This one will be long with a lot of photos…no teaser photo for the front though.

I guess I’ll do this chronologically.  As per my last post I ended up going back and buying another tarp at the “Bargain” warehouse for $20 more than the last one cost me.  We then proceeded to try and get it up as quickly as possible Friday night in case the wind/rain came back.  That was no fun at all.  The other tarp went up easier than I had expected, this one fought us every step of the way and the extreme humidity made it just flat out miserable.  I soaked two shirts with sweat fighting to get that thing up…and had to take a break partway through to buy more rope because the 100 feet we started with just wasn’t enough.  I had planned on treating us to a nice dinner when we were done – but by the time I was done and showered the only place open was Applebees – who set a new low for service that night   Oh well, at least my “Perfect Margarita” pretty much was perfect and that did help!

The new tarp is on 90 degrees different than the last one, so we’ll see how that works out.  If you compare to the older photos you’ll see that the first replacement tarp has tightened up significantly since I put it up there.  I’m hoping this one does as well since it’s kind of loose and flappy right now:

From across the street showing the top of the new tarp.

From under the new tarp

Really, I’m not as overjoyed with the new tarp as I expected to be.  I was kind of looking forward to the white tarp so there would be better light under the carport for when I work on the vehicles.  And yes there is better light…but it seems like too much now.  Almost like there isn’t shade at all.  From the photos you can see that YES there is shade…but when you’re under there it’s bright.  Also means a lot more light coming in through the living room and kitchen windows.  Time will tell if I like it or not.  I’m thinking the next time we replace them I’ll get two layer tarps that are black on top and white on the bottom so they’ll give more shade but the white bottom will still be nice when working under there.

So moving on to Saturday.  We started out the day by going over to look at some darkroom equipment some people e-mailed Amy about after they saw her blog in the paper.  We didn’t have very high hopes…but it turned out they were a real friendly couple about our age and the gear was pretty nice.   We ended up buying a couple of things:

"New" enlarger

The Beseler 23C was the enlarger Amy learned to print on…so passing this up would have been hard!  It’s in great shape, just a little dusty.  Only has the 6×6 negative carrier (but oddly enough only a 50mm lens – 6×6 should have a 80mm lens) but we can get new carriers on ebay I’m sure.  We also picked up an orignal pre 45 Weston Master light meter, a Sekonic light meter, a fixed size enlarging easel that Amy liked, an Omega color analyizer and some safelights.  While we didn’t NEED another enlarger (I still have another Durts M670 in my parents basement and a Beseler 45 that I’m not sure how I’ll ever get out here since it’s so big!) the 23C does complement my Durst nicely.

The Durst is a diffusion color head with a quartz lamp.  That gives a soft light effect which tends to hide dust and scratches a little but at the cost of some fine detail and sharpness.  The 23C has a condenser head (though a diffusion head and a cold light head are available used) which gives a harsher light that results in dust and scratches showing easier…but also a sharper final image.  So having one of each gives us the best of both worlds letting us pick the right tool for each job!

With the new toys settled in we went out and did a little shopping for a piece of pegboard to hang in the laundry room to organize darkroom stuff, and look for a cabinet to put in there and the final things I needed to finish light proofing and ventilating the room.  The new cabinets at Lowes were nice, but more cash than we could justify – espically after having just bought a used enlarger we didn’t really need.  But the Habitat for Humanity restore used home improvement store had a few “gently” pre-owned cabinets that looked like they may work…we just needed to double check out measurements and come back the next day since they were closing soon.

A quick stop at the camera store for some more ID-11 and another pack of paper we found that they had another nice safelight on consignment which I picked up and they had Ilford Delta 100 in 120 in stock so we picked up a few rolls to shoot.  We went home and loaded up Amy’s Grandfathers Rolleicord and my Lubitel – then stopped back at the shop to put the Nikon 6006 my mom had given Amy a few years back up for sale in hopes it will help some student just getting started.  We then proceeded to snap a few shots around the river and downtown before coming home to dunk them in the developer.

