Darkroom portraits

Lopaka said:

Very nice set-up, as are the print displays. Do you also hang some of your prints in your office?

Bob

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Thanks, Bob. Yes, I have alot more wall space in my office so I have 50-60 prints there. Most of them are color but I am strictly B&W now.

Murray, my daughter says no.

Jamie

Jerold, I think that if I were your patient my therapy would consist of sitting in front of your prints for a while and then moving to the next wall of them. They seem to be serene (though it's hard to view them with the oblique angle and the reflective glass of the frames) and encouraging. Then I'd pay you your fee and leave refreshed and energized. Now that's a helluva good gig if there ever were one!! Tell you what....I'll record a mix of cello repertoire...mostly Bach's solo suites I think....that you could play for your patients to augment their visual therapy (or mine for that matter) and you could send me a small slice of your fee.... What a country!!

Here are some pictures of my current darkroom. After looking at the other darkrooms posted in this thread, I recognize some arrangements that I had previously used. My current darkroom is somewhere between a converted basement and a purpose-built darkroom. I still have to share the space with a workshop and a storage area.

I never used a big darkroom sink (in which the trays would fit) and the Jobo instructions indicate it is not supposed to sit in a sink (though I see many people putting the Jobo in a sink). I just use a countertop and have used a setup similar to this in my first darkroom that I built in 1973.

Another thing that is conspicuously absent is a water panel control unit. This is a B&W-only darkroom, and the Jobo units do all the tempering. A simple thermometer-spicket works fine. (Some day I may add a water control panel, but it is low on the list of needed things)

The Enlarger area contains two Omega D5500 enlargers. I wound up getting one enlarger, then bought enough spare parts to make another. Rather than letting the spare parts sit around I put together a second enlarger. (Of course then I needed to get more spare parts to keep two enlargers running).

I think the imprecation against siting the Jobo in a sink is because most sinks slope and the Jobo wants to be level. It is a fairly simple matter to make a level base using a duck-board arrangement in a sloping sink. My sink is level so it's not a problem for me. A bigger problem is that I'm hopelessly messy and a flat wet-side bench would result in more liquid on the floor than in the trays ...

I like the way you have used lots of cabinet space: things just get covered in dust on shelves. I do wish I could find those deep plastic laundry sinks in the UK - they look ideal for cleaning trays etc...

Very clean lines you have there. Only suggestion I can think of is that you might want to consider some soft industrial rubber matting on that hard concrete floor.

Cheers, Bob.

Jerold, although I'm 46, you'll no doubt be surprised to learn that I'm you're long lost son, and I'm moving in with you!

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Get in line buddy, Im the long lost son and Im older at 55!

And really Jerold, can I call you Jerold?, how can you put such a fantastic set of pictures of photographs that should be in Home and Garden or some other magazine like Architectural Digest up on this forum, or maybe they already have been, and expect us to believe that you did all of the work alone? I bet you have a dozen assistants doing just the mat cutting and framing! And how perfect they are framed and matted. I am looking at my wall with four of my older photographs and after seeing your "little" display I think I had better get busy.

P.S. I am still recovering from the pictures of your darkroom and now this, what's a man to do?

Curt said:

Get in line buddy, Im the long lost son and Im older at 55!

And really Jerold, can I call you Jerold?, how can you put such a fantastic set of pictures of photographs that should be in Home and Garden or some other magazine like Architectural Digest up on this forum, or maybe they already have been, and expect us to believe that you did all of the work alone? I bet you have a dozen assistants doing just the mat cutting and framing! And how perfect they are framed and matted. I am looking at my wall with four of my older photographs and after seeing your "little" display I think I had better get busy.

P.S. I am still recovering from the pictures of your darkroom and now this, what's a man to do?

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Curt,

Thanks for the nice comments. I wish I had more time for the photography. Unfortunately I also have to work and have a severe addiction to fly fishing.

Jerold, your welcome, my grandfather taught me fly fishing and made me cast until I could put the fly in an inner tube. It seems so old school now but I do have to say it worked as directed. Then he made me tie the flies before I could go out. When we did go out I was surprised how easy it seemed, until I lost my first fly trying to put it under a low branch of a tree on the other side of the Wynoochee River. I haven't gone fishing in years but remember those days with a grin. It's too bad that a war and marriage and college and college and work crowded out "just gone fishing". It's like the world is on high speed, the only time I see it slowing is when photographing, but when I saw the fishing equipment in a shop in Yosemite and saw the Merced, that urge to put a fly in came rushing back. It's really not about the fish it's more.

