I joined APUG in October of last year and never really posted or read anything as I joined and forgot about it. Now that I've spent some time catching up on the old posts and adding a few of my own I figure it's about time I dropped a post here. The attached photo is my first polaroid taken with my first large format camera on the second piece of film I put in it. *The first piece was exposed before I stopped down to f/22... oops! The picture is of the enlarger I purchased to use with my 4x5 camera and just today I finished installing it into an old desk--I bought it used without a baseboard. Now that I've exposed my first polaroid I just can't wait to do it again!!! I'm hooked and I haven't even begun yet.

Now that the first project is done I just have a few more:

finish light-proofing everything
build portable vents
make light box
construct drying screens
throw together a print washer
and whatever else I can think of!

Hi Jeremey,

I'm on the verge of re-building my darkroom as well. I have always had issues coming up with a good solution to light proof the door. What will you be doing for your door? An old school lab I used to use had black panel light traps, which I might look into doing. Here's a quick sketch of that concept...

That's exactly the system an old school I went to used and it worked wonderfully. As this is also my bedroom I will have to improvise... send me your email address so that I can reply to it with a scan of a couple of pages from How to Build Your Own Darkroom with ideas for lightproofing the door.

I'm pretty sure I'll go with the above solution since my darkroom will be a basic room built under the house. But your welcome to send the scans

sean@apug.org

Thanks!