Lets See Your Darkroom

[Michael Graves]

After three years of construction, evolution and modification, this is what I ended up with. I think I'm tired of doinking with it and am going to start making all the prints my children will haul off to the landfill when I die. The dry side has a Beseler 45V-XL 8x10 conversion with the Heiland split grade head and controller, an LPL 4550VCC and a Beseler 45M with a Zone VI variable contrast head. The reason for so many enlargers isn't that I multi-task a lot. It's because when my kids visit, they usually come together and they ALWAYS want a day or two in the darkroom. They caught the bug from me. The fourth enlarger on the left is a 5x7 Beseler I'm retiring because I now have the 8x10 conversion. The sooner I find a home for her, the sooner I get that space back.

The wet side is equipped with a Delta 8-foot sink which is fed through a Hass 375 temperature control unit. In the back is a California Stainless film drying cabinet that I rescued from going to the dump back when I still lived in Vermont. I restored it and added sliding film hangers and installed an internal LED light so I can see what I'm doing in there. Overall, it's a nice spacious and comfortable room in which to work. In the winter, I need to run a space heater, because it gets down to about 58 degrees in there, but in the summer, it rarely gets over 70 degrees, no matter how hot it is outside. I have a dehumidifier set on a timer to run an hour every day, just because.

[Rick A]

Looking good. My only recommendation is get a ceiling. Speaking from experience, every time someone walks on the floor above your work dust will be dislodged and drive you crazy.

[Michael Graves]

Looking good. My only recommendation is get a ceiling. Speaking from experience, every time someone walks on the floor above your work dust will be dislodged and drive you crazy.

Definitely on my to-do list. Plan on waiting for my brother to make his late-spring/early-summer stay in Missouri. I'm probably just going to use some foam core board. Right now, there is a filter deionizer thingy in there that helps quite a bit.

[phdgent]

It's on top of my studio and about 20 m2 large,.
When I get to work in it, it is blinded with the panels you see in the back corner.

[Ironage]

Wonderful phdgent! Lots of space and great equipment. I just finished my new darkroom with a fresh coat of HP5 green paint.

[phdgent]

Wonderful phdgent! Lots of space and great equipment. I just finished my new darkroom with a fresh coat of HP5 green paint.

Your's is nice too!
Very neat and tidy, only, I don't understand the green paint, why?
I know, it's the Ilford's Hp5+ film box's green, right, but when enlightened with the safelight's lithographic red (=Rubylith) you will get a rather 'strange' kind of yellow...

[Ironage]

Your's is nice too!
Very neat and tidy, only, I don't understand the green paint, why?
I know, it's the Ilford's Hp5+ film box's green, right, but when enlightened with the safelight's lithographic red (=Rubylith) you will get a rather 'strange' kind of yellow...

I also work in the space with the lights on and love the color. My daughter says I like toddler colors.it will be interesting to see how it looks under different safelights..

[Pieter]

I see all these darkrooms with multiple enlargers. Is that really necessary or is it GAS? I just have one set up (although I have 2 stored away that I acquired along the way). Space is at a premium in my back-of-the-garage darkroom.

[Ironage]

I try to keep it simple and only have one, but I don’t know of any enlarger that can do it all.

[phdgent]

I see all these darkrooms with multiple enlargers. Is that really necessary or is it GAS? I just have one set up (although I have 2 stored away that I acquired along the way). Space is at a premium in my back-of-the-garage darkroom.

Well, actually I hardly use the Chromega, only when I can't get control over the negatives contrast, which happens rarely.
But, that enlarger was the first one I bought used over 40 years ago (when I got into 4"x5"), and was the basis of my actual supposed printing skills, if one can call it 'skills', that's why I can't let it go, it's just nostalgic...
BTW, it's a beautiful machine and it is called 'the Mickey Mouse' enlarger due to the shape of the head.

The Omega D3 is my main enlarger, which I do like a lot.

As I changed the lenses, the autofocus track wouldn't work properly anymore, so I had to modify the focussing system, which is fully manual now, a nice DIY job.

The DURST G139, was a gift from a printing house which stopped activities and was about to dump that 'monster', and I could use it for printing the negatives from my Linhof Technorama 617. They ware happy to get rid of it and I was happy to finally get a 13x18 enlarger (for free)!