Darkroom Setups and reading materials.
Temporary Amateur Darkroom
For developing black-and-white films and making prints, you can get started with only a minimum of equipment plus an easily darkened kitchen, bathroom, or any other room that has an electrical outlet. For night work, you can use practically any room as a darkroom; however, you should pull the shades or cover the windows with some dark material to exclude light from streetlamps, car headlights, or nearby lighted windows. A sink and a supply of water are desirable but do not have to be in the same room. The kitchen is probably the most convenient place to set up a temporary darkroom, since it is supplied with running water and electrical outlets, and the sink and counters provide adequate working space.
When space is not available for setting up a permanent darkroom and you must work in a room regularly used for other purposes, darkroom convenience sometimes has to be sacrificed. However, always try to arrange your equipment to allow a smooth, convenient flow of work from your enlarger through the developer and stop bath to fixing and washing. You should have a large tray filled with water for washing your prints. The KODAK Automatic Tray Siphon is a handy gadget for converting an ordinary tray into an efficient print washer. You should also have a container of water to rinse the solutions from your hands. This helps prevent contamination of your developer with other solutions. Use a clean towel to dry your hands thoroughly before handling film, negatives, and photographic paper. Group your equipment so that you can perform all operations with a minimum of steps, but allow sufficient working space. One suggested arrangement for a kitchen darkroom is shown in the figure below.
Temporary Kitchen Darkroom
It is helpful to have a table or other separate work area on which you can perform all the dry operations, such as printing and loading film tanks. This prevents water and solutions from splashing on equipment and dry materials. Set up all wet processing operations in or near the sink.
If there is no lamp socket over your processing area, use an extension cord to suspend the safelight over the processing trays. Keep the safelight at least 4 feet (1.2 m) from your trays. A good safelight to use is the KODAK 2-Way Safelamp, available from photo dealers. This V-shaped safelight directs the light in two directions at once. You can screw it into the lamp socket of an extension cord or into a ceiling socket.
The best way to develop your film, especially in a temporary darkroom, is to use a film-developing tank. Since these tanks are lighttight, any light that might leak into your darkroom would affect the film only during the time you are loading it into your tank. This minimizes the danger of light fogging your film, a frequent source of trouble. Check for stray light in your darkroom by following the procedure described earlier under “Darkroom Planning.” After you have placed the cover on your film tank, you can turn on the white lights during development and the remainder of the processing steps.
A changing bag — a large bag made of several thicknesses of opaque material — will allow you to load your exposed film into the developing tank with the room lights on. One side of the changing bag has a lightproof opening to insert your film and developing tank. The other side has lighttight sleeves for reaching inside. With a temporary darkroom, it is important to consider ways of reducing the time and energy required to prepare the room for use and to clean it afterward. For instance, keeping all of your darkroom equipment in one or two boxes reduces both the time spent collecting equipment and the chance of misplacing something.
While the kitchen usually makes the best temporary darkroom, other rooms will serve, too. One possibility is a bathroom. However, although it has running water and electricity, there is usually not enough work surface to support trays and apparatus. You can make a work surface by placing a piece of plywood across the bathtub, but processing trays will be uncomfortably low. Sometimes it is possible to set up a card table to hold your trays and printing equipment. Protect the tabletop from spilled solution by covering it with a piece of plastic such as a plastic tablecloth.
You can also use a small closet for a temporary darkroom. A closet is usually easy to make dark, even in the daytime. However, this is its only advantage, since it will have no running water and possibly no electrical outlets. Moreover, the closet probably will be filled with its normal contents. If your closet has shelves, perhaps one of them is located at a convenient height. If not, you may be able to install a removable shelf or use a small table. In any case, place waterproof material under the trays to catch any spilled solutions.