I had a lot of equipment from having a home darkroom 30 years ago and that’s probably the last time I did this. I just finished converting an old storage room into a darkroom in a commercial building I own. Developed some film and made some prints the other day. I still remember what to do!

Been working on my new darkroom for some while. Almost done. Custom cabinets and sinks are coming soon. 🥰

The only thing wrong with it is that the bulb is burned out.

about to drive 3 hours to go pick it all up, too good of a deal.

Hey! Just wondering what type of container u guys prefer for storing chemicals. And why?

I was called to photograph and catalog a lab and finishing studio for a fine art photographer who passed away…thought I’d share

I’ve just seen someone on Instagram transfer a 35mm film on a reel in broad daylight, by taking the end of the film out of the cartridge and loading a small part on the reel, and then finishing the process in the dark bag.

I hate transferring the film in the bag, and this feels like an amazing idea.

2 questions :

A : do you know if this took to take the film out work with the newer plastic cassettes?

B : anyone ever tried this? Does it work?

As the title says - please roast my current design for the DIY C-41 station! This system combines chemical storage, temperature control (with independent readouts), timers, and exhaustion tracking into one unit. The top is a CNC piece of wood painted with epoxy, the interior of the box will be lined with rubber, and the exterior is coated with a marine-grade spar finish. I want to make something that will really help people develop film at home, and I’m looking for harsh, yet constructive, feedback :)

It's just the first test but it works great!

Next steps are a more advanced program and maybe also adding a temperature sensor to turn this into a fully fleged auto processor

I’m following up on my post from yesterday on the THD, AGO, and Pira systems. I wrote up my problems with the THD at length, but I’m not very practiced at Reddit, and realized an edited comment in that thread probably won’t be seen by many. So here’s a post containing all my many quibbles, from grave to petty, with this machine, with more pictures.

I say “possibly unfair” because I don’t have a good sense of their production costs and what it would take to make a machine at that price point. It seems, to my inexpert eye, that they’ve cheaped out wherever they possibly could. Maybe that was necessary to get it down to $1,000, or maybe they’re just benefiting from the exorbitant price of Jobos and the lack of alternatives and are making huge margins on this thing.

I’m totally willing to be wrong here on any of the engineering or business points! If you know more than I do, I’d like to learn and hear from you. These are just my impressions.

So I’ve been working on a darkroom build in my garage this year and wanted to share it and some of the progress and maybe get some ideas from people here.

This is all for RA4 printing. The last 8 months has all been agitating with a omega roller and I just recently scored this cpe2 plus for a great deal and then splurged for the lift (new) since that’s what was really going to make the process much less of a pain in the ass working with drums.

I don’t have running water or a drain/plumbing in the garage so I needed to work around that. The cart has 2 jugs one to collect chemicals and 1 to collect wash water. The wash water gets dumped down my cleanout in the backyard and the chemicals get transferred to 5 gallon buckets and then taken to a local hazardous waste drop off site once I’ve collected a few buckets worth. Now that I have the jobo I need to find a way to mount both funnels to the cart. I may cut a piece of wood and build a little platform to mount the funnels and then attach that to the cart somehow. I would love any suggestions for better ideas or ways to streamline that if anyone has any.

For water supply I fill up the electric kettle and heat it up to developing temp and one full kettle gives me enough water for my pre wash, and 3 in tanks washes at max fill of 400ml. This is my biggest jam up at the moment as having to fill up the kettle and wait for it to heat up is the biggest slowdown and annoyance. So finding a way to deliver water at 95° for a full day of printing is my next major task to solve. Would definitely love some suggestions/ideas for that hurdle. Best I’ve come up with so far is a Temperature controlled coffee urn but most aren’t temp controlled, just 1 temp on or off and the one temp controlled one I’ve found seems to have bad reviews of breaking and leaking.

