to blue when exhausted.

Fixer shows no visible change. The Hypam data sheet gives capacity for film and paper per litre of working solution. I write start date, most recently used date, and running total number of prints through the fixer in my slot processor on the whiteboard in the darkroom.

Ian

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much appreciated ian.

cmo said:

Ryca, this thread is not meant as a question-and-answer thing, but I can add some extra hints. Please, ask your question about stains on your prints as a new thread in the forum.

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sorry mate...

Martin Aislabie said:

#13 Don't eat or drink in the darkroom

#14 Wash you hands well before you eat or drink anything

Martin

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#16: Get a steel soap and your hands don't smell like your lab.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stainless_steel_soap

(Yes, a spoon or something else made of stainless steel works fine, too.)

Curt said:

These are for dry work and not wet work like the Nitril gloves?

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Definitely dry work (handling negatives, sleeves, cleaning carriers, etc.).

cmo said:

#16: Get a steel soap and your hands don't smell like your lab.

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But... what if I want my hands to smell like my darkroom? Then whenever I get in a creative slump, I just snort the eau de fixer on my hands, and I'm right back in the groove again!

Own enough darkroom and camera equipment that your wife or girlfriend could not possibly tell that you spent money on something new.

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Paper safes are great places to hide cigarettes.

Foam hot water pipe insulation squeezed under the door as a light blocker. Cheap, replaceable, and fast.

I write on the back of all my work prints the time, grade, aperture, burn/dodge, etc. If I need to figure out which print was 18 seconds and which was 21 the next day, this really helps....especially with lith prints.

I also like my old iPod mini in the darkroom connected to some speakers....nice monochrome LCD display so I don't need to worry about fogging.

A label maker is so much fun that I actually label things and it looks nice

Lastly, I finally invested in a bunch of paper safes for my most used paper. Fishing things in and out of boxes or switching in and out of the paper safe just got old.

JBrunner said:

Own enough darkroom and camera equipment that your wife or girlfriend could not possibly tell that you spent money on something new.

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Is 6 enlargers, about 30 trays and as many measuring beakers, a half dozen Unicolor drums with two bases, and at least 50 various brown bottles enough???

Hey, it's not my fault complete darkrooms keep popping up on Craigslist for $50!!!

Mark Fisher said:

I also like my old iPod mini in the darkroom connected to some speakers....nice monochrome LCD display so I don't need to worry about fogging.

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#17: Music in the darkroom is mandatory. Avoid annoying radio stations with lots of commercials and the Beatles song "Here Comes the Sun".

cmo said:

#17: Music in the darkroom is mandatory. Avoid annoying radio stations with lots of commercials and the Beatles song "Here Comes the Sun".

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Not in my darkroom, it's not. I've tried it and found that I could not concentrate on my work.

Denis R said:

don't forget to adjust apeture after focusing enlarger, #1 cause of black paper
don't use focus instead of time , #2 cause of black paper

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I didn't know somebody was spying me when in the darkroom

cmo said:

#17: Music in the darkroom is mandatory.

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I was thinking "PC", with safe light filter foil across the screen.
Could be used as a 'media center' (including television), darkroom calculator, timer, and whatever else you may want/need it for (for instance: a way to ask how to questions on APUG without having to leave the DR. With a foil (over the) keyboard, you do not even need to wipe your hands).

cmo said:

#17: Music in the darkroom is mandatory. Avoid annoying radio stations with lots of commercials and the Beatles song "Here Comes the Sun".

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No, I don't like music either.

I found I noticed the passing of time far more o - is that all I have achieved so far !)

I am also not sure I wasn't subconsciously dodging and burning to the beat of the music not the bleep of the enlarger timer

Martin

Lore will have it that Mannes and Godowski timed their darkroom work whistling pieces of classical music.
So away with that darkroom timer, and in with music!

Excellent thread. I don't print at home, but I do run film, so:

-I came to standardize all my film development times to the warmest the tap water gets in the summer, so around 72 degrees for me, most of the summer. I find it much easier to warm chemicals and use the hot water tap in the winter months than to try to cool everything in the summer months.

