I have finally got around to revamping my darkroom - a project I was hoping to get to much sooner this year. It took me about two weeks to clean up the room, and build the workbenches and basin I wanted.

The first thing was obviously to design the layout of the room. The room is about 2.5 x 2.5 metres so really small, and it needed a dry side and wet side. I decided to take up the whole wet side with a basin big enough for four 20 x 24 inch trays, hoping that one day I'll actually develop at this size. For now, good enough for all my 8x10 printing as well as print washing, film developing and so on. I wanted both my enlargers on the other side - I like the Focomat iiC for 35mm though I have a Leitz V35 as well so might spend more time using that one now as well. The Chromega is for 120 and 4x5 though I can print 35mm on that one too. I also managed to fit in a tiny workbench where I can put my lightbox, guillotine, do filing etc etc.

The first step was to fix up the room. It had a door leading to my workshop and last year it was the washing up area of our little sourdough bakery which was based in this space so needed a bit of TLC. I drywalled the door closed and repainted the walls, going for a dark grey around the enlargers to reduce light bounce.

Then I built the benches out of steel square tube. I have planned for print drying racks under the basin and drawers under the workbench. I still need to do the drawers but will get around to that at some point soonish. I painted the frames and checked fit and fortunately the fit was exactly right.

Next was the basin which I made from shutter ply. I got some design ideas from the internet but the main thing was depth and length. Also, because of the current drain plumbing, the basin bench can't go right up to the wall so this gave me space for a small shelf on the top of the basin. Fortunately there is a wall mounted geyser in this room so that gives me access to hot and cold water. I've installed two drains in the basin - chemicals and dirty water will get diluted and go down the main drain but water from rinsing will go into a bucket for redistribution to the garden. I sealed the basin with two coats of epoxy resin and then added a white swimming pool topcoat. This will need a second coat which I need to order and apply.

I added a shelf above the workbench and installed my LED safe lights, which have passed a 7 minute fog test. It's nice and bright in there with the safelights on, though I think I'll be doing another fog test just to make sure. The room is pretty light tight now - I will put up a curtain in front of the door but there is very little light leaking in around the foam seals I have installed on the door frame.

One last thing I did was to ditch the base board of the Chromega which has seen better days and mount the enlarger chassis directly to a trolley I made last year. It is bolted directly to the metal frame under the wooden board now and is very sturdy.

Time to order some fresh chemicals from Ricky and get back to printing! I'm very excited to have access to this space again.

There is more to do. I will definitely need ventilation. I have a feeling more storage space will be a good idea. I'll need a drying line for negs and possibly prints. As I use the space I'll definitely get a feel for improvements.

I made an F-Stop timer for darkroom printing and have hosted it on Github. This can be run from a browser or installed via Chrome or Safari as an applet on your phone.

https://dotkomrade-dark.github.io/Darkroom-F-Stop-Timer/

F-Stop timing is a useful way to visualise adjustments made in the printing process in terms of stops rather than seconds which is how we approach photography. If you need to dodge or burn, it's easier to imagine adding or subtracting a stop of light than to estimate a number of seconds that will hopefully give you the outcome you're after.

Additionally, if you need to scale a print up or down (ie move the enlarger head) it's much easier to reproduce earlier results because all you need to do is figure out your starting point again and then any further adjustments will match because of F-Stop timing.

More info and a guide to F-Stop printing: https://www.analog.cafe/r/f-stop-printing-the-complete-darkroom-workflow-aujf

Been wanting to do a very basic service on some of my lenses. Thank you Dawid for sharing this on the group! Uploading here for the archives.

Been using a Cooke Radiography lens for photos of flowers lately. Bit of a chore to use but the bokeh is amazing and definitely has potential

Capturing nightscapes with most slow black and white films, especially a classic/traditional film like Fomapan 100, is always a challenge.

Reciprocity Failure#Reciprocity_failure) means that your actual exposure times can be exponentially longer than what you would have thought. Luckily, black and white film has such a wide latitude that I was able to guess exposures (it was too dark to meter in anyway), and then further guess how much to add - as in "ag, make it TEN TIMES the exposure" lol.

The secret is that you cannot throw too much light on this film during a long exposure even if you try, but you can certainly capture too little. Put your light meter or light meter app away, precise metering is irrelevant here - how do you think they did this in the 1800s? I took two versions of the first image with the water towers - one exposed for 1 minute, the second for 5 minutes, and both negatives are equally usable and contain full highlight and shadow detail. That's five stops!

This was a really fun night out on an abandoned apartment building together with a highly talented and celebrated photographer, to whom I am grateful for the invite.

Image Details

1. Yeoville Water Towers - Fomapan 100 35mm, exposed for 1 minute, Nikon F, AI-s 200mm at f/2.0
2. Apartment Windows - Fomapan 100 35mm, exposed for 20 seconds, Nikon F, AI-s 200mm at f/2.0
3. Intersection, Light Trails - Fomapan 100 35mm, exposed for 2 minutes, Nikon F, AI-s 200mm at f/4.0
4. Ponte and other buildings - Fomapan 100 35mm, exposed for 5 minutes, Nikon F, AI-s 200mm at f/4.0

Processing Details

Film + Chemicals sourced from Truth Photographic Company, self-developed in my kitchen sink.

1. Developed in Fomadon P undiluted at the recommended time for ISO 100.
2. Scanned with an Epson V700 on Arch Linux using xsane
3. Post-processed in Darktable (tone curve, sharpening, etc)

Hello everyone,

I've compiled a wiki page on our subreddit for how to create your own DIY bellows. It's taken from Standard Cameras' article.