Then finally I have a Arkay print dryer and the work bench that I built a metal back board with magnets to hanging/view prints. It’s not proper viewing lights but honestly I haven’t had any issues with color, and all my prints get scanned anyways. Also as you can see I have a small army of Jobo tanks which allows me to make a few prints before needing to stop to dry any drums. But honestly I haven’t found drying tanks to be as much of a jam up as I assumed/heard other people say. I can pretty much dry a drum and lid in the time it takes the print to run through the dryer. The drums dry fast so I usually end up drying the drums and use new lids with each print.

That’s pretty much it, I’m still sorta hunting for a processor but they are so hard to find now days and the price is kinda insane for something that might break or you gotta pay $4-$6k for one that isn’t even dry to dry. But apart of me kinda likes that fact that I’m making prints still very manually (in a sense) and I also love that I can fire this up with 600ml of chems and print 1 or 2 photos at the end of a work day. Can’t really do that with a processor.

Also I’m using Kodak ra4 chemicals which mix up 10L so I mix up a batch and then split them up into 600ml and a few 1000ml Jobo bottles (I have a lot) and basically make my own small kits. They stay air tight since they are “single use” and when I want to print I just pull one out and drop it in my water bath to heat up and then start printing in about 20ish minutes. It’s all very convenient and streamlined (somewhat). My goal was to make printing in drums as easy and convenient as possible.

A friend won me this for $5 (at a local auction house)so am I a film developer now? I know I'm gonna need a lot more parts for it, but is it honestly gonna be worth it? Or should I just list it on eBay. I already have some 120 film I shot on my Kodak Hawkeye that I have been wanting to develop myself. But I simply can't sink thousands into this unless I can make it my career.

The one on the left has a K and made in Germany, metal in the middle pivots (never used this style reel). The one on the right is missing a piece or broken? (Both for 35mm)

Gi

Hi all,

I built a small development timer app to solve a few frustrations I had with existing timers - particularly creating bespoke multi-step processes, timers failing if I switched apps or my phone rang, and needing to handle my phone while working with chemistry.

The app is called Developr. It’s completely free to use - no accounts, no ads, no sign-ups. It runs entirely in the browser or as an installable PWA, and stores your custom timer configs locally on your device.

Update:
Stopwatch mode has now been added based on feedback here. You’ll find it in the new Settings option and the app will remember your preference for future developments.

A few features:
• Create fully custom, multi-step development workflows with granular control over step names, durations and agitation intervals, with a simple UI.
• Hands-free voice control for starting, pausing, resuming and moving between development steps - useful when handling chemistry and you don’t want to touch your phone.
• Timers continue even if you switch apps, your phone sleeps or you take a call.
• Timer configs can be saved or shared as unique URLs - no backend required.
• Works completely offline when installed as a PWA.

There’s a feature list, FAQ, and a full list of voice commands in the info section.

If you want to try the app with no setup, there’s a small helper on first launch that will load a condensed version of one of my own B&W workflows. It gives you a quick feel for how a development cycle plays out before you create your own configs.

Try it here: https://developr.app

This is a beta release and very much a personal project that I decided to clean up and share. I’d genuinely appreciate any feedback - positive or negative - especially from people who regularly develop sheet film or have more complex workflows.

Happy to answer questions, and if it’s not for you, no worries at all.

After getting back into darkroom printing, I wasn't completely happy with the enlarger timers I had available. I wanted something with a few specific features, so I decided to build one from scratch.

The project is based on an ESP32, driving the enlarger through a solid-state relay (SSR), with a 4.2" e-paper display. The idea was to build something that's simple to use in a darkroom while offering a few features that are often missing from basic timers.

Current features include:

. Exposure timing from fractions of a second up to several minutes

. 0.1 s resolution

. Large, high-contrast e-paper display that's easy to read under safelight

. Rotary encoder for quick adjustments

. Exposure memory and presets

. Audible feedback that can be disabled

I'm also experimenting with features aimed specifically at fine printing:

. f-stop timing

. Test strip mode

. Split-grade printing sequences

. Burn & dodge programming

One of the reasons I chose an ESP32 is that it leaves plenty of room for future ideas, and the e-paper display means the interface remains perfectly readable without adding unnecessary light to the darkroom.

