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Old February 25th 04, 04:13 AM
Mike Wilde
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Default Develper for Delta-100

On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 21:33:09 GMT, Gregory W Blank
wrote:

In article ,
Mike Wilde wrote:

On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 18:57:22 GMT, Gregory W Blank
wrote:
In article ,
Mike Wilde wrote:
Most temperatures for b&W hang around 68 degrees, but, as the real
world knows, frequently the developer isn't that temp.
Why & why not?

Most people regulate the temp by using something like an
aquarium heater, in a tub of water. That is even if the desired
temp is 68F.

I personally have a tempered water regulator mounted
permanently on my darkroom tap, although you can get
a faucet mounting thermometer that allows the water to pass through it
this being removable each time after use.

When you mix the stock solution, with the desired amount of water
for working dilution use tempered water, that way there is no
waiting. Because I have a Jobo I turn every thing on and it takes
3/4 hour to come up to temp in winter, usually in summer its at
temp or I run cool water to get it below temp,...so it then comes up.

You can also do this using a tub and aquarium heater. As for agitation
get a book or something to do while tending the tank, a small rotary base
can probably be found at a reasonable price. A small radio or CD player
makes the time more enjoyable.


I was writing to the original questioner, who I presumed was a basic
B&W hobbyist.

I know that temp control can be much more precise.

I develop C-41 and RA-4 on my own. I have taken the cheapo route to a
Jobo like end performance situation: All dollar figures stated are in
$ Canadian - currently about $0.75US buys a $1Can. This message
wandered on to a longer treatise than I intended when I started
writing it, but if you take the time read it over, and you will see
why I have taken the route I have.

The current darkroom evolved out of a long period of no darkroom
activity for me. In the past I had progressed my photgraphic hobby to
the stage of successfully shooting of a few weddings, in terms of
business proficiency and developing colur prints from packaged
chemistry in terms of techical progress, after doing scads of B&W for
school and college yearbook efforts, etc..

Eight years ago I moved to shared accomodation with my then girl
friend, now wife, and others. The darkroom gear went into storage. We
later on our own moved into a dumpy apartment and saved like mad in
two incomes towards buying a house. We then got sent on a work
assignment from our native Toronto Canada to Brisbane, Australia for
three and a half years. We had our first born child there. While there
we had all housing, and auto expenses paid for, and had liqudated the
apartment and car expenses at home. We had money to save even more,
even with my wife at home with the little one. Preganacy complications
on the second one brought us back to Toronto.in February 03 where he
was born; doing just great. We had to find a house in a hurry, and
then I put the press on to finish the basement as a play area for the
kds, and to insulate it to save on energy costs.

The darkroom wasn't put into service until November, after most of the
other big inside improvenments were done. It was my reward, with about
8 years of negs behind me waiting for darkroom expression. I knew if
it didn't wait until near the end the other projects could be years
before they were finished.

So i set out to equipment my new darkroom in the style that I know
best, and anm still wholly happy with- wet silver. The digital
revolution in my absense has been great for me from a wet silver
perspective.

I am not saying that digital will not have a place for its use in my
future; I already have a low res digital capture camare function as a
part of an analog camcorder that is great for e-mailing snaps to the
grand-parents.

All kinds of stuff I drooled over as a poor student is now available
at modest prices. So I commenced a mostly on-line hunt, with my frugal
instincts intact, wth goals to better what I had achieved in the past.

Temperature control better than running water for colour work:

Ued temperature controller that came out of a plastics extruding
machine - $50 ebay. Originally it went up to 900F; I changed jumpers
inside it to cut its range to 40-400F. This made it more sensitive to
the range I need. It has PID control, meaning that it warms up fast,
and cuts the heat back as it gets close to the set pont, with no
overshoot. It has adjustable gain, and reset functions, so I tuned it
to my volume of water, to allow a fast swap from C-41 to RA-4. To
cool for C-41 to RA-4 transitions I just add cold water, and watch
the temperature readout on the controller to know when you are just
under, and then it heats to balance at the desired new temperature set
point.

