Setting up a small darkroom

Justin Ouellette from Chromogenic.net has very cool directions for setting up a minimal darkroom (negatives only) in your bathroom. I did this for a while in my old apartment, and it was a great way to save on black and white developing, as well as being a good segue into a full darkroom. I would add a couple of things to his article though.

First, a changing bag means that an absolutely dark room isn’t as important. The room should be dark, but I’ve loaded negatives in a normal room at night and not had problems when using a changing bag. They’re a bit of a hassle, but if your bathroom has a window, this is a good alternative.

Next, I like liquid concentrate developer since it lasts longer between uses. The problem with most dry chemicals is that you have to use them pretty soon after mixing (a month or two). Liquid concentrate developers tend to be more stable and they can sit for 6-18 months between uses. Right now I use, Edwal FG7 Developer, but it can be hard to measure for small amounts of use.

I would also argue that there is one meaningful difference between steel and plastic reels. If you need to do two or more batches in a row, steel reels are much easier to load while wet. I used plastic for years, and until I was told this, I never understood why I’d sometimes have problems with the plastic reels. Sure enough, when my (Paterson) plastic reels were wet, they were really hard to load. I switched to steel (also my steel tanks leak less, but thats not so important), and I can reliably load them wet or dry.