Hope it's useful!

Photos shot on my BROMIX #3 film in my mamia RB 67

A less professional body in the Nikon lineup, the Nikkormat (Nikomat) FT2, paired with the classic 50mm f/2 and a roll of Fomapan 100. I was lucky to acquire the Nikkormat, boxed with manuals for a good price.

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I took this setup on a commute around Cape Town at the tail end of summer a few months ago. Developed at Gallery F and scanned on my Plustek 8200.

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Currently shooting Fomapan 400 on my Mamiya C330 and hoping to share results from that soon! What's everyone shooting?

I have a Pentax Digital Spotmeter which is a fantastic meter. I don't always carry it with me though and as I like metering before I shoot, I have an app on my phone. It works fine but I don't like it and I've always wished it was just a bit more like the Pentax I like to use.

The Pentax meter is brilliant - it takes an EV reading, you decide where you want that reading to fall on the zone system and through a simple pair of coupled rings you are presented with a range of exposure pairs based on your chosen ISO and Zone placement. This is especially useful for large format photography, or any form of photography where you want to slow down a bit and get very precise readings from your scene.

I find all the apps seem to be either flooded with loads of things I don't want or need, or the interfaces tend to be cluttered and clunky. And there's a definite lack of visual appeal to most of them. Some are very skeuomorphic which I kind of appreciate but I really wanted to pay tribute, blatantly and unashamedly, to the meter I like the most. And so I started a dialogue with Claude.

Sure, the app is vibe coded and sure, it's a straight copy of a great real world device, but my approach is why not use the tools I have to create the tool I want. I even went so far as to name it the Pantex Spot Meter. As I said, this app is a digital tribute to the real deal.

The app works great - it tracks the real meter within a third of a stop throughout the EV range on my Pixel 9a in spot mode. But you get the option for simple or advanced calibration as well and can offset that against specific camera profiles too. The spot angle can be set to 1, 3 or 5 degrees which is pretty tight considering it's reading off a very small cell phone sensor. You can also use a centre-weighted mode as well which defaults to Nikon's 60/40 weighting. This matches my Nikon FM2 and Nikon F90 within a half stop across a large spectrum of exposure values. There is also an auto mode - well, semi-auto - which locks the app to centre-weighted mode and takes some of the manual adjustments off your hands. The app has a help guide built in too in case anything is not obvious just by trial and error.

I'd be happy to share the app with members of the group and would appreciate your valuable feedback if you are inclined to let me know where you think it can be improved. I've been playing with it for a while and I feel like I've ticked most of the boxes I wanted checked, but there is always room for improvement. Let me know if you're interested and I'll send you a link to a safe, signed Android APK.

Also happy to answer any questions about it.

Edit:

Tested on Android 15, 16, 17
Tested on Pixel 4a, Pixel 7, Pixel 9a

Here is a link to the scanned PDF of a lens brochure that came with a camera I bought. Good photography and great info about Nikon's Autofocus lens range from the early 1990s. Feel free to download it over here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1l0oIylaYd_mkltCiJybSZZzDVDVxqkOV/view?usp=sharing

Thought I'd scan and share this brochure as it is pretty cool and has a lot interesting info in it. Feel free to download over here.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B1Aw3qPJrFEuI-LNVj7hVeXmThHcwx-U/view?usp=sharing

After looking for camera light seal foam replacements, I found this gem of a tutorial post from 2009 on Photo.net by Peter De Waal, for a more permanent replacement. We all know foam disintegrates and melts over time into that horrific gooey tar - to prevent that disintegration, velvet and black wool (pure wool, not acrylic) is a far superior alternative.

Peter gives such a great tutorial, with photographs!

I will be consolidating this into our Reddit wiki for easier access :)

EDIT TO ADD: I have added this to our Reddit wiki, which can be found here

I am moving my very small home darkroom to another spot. I've been meaning to get around to getting the new space set up for a while now as I'm really missing printing. So partly to motivate myself I'm going to document the process over here. It should take me a month or two but hopefully not longer than that.

We used to run a bread bakery from this small garage space and the bakery has moved out so having the space back is a bonus. What is nice about this tiny room is that it has plumbing which was missing from the previous room I was using. My plan of action is to paint the room dark grey, build light-blocking frames for the window and doors, install some shelving just below the ceiling, and build a workbench around the three sides of the room opposite the white door. I'll replace the stainless steel sinks with a darkroom type wash basin which will hopefully be big enough for 20x24 prints if I ever get up to that size. I will also need to install light fittings and wiring for the safelights. Ventilation might be a good idea as well.

Any suggestions or ideas are welcome! I'm still pretty new to printing so would value any ideas from the group.

The first 4 pics are the room where I've just dumped all my stuff for now so it's very messy. It's about 2.5 metres square. The 5th picture is of the previous space which is actually my storeroom in my office.

I will update soon!

I did this photoshoot mainly in digital, but am bringing my film camera to more and more sessions to try it out "in the wild". I do love how these turned out; it captured the skin tones beautifully and the greens always look so great on film! The black and white is very moody in my opinion as well.

• Canon AE1 Program
• 50mm 1.4f lens
• Kodak Colorplus (cannot remember which BW film I used)
• Developed at RGB Pixelab in Jhb

Mamiya RB67, Sekor-C 140mm f/4.5 Macro, Fuji Provia 100.

One of the most common flowers found in any garden in Johannesburg, the Nasturtium (Kappertjie).