The Darkness WIthin

Today I am catching up with all yesterday’s edits… and all Friday’s edits too.

But I have also completed sourcing the rest of the parts for the new darkroom… Part One. Jen has ordered me an AGO film processor for my birthday - which is going to form the foundation for the whole build. It isn’t the whole story though, and in order to process film I needed a few more bits and bobs - the most dramatic of which being a film drying cabinet, because I plan to utilise the utility room and that has the laundy in it too which means dust/lint. I haven’t gone for anything too big and dramatic as I only expect to be working on 3 or 4 films at a time at most, probably more often than not it will be one or two. Being able to process the negatives at home will really free up my WASPs time for the prints for now.

Stage 2 is to add printing at home, using the AGO to process the paper - the big stumbling block I have had is where to put all the trays, particularly if I want to go beyond 8×10 - and even that would be very, very tight! Using a tank system for the paper should mean a much smaller footprint so the only thing I need to house will be the enlarger! This will not be as big as I would like, but enough for my general workload… for the big prints I can still use the community darkroom in WASPs of course where there are some very lovely, very large… and very expensive… enlargers and massive developing trays too! I was offered the loan of a Durst yesterday so I may take up that kind offer for the moment to get started - but am looking at a Keiser 9500 colour enlarger for my longer term set up I think.

27th September 2026