We both managed to overexpose most of our shots.  Mine I was aiming for about 1 stop over exposed so I wasn’t surprised, they’re still very printable and I’m dying to see how a few of them enlarge.  Amy’s were a bit more overexposed than either of us expected, not sure if it was due to the odd aperture/shutter choices available on the camera, Amy’s unfamiliarity with the camera and light meter, the shutter possibly being a bit slow on the 75+ year old camera…or a combination of one or more of those.  It also seems there may be a small light leak in the camera, but it could just be Amy’s unfamiliarity with 120 film loading/unloading.  We’ll see after I get to run a roll through it.  She also only got 8 exposures due to us not realizing that the Rollei had a frame counter and automatic film advance stop that we were supposed to use instead of the red filter peep hole on the bottom.  oops.

On the plus side the lens is VERY sharp and she did get a few good shots.  I’m looking forward to being able to share them here soon!

Sunday we went back to the Habitat store and for $15 picked up a cabinet.  Loading it into the truck I started to have second thoughts though as part of the toe kick fell off.  The whole thing was pretty shakey.  And before we got it out of the truck the concrete and ceramic top (which we had planned on removing anyway) was falling off.  In fact the whole thing was in danger of collapsing under it’s own weight.  There was no back and the old particle board it was made of was not holding together very well.  I didn’t get a photo of it in it’s original state but here it is with the top and toe kick removed as Amy starts to clean it in preparation for paint:

"original" condition of cabinet

We gave it two good heavy coats of Kilz premium primer to seal in any mold or mildew that may have been lurking within it – and to keep out any that conditions in the laundry room / darkroom would subject it to.  We then decided to give it a coat of the light blue paint we had originally bought for our spare bedroom but decided not to use.  With the nearly full gallon sitting there I decided to just bite the bullet and paint the laundry room as well.  One less salmon colored room!  Only two left!  Our own bedroom and the back bedroom.  Our bedroom won’t be getting painted for awhile due to lack of space to move stuff around in there.  The back bedroom will probably wait as well since we have plans to make some major modificaitons back there semi-soon.

Before - from dining room

Before from back bedroom.

After - from dining room

After - From Back Bedroom, also note the new pegboard behind the sink and cabinet.

The laundry room feels a LOT bigger and cleaner now with the fresh coat of light blue paint!  It’s not perfect, I still have to trim around the fold out ironing board and above the washer dryer…and I was too lazy to move the washer dryer so there’s still salmon hiding behind them and the washtub…but overall it’s a BIG improvement!

I also finished installing the bathroom fan I bought a week or two ago – and you can see how we put a safelight bulb in one of the two overhead lights in the laundry room.  When we moved in we thought it was silly that there were two light circuits in such a small room – now it’s just what we needed!

Safelight and vent fan.

I know, I still need to wire the fan in.  I also want to add an outlet for the timer in that area and I want to move the lights and outlets in this room onto their own circuit anyway since the one they’re on now is shared with the kitchen and IMHO way overloaded.  With no attic access in this area though it won’t be much fun to pull the wires

The duct from the fan goes out to an old dryer exhaust duct in the water heater closet.  It had one way flaps on it so I know it wasn’t there to allow air to come in for the water heater vent and works perfect for our needs, I do want to fill in around it with some expanding foam though to block out any final light leaks and make sure it’s a good permanant seal.  The path the duct takes should prevent any light from coming in through the fan itself – and if not that duct will easily expand enough that I can reroute it to make sure no light will get in:

Vent duct.

There’s another vent near the floor in that closet which probably does let air in for the water heater.  It also lets in a lot of light.  So I got another set of the one way flaps to go on the inside of that duct….but need a bit more duct to get them installed still.  I also added a new threshold at the base of the door for that room which probably seals the light leaks sufficiently that I won’t need the flaps after all.  Have to wait and see.

The “new” cabinet I fixed up with some hardboard on the back and pine stringers across the top (the original ones were badly warped) which stregthened it up a LOT!  It went from barely able to support it’s own weight to something I would stand on.  The toe kick wasn’t necessary for the height we wanted but I did have to shim out the one corner to make up for it:

Height shim on cabinet.

