Guys, don't drop the ball. Go get your bag checked for leaking TODAY!

Sharktooth said:

When I saw the Calumet name I immediately assumed it was some old stock, since Calumet went bust in the U.S. about 10 years ago. When I looked it up on Wikipedia I found out that Calumet is still a going concern in the U.K. and Europe. They were certainly a well respected equipment supplier on this side of the pond, but how are they regarded these days on your side?

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In the UK Calumet merged with WEX (Warehouse Express as was) in 2018 (?) who now sell their products. WEX is the largest and most efficient retailer of photographic and related equipment in the UK and very reliable.

BrianShaw said:

I also close my eyes when using a changing bag. Probably doesn’t help but certainly doesn’t hurt.

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I wonder if that works without the bag?

DREW WILEY said:

I always used a thin secondary liner inside my changing tent anyway - a thin black poly kitchen trashcan liner. That also served to keep the inside of the tent especially clean and free of lint; and it was very easy and inexpensive to carry a few spares.

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How do you attach the plastic bag to the changing tent so it's not draping on you and film holders? Which tent do you use?

albada said:

Your post prompted me to check my Photoflex Changing Room purchased in the 1990s.
Perfect.
No sign of crumbs, nor could I see any way that crumbs could be created, as the entire interior is synthetic cloth. Perhaps yours was an older design that used foam that dried out.

Mark

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Surprised me too, because the interior fabric looked like black nylon IIRC, and not the sort of thing I'd expect to see fail in that manner. I don't know if it could make a difference, but mine had sat idle for a number of years

I don't know the Photoflex room/bag being discussed, but many bags are made of fabric with a coating - fabric itself isn't generally completely opaque because of the weave. As I said earlier, look at blackout curtains to see an extreme example of such a coating. Anyway, sometimes the coating ages and begins to crack or come off the cloth. A similar thing happens to the waterproof coating of tents and backpacks. The life of the coating may be shortened by storing it in hot conditions or very tightly rolled; at least that's generally true for tents.

250swb said:

In the UK Calumet merged with WEX (Warehouse Express as was) in 2018 (?) who now sell their products. WEX is the largest and most efficient retailer of photographic and related equipment in the UK and very reliable.

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Thanks for the update. I checked out other Calumet items at the WEX site, and they really do have a nice selection of things for studio a pro use at reasonable prices. The tripod stuff seems to be Manfrotto clones. Lots of backgrounds, light stands, light modifiers and filters. It's too bad they aren't still around in North America.

Hi Alan. Good question. I just use a miniature plastic clothespin to attach one side of the black plastic polybag to the ceiling of the film tent. This is especially easy to do with Harrison tents, but should work for others brands too.

But one more good reason for using supplementary liners is that the urethane coating on the inside of fabric tents gets sticky over time, as the urethane degrades. I haven't checked my two Harrison tents for quite awhile. But I might need to use them again sometime for travel; so it makes a lot of sense to alleviate or delay the need to purchase a new tent in this manner.

Since I may be the victim of a leaky bag, I've been looking at alternatives to the relatively inexpensive one I currently have. Has anyone tried this Harrison bag?


I don't mind the ergonomics of a bag (I only load 35mm and 120 film) and don't think I need a full-blown tent.

A couple of reviews on BH mentioned that it can be a bit awkward to use since the sleeves aren't angled enough.

logan2z said:

....


A couple of reviews on BH mentioned that it can be a bit awkward to use since the sleeves aren't angled enough.

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Good grief! People are totally flipping insane - complaining about the ergonomics of a changing bag? aren't they all like that?

BradS said:

Good grief! People are totally flipping insane - complaining about the ergonomics of a changing bag? aren't they all like that?

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I wondered about that too. The arms on this one look just like the ones on my current bag and they work just fine.

BradS said:

Good grief! People are totally flipping insane - complaining about the ergonomics of a changing bag? aren't they all like that?

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logan2z said:

I wondered about that too. The arms on this one look just like the ones on my current bag and they work just fine.

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My Harrison tent, the next size I believe, is large enough 36x27x14" and stiff enough to load 4x5 film holders and yet have the room to move around my arms. It has the arms in front making it more ergonomic to use. It takes about 5 minutes to assemble or take down.

When the inimitable Drew Wiley posted about using a plastic garbage bag as a changing bag/tent liner, this got me thinking. No, I wasn’t thinking Drew was nuts, I was thinking about another similar plastic material that I was planning to experiment with for bellows.

A while ago, I’d been doing a search for different light tight materials that could be used for making bellows. I perused fabric stores with my trusty flashlight in search of something “cheap” with potential. I eventually found something promising at Home Depot. It was Roberts 6mil Polyethylene Film for laminated and engineered wood flooring. This is a black plastic that is light tight, and is a bit thicker than a garbage bag. It’s designed to be used as a moisture barrier under wood flooring, so I’m assuming it has some decent durability as well. The good thing is that it is relatively thin and flexible at 6mil (0.15mm) thick, comes in a large roll (10 ft x 12 ft, or 3.05m x 3.66m), and is relatively cheap.

I haven’t used this material to make a bellows yet, cause bellows are hard, and procrastination and stuff, but I did muster enough energy to try this on some leaky changing bags ….. with success!

As noted in my original post, I have several old changing bags, so I’ll outline here some of the key construction points, to help with potential repair or salvage. All the bags were made with two separate individual bags that are joined together. I’ll call these the “inner bag” and the “outer bag”. Both bags are made of a woven cloth material, but only one of these bags will have a light proof coating over the material. I’ve also discovered that the light tight coating is only applied to one surface of the material. In all the samples I have, the light tight coating is applied to either the outside surface of the inner bag, or the inside surface of the outer bag. This means that your hands won’t contact the coated surface during normal use.

