How often do you use your darkroom?

Not as often as I should, but I have the luxury of a dedicated, permanent darkroom in my basement. I'm going to be using it tonight as a matter of fact. I've got to run a pair of rolls of film, then get the Jobo out of the sink and set up the trays to make some prints.

I had my first darkroom when I was a kid in a closet. Dust problems, no running water, but it worked for years. Then college had a darkroom. My fiancé and I had an art studio and I built my "dream" darkroom (within budget limits of course). Wet and dry areas, film editing and as large as I wanted. Heaven!

Then the kids came. A 30 year hiatus, carrying around the contents of that darkroom for all those years, always vowing to rebuild. Finally I did! Heaven. I don't always do darkroom work in it, sometimes I just use it as a little sanctuary and repair or service my photo related gear, it's a great workspace for clean activities. I'm in there at least once a week, sometimes more. Love it.

I’m in mine about twice a week for printing, when I’ve been shooting/developing regularly. My rule is I won’t print unless I have at least a 3 hour block of time, and won’t develop film without an hour available.
Right now, I’ve reversed the head on my enlarger in order to print some (close to) 32x40 inch prints. I’m hoping it runs smoothly...

Outside of the darkroom, I do something photographic almost every day. Doing a lot of hand coloring, a few hours in the darkroom can yield a week of painting. Even a 15-30 minute block of time can be productive, and I always sleep better when I’ve been productive.

I haven't used mine very much this year. Partly because I had significant surgery last January, and between the convalescence, the backlog of domestic stuff, and work catch up. 'Me time' has been a bit thin.

I do have my 8x10 enlarger conversion mostly done, which is nice. It will let me go from 10x8 up to 20x16. I am not sure how often I will use it, but it gave me something to look forward to as the surgery date approached

Andrew O'Neill said:

My first apartment was a one bedroom, but it was quite roomy. My darkroom was multi-layered black plastic garbage bag affair in the corner of the kitchen. I suffocated in there, especially in summer. I endured for a couple of year until the arrival of my son. Moved to another area of the city, into an apartment with 3 bedrooms. One quickly became my darkroom. As you, it was a dry darkroom, but the bathroom was directly across from it. The room had a small window, which I covered over with blackout material. I stuck a small AC in it, keeping it nice and cool in those summer months! I spent many evenings and weekends in there!

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Just curious Andrew, if you were doing any alt processes then, or just regular darkroom work.

mooseontheloose said:

Just curious Andrew, if you were doing any alt processes then, or just regular darkroom work.

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Only silver gelatin at that time. Came back to Canada on 02, built a proper darkroom and continued with gelatine silver printing. I didn't give alt process a shot until 07. First Van dykes, cyanos, then Kallitype, and finally carbon transfer on 09. I rarely make enlargements onto silver papers. I still have lots of paper!

4-5 times altogether since I started photography a few years ago. It's really not the time or room now, it's the cost. I don't have the disposable income to print as much as I'd like. All of my film gets scanned by myself. Over time I'll collect the print worthy negatives and do a run 2-3 nights in a row. I take such long breaks between prints that my bottle of concentrate Multi-Grade went bad. So each time I print I have to restock my chems.

Still worth it.

rayonline_nz said:

Just a quick question. I have not got into large format. Do you process one sheet at a time or multiple sheets?


Cheers

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I process six 4x5 sheets at a time in a Jobo drum.

Almost every day.

When I'm not travelling, at least 2 times per week, sometimes more if I can. If I had a darkroom in my house probably every other day.

1-2 sessions per week is my goal 2-3 hours per session). I usually get at least one session in per week. Love it.

Not often enough.

Not often enough, exactly. But I manage to print at least ince a week, unless I have a lack of creativity which happens every now and then.

After four years and some 1000+ sheets of printing I am starting to think on what I want and not on what I do. Can do better (yet far from good) results quicker now with more intuition and less formalisms which feels more productive and is thus more fun.

Lars

My darkroom is almost finished so I plan to be in it often. It's Hallmark Christmas movie season so I need to get it finished so I have something to do when the wife and daughter are watching movies!!! Seriously, I plan to be in it at least once or twice a week. I haven't had a darkroom for 20 years or more so I have a lot of catching up to do. I have a pretty extensive collection of negs from 9th grade on up that I want to revisit and I already have 6 rolls that were shot this year that I want to attack.

MegoApesNut said:

My darkroom is almost finished so I plan to be in it often. It's Hallmark Christmas movie season so I need to get it finished so I have something to do when the wife and daughter are watching movies!!! Seriously, I plan to be in it at least once or twice a week. I haven't had a darkroom for 20 years or more so I have a lot of catching up to do. I have a pretty extensive collection of negs from 9th grade on up that I want to revisit and I already have 6 rolls that were shot this year that I want to attack.

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Have you been good this year.?
Better get a letter off to The North Pole right away.
Santa will need to bring you a whole sleigh full of paper, paper developer, and fix.
Merry Christmas

I have a dedicated darkroom. I tend to print once every 1 to 3 months. Having some film to develop is almost weekly. I print more in the winter than in the summer. I've had 2 printing sessions in the last six weeks.

CMoore said:

Have you been good this year.?
Better get a letter off to The North Pole right away.
Santa will need to bring you a whole sleigh full of paper, paper developer, and fix.
Merry Christmas

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HaHaHa!!! Yes, I need to ask Santa for plenty of paper and chemicals!!!

I was in my small closet one about once a week until we moved so I have not had one for about 9 months but I now have a very large dedicated space I am in the process of building out so in a way, I am in it a lot, just not printing. But once it is done, I will be in there a lot.

I have had a dedicated darkroom since I was 12 years old. Four separate locations. My boyhood home, until I got my first house when I was 23. I'm in my 3rd house now and hopefully my last. I was sold on the house once I saw two large unfinished utility rooms.
Now I have the darkroom of my dreams.

I'm in there everyday doing something. I couldn't be happy without it. Some people enjoy boats and cars. I like my darkroom so much I tried putting in a reclining chair, it was nice but in the way. 10 ft and 8 ft sinks give me plenty of room.
Mike

mshchem said:

I have had a dedicated darkroom since I was 12 years old. Four separate locations. My boyhood home, until I got my first house when I was 23. I'm in my 3rd house now and hopefully my last. I was sold on the house once I saw two large unfinished utility rooms.
Now I have the darkroom of my dreams.

I'm in there everyday doing something. I couldn't be happy without it. Some people enjoy boats and cars. I like my darkroom so much I tried putting in a reclining chair, it was nice but in the way. 10 ft and 8 ft sinks give me plenty of room.
Mike

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Very Nice Indeed.....

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

rayonline_nz said:

I was fortunate enough to have someone at my camera club to show me how he make a wet print in his darkroom. I have been developing my film but haven't touched upon the printing stage.

All our rooms have windows here including all the bathrooms and they only have "shaver" power sockets.

How often do you use your darkroom other than very quick minor jobs? I found out locally there is an art center that rent out darkrooms at $15US equiv for 24hrs or $3US per hour.



Cheers.

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Truthfully I haven't actually used my darkroom in quite a few years. I even purchased a Saunders 16x20 easel about 3 years ago that I never used. However, I just set it all up again last month and found some foam inside my dichroic head had deteriorated to nothing, so I replaced it with weather stripping. I hope to get back in there to make at least a few prints then I think I might retire the entire dry-to-dry setup and sell it to someone that will use it more.

That said I just developed a couple rolls of film not more than 15 minutes ago. Go figure. ;-)