Yeah, we probably should have painted the bottom as well….but it will be ok for now.  After that I screwed our chunk of counter top to it and we now have a very stable and sturdy cabinet for darkroom supplies, I do have to scrape the paint off the hinges still:

Cabinet Installed!

I still need to trim the shims I used to level it…but hey at least I did level it!

Finally I made one more upgrade to the laundry room / dining room door to seal some final light leaks there:

I still have to paint it but it seems to block out the last of the light leaks quite effectively!  Oh yeah, we also put one of the safelight bulbs we acquired the past few days into one of the fixtures in the dining room so we have a semi-dark antechamber before entering the real dark room.  The dining room much like the laundry room has more lights than make sense for such a small room.  There’s a “normal” overhead fixture that we never use.  A track light which we never use (where we put the safe bulb) and a big skylight that has a flourscent light in it with a stained glass design under it – which is the light we tend to use the most since it gives the most usable light, makes the stained glass look nice, and lights up our backyard Ficus tree nicely giving some gentle light near the back door so we don’t stub so many toes!

Wow!  What a weekend!  I’m exhausted!  But I’m still going to go try and do a few quick prints tonight to celebrate having the darkroom pretty much “done” and fully usable complete with nice safelights now!

Oh yeah, that’s one last thing I forgot to mention.  The back bedroom was wired kind of odd.  Most of the outlets were half always live and half switched by switches on the wall above them.  I took advantage of that with setting up our safelights.  2 of the switched outlets now control safelights so they’re on wall switches, and the 3rd switched outlet is where I plugged in the extension cord for the vent fan…so it’s on a switch as well.  This winter when I rewire this part of the house the fan will get it’s own switch in the laundry room – but for now at least it has a switch!

Better exposure, but neg was damaged.

I loaded up the other exposure of the old canal, decided to try a vertical crop instead of the native square (in hopes of cropping out some of the falloff in the corners caused by the lubitel) and after a quick test strip did a test print.  That’s it above.  As usual my scanner mangled it pretty good – one day I’ll find a way to get that scanner to reproduce images accurately instead of trying to “correct” them.  The good news is that as I suspected the exposure is MUCH better on this frame and the tones were very close to where I wanted them printed on #2.  The bad news though far outweights that.  The image is soft, my focus wasn’t quite where I wanted it unlike the other slightly underexposed image.  And then there’s the squiggle.

It was a piece of hair.  And sadly it wasn’t just on the negative, it was IN the negative, actually embedded into the emulsion   Removing the hair was easy enough – but once removed it left a canyon in the emulsion.  It was either there from the factory (unlikely), got onto the film when I was rolling it onto the spool for processing (fairly likely given how deeply it was embedded) or got there when the film was still wet and hung to dry (also very likely given our excitement over the first roll of film processed in the new house and our eagerness to inspect it.)

Had it been damage on the other side of the negative a little nose grease or no scratch would have been able to cover it.  But alas, a deep wound to the emulsion like this is far more grave.  Way too big to spot out.  I could correct it in photoshop…but I’m not looking for a digital solution here.  So this neg is effectively trash

If it wasn’t for the focus being a bit off I’d be kind of bummed.  But as it is I guess it’s just and excuse to go back out there again for some shooting sometime.

The other quick print I did was far more gratifying.  The scene itself isn’t all that great…but the exposure was quite nice, it was remarkably sharp for the equipment used, and the print came out almost exactly as I had visualized it which was gratifying:

Lizard sunning on a weathered post.

Of course as usual my scanner has “corrected” the print and thrown off the original tones.  Contrast has been increased, subtleties have been lost, and sharpness and detail were lost to the scanner as well.  But it felt good to get a print Iw as happy with after just one test – even if the image itself isn’t all that great!

Hopefully this weekend we’ll find time to put light to film and get some negatives I’m a little more excited about printing.  Saturday we’re going to a local couples house to see if we are interested in any of their old darkroom equipment so with luck I’ll be able to pick up a safelight and printing won’t be quite as much of a chore anymore.