The inner and outer bags cannot be joined together at the zipper end (or you couldn’t get inside), but they aren’t completely joined around the remaining perimeter. They are usually just joined together at a few spots, like the sides at either end of the zipper, and somewhere around the sleeves. I think the joining is minimized, since it’s not really necessary and more stitching leads to more potential for pinhole leaks.

If the coating starts to crumble or chip off, the loose pieces will end up in between the inner and outer bags. When you open the zipper on the outer bag, you can shake those pieces out. If you get a lot of stuff falling out, then the bag is probably unsalvageable, and should be tossed. If you have no significant loose debris, but there are still small light leaks, then you can probably use this plastic to repair the bag.

Here’s what I did for the repair of a leaking bag. Open the zipper for the outer bag, and pull the inner bag out (basically turning the outer bag inside out. Do this gently, and try not to force anything. Things will look a little strange, since you have two bags joined together inside out. The key here is to identify the coated surface. You want to cut out a piece of plastic to cover as broad an area of the coated surface as possible. It doesn’t have to be perfect at all. I used Gorilla tape to join the plastic pieces to the coated surface. The tape doesn’t need to be around the whole perimeter, but just enough to keep things in place. You can add more Gorilla tape around the seams if you want. Once that’s all done you can turn the bag out the right way again. This tends to be more difficult, since the plastic adds a bit more stiffness, but it can be done if you take your time. This worked well for me.

On another bag I used this plastic sheeting to make a “flap” to fold over the zipper, since that was a leak point.

I'm an avid DIY repair type, but for a changing bag I'd just buy a new one.

I'd agree if the bags were cheap, but they're surprisingly expensive. Anything with a name brand is going to set you back around a $100 to start, and the no-name stuff of dubious origin and quality go for $30 or more. I figure I used about $3 worth of plastic and Gorilla tape for the repair.

I forgot to add that this plastic sheeting would probably work as a great blackout material for windows and doors when making a temporary darkroom. You could hold it in place with some gaffer's tape.

Sharktooth said:

Here’s what I did for the repair of a leaking bag. Open the zipper for the outer bag, and pull the inner bag out (basically turning the outer bag inside out. Do this gently, and try not to force anything. Things will look a little strange, since you have two bags joined together inside out. The key here is to identify the coated surface. You want to cut out a piece of plastic to cover as broad an area of the coated surface as possible. It doesn’t have to be perfect at all. I used Gorilla tape to join the plastic pieces to the coated surface. The tape doesn’t need to be around the whole perimeter, but just enough to keep things in place. You can add more Gorilla tape around the seams if you want. Once that’s all done you can turn the bag out the right way again. This tends to be more difficult, since the plastic adds a bit more stiffness, but it can be done if you take your time. This worked well for me.

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I haven’t tried it in this context, but if I ever had to reinforce the coating on a failing bag I think I would try something like a rubberised fish-pond paint.

logan2z said:

Since I may be the victim of a leaky bag, I've been looking at alternatives to the relatively inexpensive one I currently have. Has anyone tried this Harrison bag?

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/172918-REG/Harrison_1003_Film_Changing_Bag_Small.html/reviews

I don't mind the ergonomics of a bag (I only load 35mm and 120 film) and don't think I need a full-blown tent.

A couple of reviews on BH mentioned that it can be a bit awkward to use since the sleeves aren't angled enough.

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I want one with puffy shoulders like Prince Diana wore!

Changing bags are the kind of thing that one used to buy as distributor-brand items from the camera shop - by distributor-brand I mean Kalt, Samigon, Arista, etc. You can still get these bags from B&H or Freestyle for about $25-35. A new one is likely to last a long time, I think the one I'm using is 25 years old. I have a bag that is much older and might have leaks (haven't checked recently) but I haven't tossed it yet because it's larger.

Once you get into changing tents/rooms they can get much more expensive. If you really want a spacious changing tent, find a Fuji Dark Box (actually a huge bag suspended from posts) made for lab use. It folds up for storage, but is big and heavy, not something you would carry around.

Sirius Glass said:

I want one with puffy shoulders like Prince Diana wore!

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Oy... Wouldn't you rather something more current, like what Queen Charles III wears?

I just received my Harrison changing bag and am impressed with the quality of construction. The double-elastic sleeves are very nice. I'm officially retiring my Arista changing bag after it failed the flashlight test pretty miserably.

Some bags (most?) have an interior rubber lining/coating. With some bags (most?) a good idea is to invert the bag, now and again, and check the inner lining for deterioration, cracks, crumbling, etc. The exterior may look great, BUT...............

DREW WILEY said:

I always used a thin secondary liner inside my changing tent anyway - a thin black poly kitchen trashcan liner. That also served to keep the inside of the tent especially clean and free of lint; and it was very easy and inexpensive to carry a few spares.

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Very good suggestion. Shall adopt the black trash can liner with next use. Thanks

My Photoflex tent is definitely not light tight. The sides are ok, but the front definitely leaks light. The sleeves were way worse. If you buy one, you should check it.There is nothing to deteriorate on the sleeves so it came that way from Photoflex.

My old changing bags from way back were perfect. Go figure. I guess I'll go back to those. My Photoflex and I had a decent almost 20 year run.....

I have never had a problem with my "darkroom bag" but then it is kept in a cool room and never folder up so it not had any stress put on its fabric.