Books on Dark Room design and hardware suppliers

[johnastovall]

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In the nexy couple of years, I may have the opportunity to build a custom Dark Room.

 

What books are out there addressing issues like postive pressure calculations, venting rates for fumes, etc.? Who are the distributors for lights, water filters, light tight doors, etc.

[rob_x2004]

If you think you need it just chuck in a split room AC and a fume hood/cabinet. Your local AC and refrigeration suppliers should be able to point you in the right direction. Its hardly rocket science and unlikely you will need a mech eng. Yellow pages, a phone call, a thumbnail sketch and a visit.

[Xmas]

Hi

 

John Hedgecoe's 'the photographers handbook' pages 62-63 provides simple schemes for conversions, the companion book on processing which I dont have to hand is more complete.

 

Or try googling...

 

Noel

[Jeff S]

Lots of books and articles around (web search) and backs of photo mags often advertise suppliers for various items. Calumet is also a potential place to start. (They bought the old Zone VI from Fred Picker, and that would have been a great resource. Fred's old newsletters were useful, and might still be around on eBay or elsewhere.)

 

I built 4 darkrooms in 4 houses, each one benefitting from prior knowledge as to what I actually needed and how I liked to work. Along the way, I collected articles and pictures from mags on darkrooms from others.

 

Depends on how much you want to do. Weston got by pretty well with almost nothing, as have countless others. So mine were probably overbuilt, but fun nonetheless.

 

There have been other related threads on this forum, including pics of members' darkrooms...so try multiple word searches here, too.

 

Jeff

[tobey bilek]

My experience mirrors Jeffs above. My current started as small, then was turned into a wet room with an adjoing enlarger room.

 

The key things are separation of wet and dry areas, tray bench work that is elbow high to you unlike your spouse's kitchen counter which is too low if you are 6', an inline water filter, some kind of air filter, I use two small Hunter Hepa ones, and an exhaust fan.

 

Then design a workflow for your availble space so you move from enlarger to trays or wet processor with ease.

 

My main safe light is a Zone VI one suitable for graded or dimmed for VC paper.

 

There are 7 enlargers, 2 Focomat ic, V35, two additive color med format ones, two 4x5 Omegas, one condenser one diffusion color.