July in the Darkroom

Most of my recent work has been made using mini-lab developed colour negative film, or paper negatives, so the backlog of black-and-white awaiting hand developing has been quietly mounting. A little work has been made using this Kodak PX, which is lovely stuff, and there’s a similar amount of Fomapan in the fridge of which the one here is a test roll. No idea what’s on it, nor what’s on that roll of Rollei Retro. Eight rolls of 120 including some TMax and a 38 year-old roll of Verichrome Pan, 9 rolls of 35mm, plus 2 rolls of Elite Chrome for a try at stand development. Exciting.

If you don’t do very much film developing, it’s worth taking note that liquid developer goes off rather quickly. That squishy milk bottle of brown stuff came with a box of gifted tanks, spirals etc, and is emphatically off. The brown colour is the clue. Brown developer will clear your film, or actually it may not, but the stop and fix you add afterwards will definitely do the job.

A pack of ID11 lurking in the back of the blackout cupboard, mixed 1-3 makes 3 litres, which is great because the 5-spiral tank for the PX has a capacity of 1800ml. The jug in the background contains what was left over, and that’s a bit dark, but approx the correct colour of fresh, useable developer. Not enough chemistry then, to do the all the film in the upper picture, but more has been ordered from RK Photographic’s Ebay shop, including more ID11 and a bottle of Rodinal-alike. Souper!

The concertina bottle is one of two that contains the drained-off stop & fix, both of which are re-usable. The developer isn’t, unfortunately. That’s why it’s called one-shot.

The little stumpy dev tank on the right contains one roll of Elite Chrome and the rest of the black-and-white developer. Hmm.

The Massive Dev Chart on Digital Truth really has almost every single film and developer combination you might ever need, and most that you won’t. Nowadays I use the iPhone App, which has an inbuilt timer for each step of the process. It even does a little jingle every minute as a reminder to give the tank a jiggle, or a roll or whatever agitation method you use. Fantastic.

Mixical works out quantities of everything. My brain goes like porridge when in the darkroom. It’s a bit like being pregnant: simple maths simply evades. Perhaps it’s the soporific darkness, the rolling running water, Radio 4 burbling softly in the background. If you’re the same, give it a try.

The PX with the ID11 has a blue-ish tinge but it may well be slightly underdeveloped, since the sprocket edges are rather darker than they should be. Nice results though, so far.

There’s a landscape feature in lurking in here that probably needs some 5×4 treatment, maybe even tranny, and quick before it disappears. One of my photographic neighbours is Andy Martin, who is building a darkroom from scratch, and really from scratch. None of this namby-pamby spare room malarkey: a full building job, floor, walls, everything. I’m hoping he’ll go with me, one of these quiet evenings, golden hour, or dawn. We’ll see. definitely worth more visits.

Would you use a lab that returned your 120 neg rolled in an elastic band? Spectrum Imaging is closing its Newcastle Haymarket shop to concentrate on putting your mug on a mug, or your cat on a tee shirt. Four or five years ago, the owner went all crazy over the local Lomo community, producing cross processed livid green or red scans covered in dust and scratches, and that’s absolutely fine of course, if it’s what the customer wants. Great. But his outfit was incapable of supplying a dust-free, grumble-free service to anyone else. Newcastle Lomo has gone too, which is a shame because they were producing exciting work. Somehow I don’t think Spectrum will be missed by anyone.

Choices for colour film developing in the NE currently include RGB in Middlesbrough (who seem to have given up on 5×4), Colorworld in North Tyneside (whose website is currently kaput, but 2 years ago when I was in Newcastle a lot, were absolutely the best) and Digitalab on Stepney Bank in Newcastle, who’re definitely not as good since the frontline staff changeover, but now and again, when they remember, are rather spiffy on Twitter. Current 35mm colour neg developer of choice is Asda in Hartlepool.

Recommendations, particularly for 5×4 and transparency developing, would be great. Mail order outfit suggestions are very welcome if you use one, could certainly do with knowing about somebody to do the rest of the Elite Chrome and the Velvia in my fridge, since the demise of 7day Shop’s DLab7. Please do post your favourites in the comments.

In unrelated news, a Durham Brown Argus butterfly visited my little back yard early this morning. It has a very distinguished bright circle on its upper wing, and mine was a lot browner than the one in the picture on that website. Notoriously evasive, as you can see. It’ll be back: it can’t resist the lure of my luscious broad bean flowers.

A fantastic freecyling person has donated some shelving so there was much moving and reorganising today, and the darkroom has been dusted, mopped, cleaned and tidied. After drying overnight, the above film has been sleeved, ready for contact printing. So that’s next, the contact prints. I may even have some for this fantastic project. At last.

What happened with the Elite Chrome? It was left overnight: 22 hours from 1400 to 1200, then rinsed for about 20 mins in running cold water, then stand stopped and fixed for about an hour each, with the odd shake. Probably didn’t need all that stopping & fixing, but it seemed appropriate. It’s dense, probably too dense to shine the enlarger light through, but it’s not reversed anyway, so would have to be copied, or scanned, or something, to flip it. I’ll post a picture of how the neg looks should any of you like to see.

And finally, the mighty Andrew Sanderson is running his advanced darkroom course in Edinburgh on Monday and Tuesday 12th and 13th of this month, and he’s still got spaces at the super bargain price of £100 per day. Go if you can: I’d love to do it! Tweet or email him, but be quick, it’s next week.

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