How much time? Not enough! Growing up I shot daily and was in the darkroom nearly every night or every other night. My current career doesn’t afford me a fraction of the time to do that at present, but I can now clearly see retirement on the horizon and hope to inch my way back to something frequent – balancing shooting and lab time.
I am now building a new darkroom after an 18-year hiatus. I had a darkroom since age 12, and am now 59. I packed up my old darkroom in 2004 that I let go dormant after going digital. Now back shooting film (mostly MF with a Pentax 67II system) along with digital (a Nikon D800), I decided to re-establish my personal darkroom. I really missed the process, the experience, the unique results and look of shooting film, the deliberate process, and the tactile joy of hand-crafting analog film and prints in the darkroom, the sound of good music playing while I work, and, ahhh, the aroma of fixer and other chemistry LOL.
Growing up I could barely afford adequate gear, let alone good gear – I got by in the darkroom with a basic enlarger, cheap timers, metal reels and tanks, basic safelight – very basic stuff. I improvised a lot, but it got the point that quality was limited by lack of better gear and facilities. Now at the top of my professional career and earnings, I can afford decent facilities, so I decided to do it right this time around.
I have been gearing up and working on the space for a permanent darkroom. I acquired an LPL 6670MXL Dichro enlarger, APO lenses, a Fujimoto CP-32 dry-to-dry print processor, a Phoththerm Super Sidekick 8 film processor, a Jobo CCP2 for one-offs, an industrial 16x20” vacuum easel, Gralab 900 digital timer, Peak Model 1 focuser, color analyzer, an industrial Nuarc safelight, and of course a full complement of manual processing gear (standard trays, tanks, etc). On the hybrid side, I proof with an Epson flatbed scanner, do final scans with a Nikon Super Coolscan 9000 and print on a 24” Epson 7880 wide format printer - all connected to a monster of a computer that I built to handle gigapixel image processing for the commercial imaging work I do on the side - indoor murals tens of feet by tens of feet for up-close viewing in visitor centers, buildings and so on. I sell many other prints in a local community gallery.
The darkroom facility itself is one side of 20x24 foot garage I had previously converted into a shooting studio, complete with five wireless Paul C Buff Einstein monolights, backgrounds etc, with most everything wireless and off the floor, a wall mounted large-screen LED monitor connected to both a studio computer for teathered shooting preview and regular programming, and a good vintage component stereo system. Now I am in the process of finishing the room with year-round HVAC, flooring, finished walls, better seating, and a permanent 12-foot work surface for the enlarger and processing side. Net-net, I’m aiming to make the facility a secondary man cave on steroids that is inviting and cozy.
MFL
