Setting Up A Home Darkroom

While I was very pleased with the service from The Darkroom, it made it clear to me that I am way too impatient for mail order developing. Also, I found out that my camera takes super panoramic photos and that there is a $10 per roll surcharge to develop and scan these, so that makes each roll almost $25 all in to get developed. It’s worth noting that The Darkroom processed my photos without the extra 10 bucks, they just included a note with the negatives they returned asking that in the future I pay for that service. It really is a great outfit and I’ll be sending any color film I shoot to them in the future. But the fact remains that $25/roll and a two week wait is not ideal. 

The other option is Do It Yourself. I’m not entirely new to developing film hair learned in high school and continued in a college photojournalism class, so I figured I could noodle it out. The first thing I needed was a dark room. Imagine that. The film needs to be taken off the roll and put into the developing tank in complete darkness. They make bags with light tight arm holes for this, but I’m lucky to have a downstairs bathroom that can be made pretty much completely light tight. 

Paterson Tank and FPP Super Monobath Developer

The equipment needed for home developing is fairly simple. I bought a developing tank, I bought a small Patterson Tank for around $35, and then a funnel and thermometer. The tanks come in a bunch of sizes and most come with the reels that the film gets wound onto. Mine can hold one roll of 120 film or two rolls of 35mm, and came with reels that adjust to fit either size. The thermometer is important and the temperature of the developing chemicals matters. A normal kitchen one isn’t ideal as the temps we’re going to be dealing with are much lower than cooking temps. The one I found on Amazon was sold as a darkroom thermometer but still cost less than $15. The funnel is just for pouring chemical out of the developing tank and back into its bottle when you’re done. 

I did a little research into developers and found that there is a huge variety. I can’t remember what we used  in school. Normally you’d need a developer and a fixer, but the Film Photography Project sells a One Step developer that combines both the developer and fixer into one solution. The advantages are simplicity and speed, and temperature matters much less than normal. The drawback is less control over how your film is developed. For a beginner, though, it is ideal. The one liter bottle costs $19.99 and is good for about 15 rolls of film, they say. 

That’s all you need, really, to turn the film in your camera into negatives. You’ll want to do this with access to hot and cold running water, so I just stayed in my bathroom darkroom. 

The process is simple. Go into the dark with your exposed film, carefully wind it onto the reel (this takes practice), put the reel in the tank and screw on the lid, and then you’re ready to turn on the lights. You rinse the film in water about the temp of the developer (about 72 degrees in my case) for five minutes and pour it out. Then in goes the One Step. You agitate the tank for 30 seconds and then an other 5 seconds every 30 seconds for the full 5 1/2 minute developing time. Then the developer goes back into its bottle (using your funnel) and you rinse again, this time for 20-30 minutes. They sell a special chemical that cuts this time down to 5 minutes and as I a truly an impatient person I plan to buy some. 

Then you take the film out of the tank, squeeze extra water off it and hang it top dry. It took about two hours for me. 

That’s it. Now you have negatives ready for scanning or enlarging. I’ll talk about how I scan these using my DSLR in another post. The scanners used to scan negatives are pricey so I find this kind of poor man’s set up to be a perfectly acceptable alternative. 

One of my finished products!