The type J thermocouple temperature sensor needed for the above cost $
free.It was made from thermcouple extension wire, since was no need
to tolerate high temperatures; I talked a process control shop to fuse
a junction on one end of 2 feet of extesion wire for no cost.

The power load control switch is a surplus relay, scavenged from an
old furnace fan relay when th furnace was replaced last summer. It has
a 24V coil which is powered off of a control transfoemr also scavenged
from same old heating system. I will replace it with a solid state
relay when the right one turns up surplus or I get annoyed with the
thing clicking too much and spend the $30 it costs new.

Housing for the water bath:
I have used a cooler. It is surplus to my present needs, and is now
dedicated to darkroom use - so I call this $free.-It holds about 35L
water. The cover goes on overnight, or on the initial warm up on start
up when I am first home from work, so that by after dinner / kids put
to bed the thing is up to temp withing an hour or so of being fired
up.

Bath tempering:
I use a 300W aquarium heater bought on sale at Superpet for $40. I
have the manual thermostat in it wound way up so it won't cut out
until about 120F. The temperature is controlled by power cycled
under the temperature controller's load relay .

An aquarium circulator pump evens out temperature distribution in the
water bath, so the chemicals warm up faster; again on sale, $30 at
Superpet. A scavenged hose is used to extend the intake to the far
lower corner of cooler.

To warm the chemicals themselves old photo plastic jugs float at
present; Cheap 500mL amber glass $2 each / 1L $2.30 each presently are
being sourced from a chemical supplier and bottle wholesaler to store
ready solutions, as well as aqueous stock solutions to speed the
making of ready to use stuff without fussing over the balance weight
of 1g of this or that. The size of the cooler present easily
accomodates 2L of each solution required.

To dispense the right amount of chemistry into the tube for RA4 I have
little plastic cups colour coded that have handles that hang over the
edge in cooler and float one the water bath when filled; they are left
to float in water when empty. In the cups I have incribed levels for
8x10, 11x14, 16x20 required volumes with permanent marker. These were
garage sale acquired with the set costing $1.

Sink
This is a lagacy home made fibreglass over plywood 60" long, 16" deep,
6" high affair I made 20 years ago. $80 at the time I recall, because
in my student days that was a lot of money to come up with after
buying the enlarger a few months earlier. I am sure today a stainless
sink could be e-bayed for less but shipping would be a killer. No
autotempering valve faucet is fitted yet, instead I ue a cheapo dial
thermometer fitted into a hole drilled into the outlet spigot of a
used/recycled laundry tub faucet set; it works OK for me for now.

Print and film finishing
A better and morecompact print washer is planned to be made out of an
aquarium conversion i have in my head for fabriaction this summer,
after surplus glass is gleaned from this spring's spring clean up and
garage sale season. Presently it is a big tray withan old auto tray
siphon that uses a fair bit of real estate and water. Drying is with
clothes pegs over the sink on a clotherline like affair. Next winter
will likely see a crop of scavenged screen door screening material
made into a series print drying racks on shelves under the sink.

Film dryer
Dust with a kids play room, carpetted next door was always going to be
a challange. So I created a micro supor clean environment, and just
keep the whole darkroom as cleans of dust as I can.

I wash and photoflow wetting agent the film on the spools, shake them
as dry as I can, and put them into a modified coffee can affair with a
dessicant agent, appropriate sacers to ensure bst air flow, and a
little cpu computer cooling fan to circulate the air. Apart from $30
for a whack of the Drierite dessicant,(which is periodically
regenerated in the oven), all parts were free from scavanged sources.

After drying the film is left on weighted hooks overnight to absorb
some moisture from the air to take the curl out of it. the reels are
put through the dishwasher to keep the photpflow concetrate residue
out of the being carried over to the next uses developer.