-A big moleskin notebook with tech notes on film and processing. You need to be a code reader to decipher it, but just the act of writing it down helps me remember it. I make notes on the shoot, tape in a polaroid, etc, notes on the film running, and then notes on results, or a small final example print. B/c there are often tweaks being made, I number the pages and try to cross reference notes so I can go back and see the process with film and developer combos. And a highlighter for stuff I feel worked or that I'd standardize on.

-I keep my area clean, but I also keep everything at the ready so I don't have a desire to put off running film. I find it a more enjoyable process (not to mention less prone to error) to do a few batches once a week opposed to a marathon session once a month.

-I use a small digital voice recorder as my timer for running 4x5 in the dark. I recorded myself for 30min, noting each min for agitation. Hit play once the film hits the dev.

-Use rubber gloves, and if not googles, be careful and methodical during pours b/c chems splash very easy if a bottle decides to burp or etc, and while I've never got anything in my eyes, I've had a few close calls to know to be careful.

-Go ahead and buy the best reels there are. The difference in using Hewes reels compared to the cheapos is well well worth it.

I'm writing the processing information on the negative sleeves, so that I can always find what EI I used when shooting and how I developed this film (developer, dilution, temp and time)

eddym said:

But... what if I want my hands to smell like my darkroom? Then whenever I get in a creative slump, I just snort the eau de fixer on my hands, and I'm right back in the groove again!

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*******
Yup. And like keeping a bit of amidol around just to stain the fingernails.

eddym said:

Not in my darkroom, it's not. I've tried it and found that I could not concentrate on my work.

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******
It has to be Mozart in the darkroom, that's all.

Instead of hash marks to record the amount of film through the working bottle of fixer, I put a vertical strip of masking tape with two vertical lines, divided horizontally into "boxes" which represent multiples of 80 square inches (one roll of 120, four sheets of 4.5, etc.) and fill them in as I use the fixer. I can tell at a glance where I stand with the rated life, even though I keep an eye on the "twice the time to clear" rule. (This would also work with developers, although in my case it is all one-shot chemistry.)

Regarding the use of gloves: there is an advantage to working bare-handed (once you learn how to handle a print with tongs and without damaging it). Everything that is allowed to be wet should be in the sink, so if you feel something wet on your hands or anywhere else, stop immediately, clean up whatever it was, wash and then dry your hands. If you do this religiously, all of those wet spots will turn out to have been water. If you don't, some of them will metamorphose into fixer or developer, which will become apparent when fingerprint marks start to appear on your film and paper. (Please don't ask me how I know this.)

...(Please don't ask me how I know this.)

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I know how you know that, and it's good advice.
I always have a kitchen style towel over my shoulder when I'm working in the darkroom so that it's aways available for drying my hands. (I do the same in the kitchen, which is a huge annoyance to my wife when we are cooking together)

Something I've not seen mentioned is to always keep paper protected even from the safelights, as much as possible, aside from when it's being exposed. If it is out, make sure it is face down at least, and double check that nothing is out when the white lights go on.

It's fascinating how many bits of good practice seem to have appeared or been discovered independently. The 'multiples of 80 sq.in.' is a neat device, sign of a tidy mind too. I too have always worked bare-handed, and not only because I rapidly feel like my skin is suffocating when I wear gloves. My early working life was spent in a medical research laboratory, where some pretty nasty liquids were handled, so one learned good lab handling practice. To this day, I always hold any bottle from the label side ; that way, you always know that any corrosive drips are going to run down the side opposite the label. (I even do this with my whisky bottles -- that way, I always know which side to lick.)

Likewise, don't trust safelights, or at least, only grudgingly. I too write the abbreviated processing details on the edge of the negative files, and I always use pencil, never pen. You always know a pencil is going to write, which isn't true of a pen, a habit picked up from watching operators working on emergency switchboards.

alexmacphee said:

I too write the abbreviated processing details on the edge of the negative files, and I always use pencil, never pen. You always know a pencil is going to write, which isn't true of a pen, a habit picked up from watching operators working on emergency switchboards.

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...until the point breaks!