Bob F. said:

Only suggestion I can think of is that you might want to consider some soft industrial rubber matting on that hard concrete floor.

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My darkroom is all self-built. Since I am not in the construction buisness, each step has been a learning experience. The flooring has been the source of anxiety, as I don't have much experience laying a floor. Currently I keep the floor clean with a vacuum and I have operating room shoes that are used only in the darkroom. Painting the with epoxy is a big deal because to get it to stick you need to etch the concrete with acid. I am a little worried about the rubber mats in that many I have looked at have a rough or porous surface that would be hard to clean when chemicals spilled.

Almost everything came from 'Home Depot.' For example all the cabinets and counter tops were 'kits' from Home Depot. The drying rack is from the 'household' section and was intended for storage trays. I build the screens (again from Home Depot parts) and the slide right it like it was made for print drying.

I did all the electrical wiring using conduit, 12guage wire (20 amp) and CGI circuit breakers. I have it wired so I can control most of the lights from an area near the enlargers.

I don't like fluroescent lights, so all the lighting is 12volt tungsten track lighting.

There is also a big HEPA air cleaning unit on top of the negative drying cabinet (which is a 'clothes cabinet' convereted with hooks on the cieling)

There are some other goodies hidden in the cabinets like a 20x24 Nova archival washer, almost all the negative masks and carriers they made for the D5500, laser alignment light, hygrometer, Enlarging lenses (Schneider APO HM 40mm, Schneider Componon-s 100mm, Schneider Componon-s 75mm, Minolta CE 30mm), 16x20 4 blade easel, many Jobo tanks and reels...

Since everything is hidden I need to label all the cabinets and drawers with a lable maker so I know where everything is located.

Finally got some pics

After a little freshening up - here's a look at my favorite room in the house - print finishing area - sink - enlargers and contact printing area...
Tim

Geez, that looks like a hybrid art gallery/darkroom!

Love the floor Tim. And what did you do for the sink? What is it made out of?

Floor and sink

Thanks for the nice comments - the darkroom is "L" shaped and the floor beneath the dry area is hardwood and what you can't see in the pics is that the floor beneath the sink is tile - great for easy cleanup. As much as I wanted a ss sink (I had one in my previous darkroom), I decided to try this one - it's black abs plastic from Calumet - I believe it cost me about $300 - with the aluminum stand. It's great low maintenance and economical. It's an 8 footer and I can fit 4 16x20 trays in it easily, although now I'm mainly contact printing 5x7 and 8x10.
Tim

That looks really nice Tim... much better than my tiny 8x8' hole in the wall!

gene

Great thread! Im about to buy a house and plan on building a darkroom in the unfinished basement. Does doing so hurt or help the future resale value of a home. I guess I could always take it down if we ever decide to sell. But after having 2 makeshift darkrooms in apartments Im ready to build a permanant one with running water and the works.

I had two darkrooms in our former home - one was a tiny closet affair on the second floor, and the other was more spacious in the basement. When we sold the house, the presence of those rooms didn't appear to affect the resale value.

Installing plumbing, electricity and shelves in your basement can only help the value of your house. Painting all the walls black maybe not. But hey, don't let a potential future owner mess up your joy of living today.

paint it black

argentic said:

Installing plumbing, electricity and shelves in your basement can only help the value of your house. Painting all the walls black maybe not. But hey, don't let a potential future owner mess up your joy of living today.

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Might come in handy if they're pagans....

Nice image on the back wall there my friend

art in the darkroom

Nothing inspires in the darkroom better than to have great photographs hanging nearby as you print...Adams, Weston, Sherman...

A lot of stuff in my small darkroom

I finally cleaned up enough to take the digi thing home from work this weekend and snap some pics of my darkroom facility. The darkroom proper is 5.5' wide by 8.5' deep. There is the typical dry and wet side.

The wet side at on end of the sink has a vent that gets sucked into the intake of the heat recovery ventilator for the house.

Under the sink there is a reverse osmosis filter that I scavanged from the trash in lieu of lugging distilled water home. There is also a nitrogen tank for gassing developer solutions to keep them from dying as quickly (stored dried food too). There is a roller base, used with RA-4 in drums. There is a magnetic mixer that I have built the guts of a coffe hot plate into as well.