Ventilation
An exhaust inlet is placed just over the edge of the sink at one end.
This is the end where the fixer tray usually sits for B&W work,
The air inlet for the rom is filtered through a ligt trap built out of
a stud cavity with grilles placed high and low on the opposite side of
the room.

The exhaust duct from the darkroom runs to the inlet of a scavanged
heat recovery ventilator that I found in last years spring clean up,
and have done minor fix up work on to allow it to go back into service
in our house. This exhaust air goes through an air to air heat
exchanger that warms incoming air in the winter/cools it in the
summer. This allows the exhaust to have its heat/cool energy
partially recovered. It also means that I don't risk pulling make up
air down the naturally vented gas clothes dryer or gas hot water
heater vents to get into gas exhaust product build up.

Usually it runs on low speed to generally turn over air in the house,
which it needs, since we have insulated and draft sealed extensively
since we moved in to the 35 year old house about 11 months ago. The
humidistat is set that if wet things are on the go in the darkroom it
automatically cuts onto high speed. I have yet to wire the manual
high speed contacts to a switch in the darkroom. This would allow me
to more easily move to a higher level of ventilation when I am
weighing out dry bulk ingredients to mix things up that have less than
healthy dusts to be settling on surfaces. I otherwise wear an
industrial air filter and goggles, a lab coat and rubber gloves,
becuase some chemicals are downright nasty things .

Mixing
One luxury that I have sprung for is a used $60 magnetically driven
plastic coated iron mixing pellet and variable speed type mixing
platform. It is so nice to be able to have it attend to mixing while I
am carefuly trying to not add concentrated acid to the solution too
fast while otherwise being occupried with a mixing paddle. It is also
nice to leave it to mix something or a few minutes that is barely
soluble. The variable speed means that you can set it to not drive
bubbles into the solution, but still mix quickly.

Agitation
To achieve uniform agitation for processing paper an old uniroller
motor base that I have had for years/ saw used at camera store for $10
is used. With it I use Cibachrome II to 10x tube and 20x sleeve from
years ago and a second 10x unit sourced for $5 used. I like Ciba
tubes, because they drain from opposite end that you fill them, stand
up on thier own when draining, are made from all softish plastic that
won't crack if dropped, and come apart into pieces that are easy to
dry while the other one is on the go is running its 2 minute home
brewed one shot dilute blix time when two are in alternate use.

To keep the tube from getting cold as it runs, a gooseneck lamp with a
75W reflector spot bulb runs off of the Gralab 300 that I use for
process timing. A second lamp gets added when 16x20s are being run.
..
Film Processing
To process the film I have stainless steel Omega tanks, and Paterson
(for B&W, usually). The latest acqusition is a 4 high omega tank with
4-35mm and 2 -120 reels for $50 - again -ebay. I wanted a 4 reel tank,
because C-41 developer once mixed as I do it doesn't keep long, so if
I can I do all 4 to use up a L at once that is better. Usually I
manually agitate the colour in the water bath, but have tried with
both lamps and the tank on the uniroller last time to no apparent
detriment, I just cut the process time 15% to counter for the
continuous agitation.

Photo chemistry bulk storage
Dry powders are kept in old mason jars, scavenged from spring clean
out city wide scavanger before pickup program (also used a larger
different set for food storages, canning). Where light sensitive dry
materials are to be stored , I cut a black construction paper sleeve
and disk to fit inside the jar, and leave chemicals in the zip lock
that they came in from the supplier.

Alkalines go on the top shelf, developing agents, etc the next shelf
down.

Wet stock solutions or ready mixer fixer, etc. go into photo plastic
bottles that I bought years ago before I got the frugal streak so
badly.
..
Oxidisable chemicals get a squirt of ' private preserve' wine argon
etc gas on top before closing up. It is worth the $20 or so the can
costs and the can goes a long way when you look at the price of Colour
Developer -4 granules etc. going off from oxidisation,
..
Acids are stored under the sink in a recycled drywall mud container
that has a tight fitting lid, that even I find a challenge to get off.