Assuming of course that I finish installing our vent fan and track down whatever has mysteriously caused two electrical circuits in our backyard to suddenly fail at the same time

Laguna Dam - abandoned sluiceway

Read on for details!

First stop of course was our new local camera shop “Backyard Photography” in downtown Yuma. We were glad to see they had a number of customers in the store when we showed up, and they were glad to see us having seen Amy’s blog about them on the Sun’s website.  They apologized again for not having safelights in stock, they almost ordered for their initial stock – but held back at the last minute.  It sounds like they’re also going to get in some 120 film which I’m looking forward to.

While I preferred Ilford films back when I last shot film – I never used the Ilford developers normally using T-max developer, since the local store is still working on getting setup with Kodak this was a good chance for me to try some Ilford developers so I picked up some ID-11 and Perceptol film developers. The fixer and stop we bought last week can be used for both film and paper (just a different dilution) so we didn’t need any more of that. Dug out my old film tanks…and decided to expose some emulsion!

But I didn’t want to just shoot 35mm roll film. And having recently sold my 4×5 monorail didn’t have that as an option (though the cash from selling it did help us make the down payment to afford the house we bought and love so dearly so it was still a good call…I do have a 4×5 field view still…but it needs a new shutter.) I have a 120 Holga but it’s got a polaroid back on it and I don’t know where the original film back is right now. Plus it’s a Holga…super cheap plastic lens, no reliable way to focus, and lots of light leaks.

Amy and I also have a decent collection of older cameras a few of which will take 120 roll film…but I opted instead to dust off another “toy” camera that I’ve always had a lot of fun with. The Lubitel 166, a slight step up from the Holga. Like the Holga it’s still made of plastic, and has some light leaks. Unlike the Holga it has a real glass lens, a real shutter and aperture and can actually take some halfway decent photos. It is kind of tough to focus accurately though and with no light meter getting a good exposure takes a good bit of experience. But the effect can still be quite nice for the right subject matter.

Plus I really like working in the 6cmx6cm square format and the viewfinder is a lot like a view camera with everything backwards which gets me thinking a bit more out of the box and looking at things differently. Being a TLR (twin lens reflex) you don’t see the exact image that the film sees like you do with a SLR (Single Lens Reflex) but you get a much more accurate representation than you would with a rangefinder camera like the Holga.

I only had one roll of 120 film left though…it was a roll of Ilford FP4+ (125iso/asa) which expired back in 1998 and has been stored quite poorly in the bottom of a box ever since. But what the heck. Let’s give it a go!

We trekked up to Mittrey lake and Laguna dam road to take some photos of an abandoned part of the Laguna dam – also known as the Swastika dam. This was the first dam built across the Colorado river back in 1905 by the Bureau of Reclamation – at the time knows as the ” U.S. Reclamation Service” who had adopted the swastika as their emblem (well before it came to have the negative connections many of us associate with it now.) Read the link for more details about this interesting old bridge and dam.

Here’s some shots I took back in 2005 where you can see some of the swastikas….I didn’t take any yesterday that show them:

Canal Turnouts on AZ side at Laguna Dam

"Swastika Bridge" at Laguna Dam

Anyway, I’m getting off track! The point is we went up there and snapped some shots…we tried to make it up to the Imperial dam…but by the time we got there the sun had dipped behind the mountains and the light was fading and flat. And I only had 1 exposure left – oddly enough I managed to overexpose it trying to compensate for the fading light.

Once we got home, Amy mixed up the ID-11 developer and some film strength fixer while I cooked dinner. After we ate I dug in on processing some film and the results were not too shabby at all considering the quality of film and camera I had on hand.

Here’s the proof sheets I whipped up:

The lower right was my first exposure….not having used the Lubitel in a couple of years I got the self timer and shutter cocking mechanism mixed up and wound up doing a several second exposure by mistake…oops. The shot above that shows what can happen when you’re used to a SLR but switch to a TLR – I thought I had positioned the camera to shoot through the fence. Though I kind of like the effect I ended up with having the fence positioned like that. The other two exposures – the top one was exposed according to the reading I got with my light meter. The lower one I tweaked the exposure a bit to get the effect I was looking for – apparently I still remember a thing or two as it seems to have come out just like I planned. If you view the big version you may be able to see the little lizard sitting on the post who blended in to the point I almost didn’t notice him.