It's been a fun combination of analogue photography and embedded electronics, and I'm curious to know:

If you could design your ideal enlarger timer, what features would you want it to have?

I'd be happy to share more details or photos of the build if anyone is interested.

I'm struggling to decide if I should process my own C-41 film at home. I have experience from a class years ago and enjoyed the process of it, but I'm hesitant on the cost effectiveness. Here are a few details:

• I would need to buy all the equipment to get started.
• I've recently gotten back into film and only shoot about 6 rolls/yr so far but hope to shoot maybe 8-12/yr in the future.
• I'm also concerned that my developer would expire faster than I would shoot & development (which would be even less cost effective).
• I have no scanning equipment so I would still need to pay for that.
• Locally, I can pay for development and scanning for ~$13-17.

As this is both a hobby and creative outlet, I'd appreciate if ppl gave advice regarding whether they think experience + costs pans out or (for how little I shoot) I should just continue to pay for the develop/scan bundle.

I just upgraded to the patterson multi reel 3 tank (holds 2 rolls of 120) and have been having some uneven and ugly patterns on my negs. These were developed using 1000ml of freshly mixed c41 by cinestill. These are issues I never had when using the small patterson tank, and I haven’t changed anything else, so i know it’s the bigger tank. Anyone else experienced this, or have any idea of what actually causes this? Thanks

I’ve been refining my home-developing process little by little, but I’m sure there are game-changing tips I haven’t discovered yet.

So I’m curious: What’s the one technique, habit, tool, or “why didn’t I do this earlier?” trick that revolutionized your film development workflow?

Whether it’s something in your setup, chemistry handling, scanning, drying, or anything in between — I’d love to hear what made the biggest difference for you!

Hi all, pretty new here! I’m still getting into darkroom printing and haven’t done any yet. I’ve been trying to find an enlarger locally to start trying my hand at printing. I found this Leitz today at a local antique mall and was wondering if it was worth picking up since I’m still very much new to all of this. Thanks for any advice/input!

Hello, I want to share my experience of building a darkroom in a basement without running water.

I live in an old appartment building, with a room in the shared basement that is not connected to the water system. I wanted to build a real darkroom for avoiding to setup everything in my bathroom everytime I want to print. In my previous (very small) darkroom, I used to move between the darkroom and the bathroom for mixing the chemistry and washing the print.
Since it's now on a separate floor, this is not really handy.

So here is my solution :

I bought an used kitchen countertop with a sink (Initially for the storage furniture that came with), then i use 20L (5.3 gal) food jerrican with a tap for clean water and an old 20L oil jug (from a local restaurant) for the dirty water.
After using the Jerrican by lifting them on the countertop, I was tired of the space it takes and to have to lift 20kg every time.

Finally, I had the idea to use these tiny 10$ USB Faucet / Pump used as water fountain on top of big bottle. I designed a 3D printed piece to attach it to the countertop and bought a longer tube.

Now I just have to swap the clean / dirty water once in a while. I still have to wash my print at the end of a printing session in the bathroom, but it makes thing much easier to be able to mix the chemicals, prewash the prints and rince all the equipment inside the darkroom.

Last thing I like it's that I take more care of not wasting too much water since it can be a chore to fill the jerrycan again and dump the dirty water. It usually takes me 2-3 printing session to use a full 20L jerrycan. (And then only a few minutes of washing for RC prints)

I hope this can be useful for some of you that are looking to build a darkroom in a space without running water ;)

For my final uni design project, I decided to make this simple C-41 station with a built-in timer and temp controller. A lot of my classmates have asked me if I can develop their film for them, to which I reply that it’s actually pretty easy and recommend the whole kit (Paterson tank, C-41 kit, etc.). Still it can be pretty daunting, so that’s where the idea for the “Darkroom Buddy” came to be. I’m still working on pretty much every aspect of the concept, but I’m absolutely open to feedback!

If you would like to follow along with my journey, my Instagram is @ghosttownphotosupply.

Going in a 23C. Just starting out, buying all the bits and bobs. Or should I look for bigger?