Balances - I have two

A $13 discounted 50g pan balance with balance weights. The discount
was achieved thouigh a bulk raw chemical order from fotochem.
A $34 old 610g triple beam balance from ebay. Tare is adjusted
against the dixie cups that I use for weighting cups by attaching a
small length of wire trimmed to the right length to the hole at the
end of the balance where normally extra weights are added to take the
scale to 2610g capacity.

Exposure and control
I have a Beseler 23series 2 bought used $300 about 20 years ago.with a
Nikor 50mm F4 lens. I use Acetate ciba CC filters; these work OK for
me. I am waiting for the right Dichroic price to come along.Other
bits: Durst used colour analyser $35 ebay; 4 blade easel 20 years ago
gov't surplus auction $20. It sits on a separate anti skid rubber mat
-it was sold because the OEM rubber backing had started to roll up
under one corner. I bought a mechanical repeating timer one day in
college for about $120 when I had to print about 400 potraits for a
yearbook in about three days, in addition to labs and wanted to get
away with a repeatable 3 second exposure to speed things up.

So as you see, I get to the end result for my darkroom and colour
darkroom work in a different from a Jobo way, but it is even more
satisfying to me than having bought it outright retail or as a ready
made solution. I was pining for a Jobo for a long time, but along the
way I have home brewed something that seems to do all that the real
McCoy can do.

Last week I read about how to adapt a Unicolor tube to develop 4x5. I
haven't had the need for it yet;,no new enlarger fever unit the kids
are in college and I can take over more space in the basement maybe.

The TLR 120 is also presently out of service - I am waiting to see
that the darkroom and kids time demands can co-exist on just 35mm
before moving back into 120 after leaving it idel for about 15 years.
Then I will go looking for the enlarging lens that I am missing to do
printing from that format on my own. By then a Blad might even be
affordable, while the price of 120 by then will be not.

As far as consumables go, ebay as usual is a great source. I in the
last 2 months have got:

300 sheets 8x10, 75 sheets 11x14 Supra 3, about 75 sheets 8x10 B&W for
RA4 process from a retiring wedding photograpgher all for $80.

100 rolls 27 exposure fresh dated agfa C-41 400ASA $230

200' 1 year out of date bulk agfa C-41 100ASA $50

300' tmax 100ASA B&W, 200' tmax 400ASA B&W 2 years out of date, and a
second bulk loader for $60

200' plus x 100 ASA fresh dated

150' ilford panF plus 50ASA fresh dated.

That has the freezer in the basement with more film and paper related
products than food in it by this point in the year. My customised
developing speed per Picker of the earlier message in this thread for
B&W gives me confidence that I can get good results out of most films
that I buy a year or two out of date, and keep in the freezer until I
need to fridge them to be ready to shoot.

To fill the time while in the darkroom while processing I have a small
radio that is tuned to an all classic radio station that I find very
relaxing to listen to. I also have a Pentium 166 computer and modest
sized monitor good to surf with while processing b&w film, waiting for
wash times to finish, etc.

The computer I recovered from a number of units that went into the
dumpster here at work. I took the ones that looked best, got three
spruced up ones going with the dog one parts. I gave one to my mom and
dad to replace their 486, put one in the darkroom, and traded the
third one to a compter salvage store for the bits that I did not have
like memeory SIMMs to make the whole affair come together. The
remaining bits went to the dump.

Winter is ending, so big darkroom efforts will be scaled back for a
time to get ready for this spring's clean out gleaning effort. The
next city over has the highest per capita income in the country, and
no convenient dump.You are allowed 3 garbage bags a week maximum for
curbside pickup.

