I would like to set a darkroom in my kitchen. Has anyone done this? I am sure someone has! I have been using the university's lab for a year and would like to continue on my own. I have learned how to successfully develop and print to my satisfaction but I am not too savvy in tech matters. Can someone list what the equiment and accessories I'll be needing? Include the brand names if possible and the price range. I want to know what to ask when I go to the store.

-- Jany Tomba (Janytomba@aol.com), May 24, 2000

Answers

From my various home dark-rooms the one thing I have to contribute is that it makes a world of difference in a makeshift dark room whether you are working at night or in the day. I can make my "darkish" room ok for prints in the day, and yet I must do negatives in the middle of the night. My life's goal is a door. Think closet. Who needs air? Anyhow, it works. Just think about giving up on light proofing everything and put the PM shifts in your Daytimer as Darkroom time.

Dean

-- Dean Lastoria (dvlastor@sfu.ca), May 25, 2000.

If there is half a chance, do it in the bathroom rather than the kitchen. Practically all of the darkroom chemistry is toxic, and that doesn't go too well with the food handled in the kitchen. You may do as much cleaning as you can, you can't fully avoid contamination of surfaces which might later get in touch with your food. You might consider covering everything with plastic sheets, but the necessary cleaning and clearing up will then take a lot of time, time not available for darkroom work.

-- Thomas Wollstein (thomas_wollstein@web.de), May 25, 2000.

There is an excellent darkroom website here...

http://www.darkroomsource.com/

Roger

-- Roger Bird (rpbird@home.com), May 25, 2000.

While Thomas's advice is sound, with reasonable precautions a kitchen is fine. All kitchens are laid out differently but one thing I did was to use some peices of 3/4 plywood laid over the tops of the counters to provide a "stage" to put my trays and work on, its a barrier for spills and accidents also. Try to plan a "wet side" and a "dry side", there are many books on this. Keep your chemicals clearly marked and away from food areas. The only real difficulty is getting the room dark enough, there are all kinds of materials to use for this and printing at night helps. If your just doing B&W its not really difficult nor really expensive to do. good luck.

-- bill zelinski (willy226@yahoo.com), May 26, 2000.

Kodak has some publications that are good if you are getting started. They have a beginning darkroom book with a title something like "Into the darkroom one step at a time." If you want a really good presentation of darkroom design, try Curtin and DeMaio _The Darkroom Handbook_,published by Focal Press. They show many different setups, from tiny closets to custom built darkrooms.

-- Paul Harris (pharris@neosoft.com), May 27, 2000.