Oh and on all of these – please excuse the dust – my scanner sucks and is pretty dusty right now. I tried cleaning it off but it’s still bad. And the glossy paper tends to cause reflections on this scanner as well. Trust me when I say the original prints look much better.

The second contact sheet from this roll:

Amy makes a cameo appearance in the shot in the upper left, but she’s way down at the end of that wall and very small.  The two in the lower left were once the light was fading, the “no parking” sign was up at Imperial dam. I ended up picking the image on the lower right to try doing a print of – the frame at the top of the right column was a better exposure…but I liked the framing of the lower one better and wanted to print a full frame.

My first test print was a little flat – the scan distorts the tones somewhat, and makes it look a bit closer to what I was going for in the shadows…but the highlights look a lot flatter in the scan than they do in real life:

Since I liked the highlights on that first print I stuck with the same exposure but went from a 2 contrast up to a 3.5 contrast to bring in the shadows…but that was going too far:

3rd try I stepped back to about a 2.75 (I use a color enlarger so I can dial in variable contrast filtration more without having to do the 1/2 value steps you get with tradional multi-grade filters.) But I also stepped up the exposure just a hair since the highlights were looking a little weak on the previous two (or so I thought…once they fully dried I realized I was closer than I thought.)

Again – the scanner is throwing off the tones on these a bit but you should be able to see how the contrast is inbetween the last two.

No good final prints out of this session…but that’s mainly due to me getting frustrated working without a safelight and loosing my patience in the complete dark. Once I get a safelight setup (and a better exhaust fan) I’ll probably switch to the other neg of this scene and do a good final print that I’ll give to the local shop as thanks for being there and inspiring me to get back into the darkroom.

The first order of buisness was decided where to do it.  We needed water and a room that could easily be made dark.  Well, our laundry room almost fits the bill.  It has water, but no counter space, and there was a BIG gap under the one door.  But no windows.

The room on the other side of the laundry room, our 3rd bedroom and future master suite, only has one window.  It also has its own A/C unit which works better than the main house unit, and two desks.  One of which was covered with boxes.

So we decided to use both rooms.  The laundry room would be the “wet side” of the darkroom while the bedroom would be the “Dry Side”.  It’s not idea.  There’s dryer lint to contend with in the laundry room, and the bedroom is where the dog door is so there’s lots of fur in there.  It’s also carpeted and kind of big to try and keep dust free for an idea darkroom.  But for occasional use it will be just fine.  With that decided the big question was…how to make the rooms dark!

So a quick trip to Lowes to look for inspiration.  I figure eventually I’ll make a custom blackout block for the window out of some styrofoam, weather stripping and aluminum foil.  But for now the aluminum foil and a roll of foil tape did the job quite nicely.  The dog door we just put it’s blocker panel in and toss a towel over it to take care of the small final leaks.

The gap under the laundry room door took a bit more work.  But with a piece of 1/2″ poplar and a piece of 1/4″ poplar I was able to extend the door.  It still needs some finish sanding and paint but works great!  A bit of weather stripping and a small fox to the striker plate (that door never latched before) and the door is almost completely light proof:

Upgraded to fill the gap!

We cleared the boxes off the other table, which resulted in the final empty bookshelf back there finally being filled with books.  And then setup my old Durst:

My old Durst all setup.

It’s a little low for my tastes…but Amy likes being able to sit on the bed while working and I can live working from my knees as often as I print anymore.  You’ll also notice the motel style A/C unit in the background, with some more foil tape we used to seal up the light leaks around it.

I also re-installed the shelf that was in the laundry room.  We had to take it out to make room for the laundry tub.  But I cut it down to fit the remaining space (slightly overlapping the tub so things can drain off of it into the tub) and remounted it.  I wouldn’t lean on it or put anything heavy on it…but it can support a few trays or my Jobo processor just fine:

All set up and working!