Once a year the big things are put out and gleaning is encouraged to
minimise the amount to be trucked away. So, as I alluded to earlier, i
scrouge a lot. It takes me about 15 nights of 7-midnight to cover all
the different neaighbourhoods.as the pickup time rotates to different
areas of the city. But it is worth it. We got back from last years
efforts the HRV, a laserjet printer, 4 dressers, 5 bookshelves, a CD
player, stereo receiver, vcr, tons of kitchen appliances, a full set
of winter boots, sand shoes, dress shoes, rubber boots etc that will
fit our your 1 and 4 year old sons until they are at least 8 years
old, the list goes on and on. What we did .not need we cleaned/fixed
up out ot the other bits found and garage sailed the excess to the
tune of $400 one day sale profits. The unfixables just went back to
the curb on the next trip of hunting.

Summer is for relaxing, tending the yard, going camping on the odd
weekend, taking photos all along the way.

Late summer and fall is when we gather the summers harvest and put it
by for the winter. I make jams and perserves for our own consumption,
Last year we put up 160 jars of jam/jelly/marmelade in about 11
different varities.

I also made and canned enough scratch soups, pasta sauce base, canned
tomoate puree, stews, chili,swiss steak, etc string beans, corn,
carrots, peppers canned peachs, pears, apples, applesauce other fruit,
etc. I had at least 2 nights a week of dinners plus their left overs
looked after for from October to April in the cold celler by the end
of October.

This years' Mad Cow scare put more good priced beef into our freezer
than it could easily could handle. The rest was canned in the
different things outlind above. We ate more meat this year than is
commonly in our more chicken as a meat source part of our diet.

The canned fruit were done in extra light syrup. That way fruit and
veg go into the blender to feed our youngest the fruit and veg
comonent of his diet, in addition to feeding us.

In this manner my canning effirts fulfill my share of preparing and
making meals for the family all as a big series of canning sessions.
My share of the winter meals preapration means pulling the jars needed
out of the cold cellar (and by next year the wine aging down there
too) and the occasional cut of meat out of the freezer.

The jars and water bath canner needed to do this came mostly out of
the gleanings and garage sale shopping. The pressure canner needed to
do meat and vegs was found normal $129, marked down to 80, and on a
half price of that clearance table one night in a department store.
Never in a long time have I been happier to part with $40 as a retail
purchase.

Extra jam I sell at my office at before Christmas time to raise a bit
of extra cash flow for Christmas entertaining. No need for cash for
many new kids gifts; yard sailing and spring clean out yields a years
worth of gifts that come out of the latched spare room closet ('the
secret room' as my four year old calls it) in dribs and drabs
thoughout the year on rainy days, etc,.

The 'profits' in cash and goods from these frugal efforts are better
than if I stayed at work and worked the overtime to buy to furnish
and fit out our house, even at garage sale prices in most cases, and
to feed our family. I would not be seeing my family as much, and it
would also cut into the time in the darkroom.

This frugal lifestyle allows our household to function on my sole
income while my wife is at home raising our little people and pursuing
completion of her university degree. The spare funds accruing from our
frugal lifestyle in part allow my photography and darkroom hobby.to
continue.

The frugal lifestyle also allows my wife to keep signing on for more
courses to get to her degree. The darkroom keeps me out of her hair
and quiet after the kids are in bed to let her study

When she gets feeling too cooped up on the domestic front with kids
under foot she re-imerses herself in some form of involvement with
differnet community theatre organisations around the city. When she is
cast in a play, photography and darkroom mostly can keep me happy
around the house while looking after the litle people in the evenings
and weekends when she is at reheasersal or on stage or backstage.
Community theatre is mostly an all of your time, little money hobby,
so it plugs in well with where we are in our life.

I have scaled back past techinal theatre involvement since I also have
photograpghy, while her passion is theatre, and there are the wee ones
to care for too.

So all in all darkroom on the cheap, life on the cheap, and our
intersts keep out family running smoothly.


Mike.