What is your most ingenious, most practical piece of equipment in your darkroom? The detail that makes working so much easier.

I'd say a transmission step wedge.

Oh! and those turret thingies and bellows on the enlarger that let me switch from 35mm to 4x5 configuration in an instant.

My brain.

Radio

For me, it's my laser level which I use to align and check my enlarger before each session. It is so quick, simple and accurate to use.. I find that generally my easels get bent up out of shape (particularly speed-ez-l's), I use a dab of that 3M or similar poster adhesive. It's like that moldable eraser stuff that you can pull apart and stick together, like putty.. I put a dab of that under each corner of the easel and place the laser alignment tool on the easel, pressing each corner down (or lifting up) until the easel is completely aligned with the enlarger. Takes a few minutes, stays for the whole session if you are careful.

Also, sharpies, post-it notes, 3m Painters Tape (the blue kind, for resealing paper packs and boxes. the BEST i've found as it won't tear up your boxes, stays sticky after being pulled away tons of times.. $4 a roll from lowes or home depot will last you a long, long time.)

I'd love a transmission step wedge. I have a calibrated kodak one, helps with eyeballing negative density and with some alt. processes. I think that a 4x5 stouffer one would be NICE, sandwiched with film in a 4x5 holder to calibrate your processes. I guess that's another post..

My brain.

How much with shipping to France? What are maintenance costs? MTBF?

:)

Lee

How much with shipping to France? What are maintenance costs? MTBF?

:)

Lee

Don't forget the duty!

I really like a good set of tongs. I have skin sensitivities to all sorts of chemicals, plants, etc., so any time I can hold something relatively benign, such as a set of tongs, instead of dragging my hand through a pool of hazardous chemical I consider that to be a good thing.

I took 4ft X 8Ft sheets of "frost white board", cut them to 2X8 and glued them to the walls. This is the material they make dry erase write on boards out of. I can make notes right on the walls.

Maybe my Metrolux timer.

But I'm setting up the new darkroom in our new apartment right now, and I have the luxury of a spare bathroom to convert, so I can adapt the plumbing in non-destructive ways. The shower stall will be a permanent darkroom area, and the bathroom can still function as a bathroom. My best discovery on the plumbing front is a four-spigot hose manifold, each with its own ball valve, so I've got water coming from the shower outlet into a Delta 1 temperature monitor (you can find it at B&H), and then the hose manifold. I've got one garden hose for cleaning and general use, a 3/8" hose for the print washer, I'll get another hose barb for the film washer (I think it's 7/16"), and a very flexible 1/4" latex hose for local bleaching use.

I got it at Home Depot, but this is it--

http://www.hardwareandtools.com/invt/1590611

David, thanks for the tip on the 4 way hose bib. My shower is my water supply also and it never even dawned on me that there was something like this. This is great!

Jim

I took 4ft X 8Ft sheets of "frost white board", cut them to 2X8 and glued them to the walls. This is the material they make dry erase write on boards out of. I can make notes right on the walls.

I think that's an ingenious idea, perfect for the wall where you keep your info or by your processor or developing supplies. Times, notes.. love it.

kostiner print tongs.

My trash can, which gets used many times in every darkroom session.

The electric timer.

Two old, former shelves made of wood that curved with the age. I put them on the counter, the concave side face up, and put on them the developer and the fixer trays. Now I can slowly and carefully shake the trays to allow chemicals to refresh at the gelatin surface. It simply makes the processing much pleasant.

Trays with ridges in the bottom.

It's not ingenious nor the most practical piece of equipment. It doesn't really make working much easier but yet is indispensable in my book - my dry mount press for it's ability to literally transform the appearance of an unmounted print.

My stool with wheels !!

My hot water kettle -- can't do those all-nighters without my tea!

Vaughn

My Hass K-250 Intellifaucet. Worth every penny. (And it took a lot of pennies...)

Right now in August my ambient water temp just peaked for the year. Cold line is running about 67.3F. This unit is so good it can easily add the 0.7F for a perfect - and sustainable - 68.0F. And do it reliably at 0.25 gal/min flow rate. Also works equally well for the higher temps often required for color processes. Year-round tempered water bath heaven.

Have used it now for five years without a single problem. I do filter both incoming lines down to one micron to keep junk out of the unit. And I always turn off both hot and cold lines upstream, then drain pressure from the unit after each session. Probably not required, but after all those pennies, it makes me feel better...

Ken

My hot water kettle -- can't do those all-nighters without my tea!

Vaughn

It's also handy for steaming albumenized paper to loosen it up and to harden the albumen before sensitizing.

A wall chart with emergence times, development factors, and resulting paper development times. I keep my working solution until it starts to run out of gas (sometimes for several months) so needed a way to compensate for temperature variations and for the first whispers of developer fatigue to get consistent results. The developer is a Glycin/Metol one with a really slow emergence time (but picks up steam later) that allows me to use the films clear edge as the emergence area, which also helps with consistency. When Life gets complicated and I can't get into the darkroom to print for a couple weeks I can pick up from exactly where I left off, or nail reprints with the same batch of working solution several weeks later.

Murray

after twenty years of darkroom work i finally got a foot switch for enlarger timer. wow.

but then I picked up a beseler 35mm negatrans 35mm negative carrier and wonder how i ever lived without it.

A black neg, set in neg carrier. Scratch the emulsion away with a pin head. Pull the neg, and use a ruler to score with the pin from corner to corner. Bingo. An enlarger alignment tool made out of a waste prcessed bit of film leader.

Oh, and a 'darkroom' microwave on a shelf above the washing machine next door in the laundry/dry chem area. Takes cold stock solutions and stored distilled water to 20C in a flash for b&w or 38C for colour too. Most of my graduates are too tall, so a 4cup pyrex measuring cup finishes off this rig.