Space is tight…and the trays aren’t setup optimally.  That’s developer in front, Stop in the corner, fix on the right and improvised wash in the tub.  I also only had 2 real trays on me…but for $7 walmart had a Sterlite 3 drawer organizer and the drawers make very handy trays!  The 2l bottles were also the cheapest option we found for holding the chemicals – $.67 each though, it was cheaper to dump out the soda than to buy real bottles and they work just fine for us.

On the other side of the laundry room I hung a bit of kite string which we use as a drying line.  We both cranked out a quick print or two and it does indeed work.  But without a safelight it’s very difficult to work in there.  And we need a better processing timer.  But with a bit more organization, a few things shipped out from my old darkroom at my parents house and a bit more time….it will be quite nice.

Now if we can just get the dog to decide if she wants to be in or out while we print

One of the interesting aspects of digital photography for me is the way that suddenly the camera make a much bigger difference in the photo than it did previously. This is of course because the camera now also does the job of the film. With film cameras it was relatively simple to swap rolls of film to get increased speed ratings or different color balances and response curves giving wildly different results for the same “photo”. Yes, much of that can be mimicked through processing and at the hands of a skilled artist can be quite convincing. But there are still physical limits that could be changed or pushed with film that are fixed and solid with digital. This was even worse when all cameras created JPG’s or TIF’s so you were stuck with the artifacts of each cameras own software shortcomings.

Thankfully RAW files bring back a lot of the flexibility of film that was missing. And in many ways give even more flexibility since now you can choose your “film” after you shoot instead of before, not to mention being able to change your mind on the fly.

Which tasty Challa would you rather have:

Read on for the differences

The first shot is a JPG from my Minolta 7D with no modifications at all. This is the starting point if you’re not shooting RAW.

The second is a JPG made by Picassa doing a default RAW conversion on the same image. It’s quite a difference. The RAW image is much more neutral and they colors and contrast aren’t as exaggerated. You can get the same image as the camera delivered in the first sample by processing this – or something completely different. But it’s a much better starting place for any modifications.

The third is a JPG I made by doing a custom RAW conversion in Photoshop and saving. No manipulation, just a RAW import. Very similar to Picasas guess but a little more refined to give some more detail in the shadows and just a bit more punch to the colors. I usually would throw in a bit of sharpening here but I’m really just trying to make a point on tonality right now.

Overall the 2nd image is probably the most “natural” and closest to how the scene appeared. The third is closest to what I visualized when shooting. And the first is barely useful as a proof. That isn’t to say the 3rd is what I’d consider a finished “print” level image. I would still want to add a curves or levels layer, do some sharpening, and possibly a little dodging or burning. All things I used to do with any negative that wound up in my enlarger. Not that this particular image would ever make it to my enlarger…the plane of focus didn’t fall quite where I thought it was and even cropped this image isn’t quite what I was going for. It was a good example of the tonality changes I wanted to show though so I ran with it.

Even so the JPG’s are quicker and in some conditions they’re very nice images. Plus Picassas default export has it’s own flaws. It’s better than the firmware in most cameras … but it’s still not as good as a human. This is where many of the skills that most pros who shot film would trust their lab to deal with come into play. And there are still many pros who work the same way, passing their digital files off to a lab to be processed into final images. Software is getting better – but until we have AI there’s always going to be photos that can only be done justice with some help from an experienced photographer with lab experience – even though it’s now possible to get that experience without using any chemicals, paper, or film.

I still want to setup a chemical darkroom here at my new house and do some film and paper work. One of the reasons I wanted to move to Yuma was to do more shooting in the desert, and I’ve barely touched my cameras since moving here … despite moving to digital which is much more affordable with not having to pay for film and chemicals! Digital is a great way to play with things and test ideas … but for some of the images in my head executing them in digital would just never give the final result I’m after. But taking lots of test images in digital and playing with them sure will help me focus in on the right combination of film to achieve what I’m after!

