A Darkroom in a small Flat – this is also possible
This is the English translation of the original German article.
You might think that you need a separate room for a darkroom to develop black and white photos. This would be ideal. But you can also develop and expose photo paper provisionally in tiny rooms.
In the past there existed such “darkroom suitcases”: they contained a small enlarger and the necessary three chemical dishes. The case itself often served as a base board or as a fixed base for the enlarger column. This made it possible to enlarge photos even in a small hotel room. These devices (e.g.: “Meopta Proximus”) were, however, relatively economical in their functionality, but today they can still be found on Ebay.
A self-developed photo is stuck to a tile to dry.
Perhaps you – like me – live in a small apartment where you don’t have the luxury of a nice extra room in which to set up your photo lab. However, if you pull yourself together a bit (and live alone), you can develop paper pictures – at least in smaller formats up to approx. 24 x 30 cm – even in a tiny cosmonaut’s toilet:
The enlarger is of course quite large (6×9), as I still have it from times when I had another room available. There are much more compact models (only 35mm or 6×6). But even the large one fits in the bathroom with this vertical setup. The base is the same size.
Look here! Because you don’t need that much here: I use a wire basket shelf like this with four drawers. Instead of placing the developer trays next to each other, they are now positioned one below the other. There are actually four drawers here:
I use a fairly inexpensive, stable and, above all, practical shelf from Ikea called “Jonaxel”. The wire baskets mean that chemical splashes are not a problem. Some may even drip through from top to bottom. The photochemicals are carried over anyway.
The enlarger is located above on its base board, with the developer tray immediately below, then the stop bath and the fixer underneath. In the bottom drawer I have positioned a fourth tray with water to collect the test strips. The actual prints, on the other hand, go straight after fixing into a large washing tray in the shower. You can see it clearly in the photo above.
This very compact form of photo development is called the cascade principle: after exposure, the photo paper moves from top to bottom through the individual drawers. The more practical (and typical) solution would be the classic, horizontal processing line:
But this simply requires a lot more space. Of course, such a setup is initially recommended. However, the “cascade shelf” can also be used temporarily in a tiny bathroom. It even fits into some larger showers – unfortunately not mine, as their doors don’t open wide enough.
But this is how I do it myself: I set up my enlarger in the small hallway. It doesn’t have any windows, so I don’t have to worry about darkening the room. My small bathroom doesn’t have a window either (but it does have a fan). The corridor is painted white, which is only a good thing, as it spreads the red light from the small lamp well. You should only hang a black cloth behind the enlarger itself (or position black cardboard) so that its light causes as few reflections as possible (you should also not wear a white sweater when enlarging, but a dark one).
A lamp is mounted on the wall. Red foil is placed over it. Of course, this only works if a weak LED light source is mounted here, as this does not get hot.
Right next to it in the bathroom is the shelf with the developer trays. The tub for washing is in the shower. In the bathroom, I use a simple, battery-operated bicycle backlight as a darkroom lamp. Of course, you first have to carry out a veil test to see whether such a red light lamp is suitable for the photographic paper. It is important that such red lamps illuminate indirectly or are not aimed directly at the photographic paper. They should therefore be directed towards the (white) wall.
One more thing about the fan in the bathroom: it doesn’t pump, it sucks: This means that you should also ventilate here after every photo print. Otherwise there will be too little oxygen in the small room. If you have a window in the bathroom, tilt it regularly between exposures.
Finally, this vertical principle works better than you might think when looking at the photos: you only pull out the top drawer of the shelf halfway, but the drawer underneath is pulled out completely (they have a catch to prevent them being pulled out completely). This allows you to transport the photo paper elegantly and without any significant splashes from the developer to the intermediate washing unit (using the picture tongs, of course).
As you know, you should always lift or move the trays slightly when developing the photographic paper. This is very easy to do here by simply pulling out or pushing back the drawers slightly. And: These wire baskets are also great for drying the hand prints afterwards – at least if you use PE paper.
Developer trays with a maximum surface area of 41 x 38 cm fit into the wire baskets on the Ikea shelf. However, as these compartments become wider towards the top, trays for a paper size of 30 x 40 cm should also fit in (trays for a paper size of 24 x 30 cm are shown).
Ideally, the wire basket shelf should be placed in the shower. Here, one of the doors had to be removed, then it fitted in. This allows you to use the developer trays very elegantly and quickly accessible even in the smallest darkroom without any problems.
As a taller person, you will sometimes bump into things in such small rooms in the dark. But it is certainly possible: the provisional darkroom in a small rented apartment.
Look at this: My entire darkroom equipment (almost) fits into just two banana boxes!