Above the sink there is a Vivitar process timer that lets the mind safely wander when doing big lots of stuff. The copy holder on spring arm lets me get caught up on magazine reading backlog when doing c-41, or ra-4 colour work, when using this timer. Chems for colour work get tempered in the old cooler that is fitted withan immersion pump, fish tank heater, and thermocouple. The old plastics injection molding machine controller above the vivitar process timer runs the heater most effectively.

As you can see from the myriad of of little bottles, I mix my chemistry from scratch. Little kids means that buying a batch of chems, or even mixing up a gallon of D-76 does not make sense for me. I mix what I need a few days or in the morning ahead of time. I also make my own soaps, and pop flavours from the little essential oil bottles that I also store in this room, since the scale I use to weigh them is here too. The scale is an old run of the mill triple beam balance that I *bayed. Its upper range weight was missing, so there are little cups of screws that I hand fabriacted to allow me to weigh greater than 610g at one go. There is also a short length of wire that tares out on a dixie cup's worth of weight. For greater precision I also have a small 50g pan balance.

The sink holds 3 11x14 trays, with a larger fixer tray on a shelf at the top, just beside the exhaust inlet. I go dev, stop, up to the fix, under to the holdiong bath, and then do a big fix two/HCA/wash effort at the end of the session on all the prints that have accumulated when I print big FB in a session.

If I print larger than 11x14 in B&W I take over the adjacent laundry room. The clothes dryer and washer are leveled, and have boards that fit into their tops to place the trays on. The old microwave oven gets used to quick dry fibre test prints to evaluate dry down, as well as for soap making. The freezer actually has about half a load of food in it; the rest is of course film and paper. In the corner of one shot adjacent to the furnace you can see the filtered drying cabinet I built when I want to dry film, and also still keep working in the darkroom. The washer for 16x20 is an oversized tray and auto syphon print washer that sits on top of the freezer, and drains to the laundry tub. The archival slot washer usually sits in the darkroom sink if I am printing smaller than 11x14, and gets moved to the laundry tub for bigger jobs.

The dry side has a couple of Omega enlargers. The B600 condenser unit is mostly used to flash paper, and make contact prints under. The Dichroic diifusion unit does most of the exposing. It column has been moved to a shelf and roof mount to allow for larger print capabilities, and also to allow the use of a four bladed easel without having the column getting in the way. The timer for it is built into the Lici Colorstar analyser, which is a wonderful piece of kit. Somewhere on the wall there is a ferroresonant transformer that is used to feed the enlarger constant voltage. On the left hand side wall there are factory 35mm and 120 neg holders, and an assortment of matt board made holders for the more obscure film sizes. Even the spot above the door has been used to hang reels to dry. The cabinets under the bench are surplus from old drafting tables at my company. They are 36" deep, and hold a ton of stuff. The foot space has smaller cabinets that hold a camera macro bellows, and RA-4 drums, as well as sundry oil supplies for the soap efforts. The camera bags themselves get relegated to the hall beside the darkroom when I am printing.

Print finishing happens at my office - I usually mount at lunch the day after I print. I have my dry mount press and matt cutter there, as well as lots of room, a self healing cutting table,and big straight edge at my disposal.

Good Evening, Mike,

Congratulations on making the most of your available space. You've given me a couple of good ideas.

Konical

Just finished it.
It's small and a little shady, but I made it on a very tight budget and it'll be quite operational.
I'll get some pictures up soon...
7'x7' with a Beseler 23CII and a 45M.
But for now...I've got work to do.

The idea of using an old Cold-room has panned out pretty well, oddly enough we've spent more time building a retaining wall around it and paving than converting it too much. When I leave for university next year my parents will take it over as a cellar, so getting it to look pretty on the outside helps my case a little. But I'm cleaning things out, marking out where everything will go, and I've put in the first shelf. Ventilation, electricity and plumbing still need to be taken care of, but it's nice to see all that paper I got in one place.

The second photo is me on top of it blowing bubbles on Easter...yeah. I didn't think anyone had a camera at the time, you see. But it gives you an idea of the size and location.

Hello friends!
Want a creative problem?. There is a premise 2,4x0,9 m.
Wish to make small darkroom for BW Prints. What ideas on a layout?
Furniture I can make any.
Advise please. Thanks