Oh and believe it or not – I actually started to post about the bread I’ve been baking. I’ll have to come back to that another night though. After seeing these images of the Challa I just had to unburden my thoughts a bit. They’re a bit ragged and raw up there but at least they’re out of my head now. Maybe later I’ll come back and try to clean them up a bit more for posterity, but it’s more likely I’d just post about it again instead and try to do better a second time

Other lenses are close at hand so I go back to my trusty old 50mm…same exposure…came out great. Took a closer look at the 28mm I had come to know and love. Pushed the iris lever fully open…and it stayed there. That’s not right, it should return back to it’s smallest opening (largest F stop.) Basically one I shot something at f2.8 the lens was staying at f2.8 until whatever was causing the iris to stick gave out. So my exposures were right – the camera just wasn’t giving me the exposure it thought it was.

I’ve had this happen before. On my original Minolta 7000 that my mom gave me. Just before I was due to head off to a week long Photojournalism workshop at Ball State. I had been saving up for the new 7xi but it wasn’t released yet. I ended up having to buy a 7000i because I needed something for the workshop while the 7000 was being repaired. That problem was actually in the camera, the actuator for the aperture lever was burned out – so the camera thought it was setting the iris to the proper size…but nothing was actually happening. My parents ended up helping me get a 7xi when they did come out. But by then I had become a huge fan of my 7000i, and unless I needed the wireless flash or higher shutter speed of the xi it usually stayed in my bag. The 7000i was a small light camera and a joy to hold and work with. The xi felt like a brick and had no form to it. Not nearly as pleasurable to hold and operate.

Finding the problem on the 7000 was much more difficult. For one thing I was less experienced so my initial suspicion was that I was making a mistake. There were also far more variables with me doing the development and printing as well. So it was a couple of weeks of lousy exposures before I finally decided to test the camera. Which itself took a couple rolls of film and extreme care in development to rule out any other possible problems. Even then it was had to tell what the problem was because it was intermittent and inconsistent – when it did work it didn’t do what it was supposed do and didn’t make the same error consistently either. But a roll of film all shot with the same settings on the camera but all different on the proof sheet was proof enough that something was very wrong.

This time thankfully the problem is just a lens that was recently given to me. So I’m not really out much more than a few photos. And the lens is still useful for times when I know I’ll only be shooting at f2.8 – as long as I treat it as a fixed aperture lens it will still be useful.

I left out a kind of interesting little bit of the story last time. You see, I only budgeted for the inside of the darkroom and planned on leaving the studs exposed outside. I bought spray foam to fill in the cracks and make sure the room was light tight even with only one layer of drywall. My dad was not very happy about that, but did agree to buy the drywall for the outside as long as I would put it up. We also went ahead and added some outside outlets and in the one upper corner – speaker connectors for the radio I planned on putting in the darkroom.

I did work a few other special features into it as well at that point. First I added some ventilation into the walls. I built baffles out of cut down 2×4’s between the studs so there was no path for light to follow. The baffle on one side was static, while on the other side I installed a large muffin fan to circulate air. I also wired in a doorbell with buttons both right outside my door and up in the kitchen so my parents could contact me without having to come downstairs. The lights were wired on two switches – dark lights at the normal height and white lights higher on the wall so they wouldn’t be hit accidentally.

At first my equipment was pretty sparse:

The enlarger I bought new, it was a real challenge to do quality work on it. I bought a decent lens (spent more on that than I did on the enlarger) but the Besler Cadet was cheaply built and not very stable. The table it sits on I built myself using the top of an old computer desk we had – but making my own legs to raise it to an easier work height when I was standing (or sitting on the bar stool from a relatives old bar.)

Wet side features include the large white cabinets from my great grandmother, I built a paper safe into the largest drawer. As well as a kitchen cabinet that came with the house, I just had to add the top to it. The laundry tub I also plumbed in though it had originally been in use elsewhere in the basement – I just claimed it and gave it a better home. On top of the stereo is a clock I got at a hamfest dirt cheap and ended up housing in an old piece of tupperware. It was just the right wavelength and would not fog paper so it worked great for me.

But the trays on the counter were only a temporary solution while I built my sink. The sink was made out of 3×4″ OSB then sealed with multiple coats of outdoor paint and clear acrylic. Eventually it started to rot out around the drain…but it did last a long time before that happened:

I also put some pegboard up and acquired more and more darkroom equipment. As well as some other little toys that I kept around as moral boosters I didn’t save up enough to add a ceiling for some time…but when I did it made a big difference. Much less dust and the white surface made the safe lights more effective. I know painting a darkroom black is usually done to prevent stray reflections…but I always preferred keeping the walls and ceiling light so the little light there was would be more useful. And once I got into doing color work which necessitated working without any lights….I just didn’t see much point to taking everything out so I could paint.

The Vivitar enlarger I got at a used equipment shop in Columbus cheap after trading in my grandfathers antique enlarger that I never used. (it was a Kodak and I don’t have any photos of it that I know of.) It was a step up from the Cadet…but just barely. You can also see my helper handle hanging off the side of the table. I built a moveable shelf off the side of the table so I could do very big enlargements (the short height of the Cadet was one of it’s big limiting factors!) but couldn’t reach the focus knob…the helper was my solution to that problem!

Over in the other direction you can see one of the air vents and the radio. I removed all of the lights in the radio, then put a small red safe light bulb into the Schlitz sign hanging on the pegboard which I plugged into a switched outlet on the back of the stereo (meant for a tape deck or turntable.) I kept the top of the Schlitz sign unscrewed so it was easy to reach in and unscrew the blub when I did color work. The St. Pauli Girl banner still hangs in my kitchen to this day, though I really can’t stand their beer!

I collected a few more cheap enlargers at garage sales and such and ended up eventually traded them in along with some cash for a Durst color enlarger. It was 35mm only but I really wanted that color head so I could get rid of my VC filters and eventually learn color. Sure enough eventually I ended up buying a Jobo tube processor and teaching myself color printing. While I was in college my mom ended up burning out the power supply on my Durst – so she bought me a new one as a replacement. I think she eventually got the old power supply fixed and kept the original enlarger…but by that point I was using the darkroom so little that it’s hard for me to remember.

The Durst and Jobo are still with me, patiently awaiting the day I have the time and space to setup a darkroom again. While I shoot almost exclusively digital now I do miss the days of the darkroom and would very much like to do some B&W film and paper work again at some point. The new house has a bathroom with no windows as well as a laundry room with no windows…so the chances of me doing something are pretty good.

Oh yeah, that reminds me. Photos of the new living room paint are coming…it’s just real hard to get a shot that shows the colors well. I need to remember to take it before the sun gets too high in the sky to get under our awnings and into the living room!

Well, since it was my dad mentioning my old darkroom that spurred me into finally creating a blog I suppose it would be a decent place to start from. I built my darkroom in … I believe it was the summer of 1988.

Correction. It must have been 1990 as it appears that was the year that Danny Sullivan won the Cleveland Grand Prix. The film I shot there (while my dad was rushed to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy) was the first I developed after getting my enlarger. One of the first shots I printed was of Danny Sullivan just before the race when I happened to get a few frames of him. I’ll have to try and dig those up and scan them sometime. The one shot I liked best from that weekend has been on my website for about as long as I’ve had a website and was of Arie Luyendyke, who got 5th in the CART race but went on to take 1st at the Indy 500 that year.

My dad helped a lot more than he lets on in helping me with the darkroom. He may not have been able to physically help with erecting the walls, sweating the plumbing fittings, wiring the room or even the drywall at the time I built it. But he had helped me plan the project and more importantly had involved me in enough projects before that I already had first hand experience with most of the skills I needed. The one part of the job the could have helped with but didn’t was the original cleanup. That was the price I had to pay for building in his basement – it was up to me to make room and keep the darkroom area cleaner that it was before I started.

These first shots were after I had already cleaned out most of the corner to try and help convince my dad that I was serious.

Once I had the OK and had bought the first load of lumber I cleaned the corner out completely and started to build:

Going to look into better ways of linking my photos (better as in easier for me when posting!) then come back and post the inside shots along with some of it a little later after being in steady use for awhile.