[Leica] Who Still Has a Darkroom?

[firkin at ncable.net.au (Alastair Firkin)]

I'm very late on this thread, but I should put in that I have been 
"building" up my darkroom over the last 2 years, and will shortly be 
attending darkroom workshops etc. In my "lab" I have a Devere 504 with 
colour head and an Ilford multigrade 500 head. For 35mm I use a focomat 
V35 with original 40mm lens. This has a colour head, multigrade head 
and the splitgrade multigrade b/w head. The splitgrade also controls 
the Ilford head on the Devere, and I recommend it for fast b/w 
printing: with the Focomat V35 the Splitgrade allows me to "churn" out 
prints at a great rate of knots, I then analyse  the result and go back 
to "perfect" the print manually.

For colour I now have a jobo 7000 analyser: this is overkill for me, 
but it seems to work well. I still think my prints both b/w and colour 
are better than ink jet versions iffffffff the negative is in good 
condition and ifffffffff I put enough effort into printing them. The 
image chain to print is pretty good with this combination.

To process, I have an ATL 3. This is overkill again, but it is a 
fantastic addition. I have a water wall to help temperature control, 
BUT I'm too far from the hot water tank to really have it work, and its 
not vital in my system yet.

I use a fantastic micro focus thing from Omega, and I have  few 
different easels: none of these is perfect. I do not use trays, all 
processing is in the jobo and drums including b/w prints: this gives 
great constancy and stops me from damaging the surface of the prints. I 
do use trays to tone with Selenium and I have 2 archival washers for 
fibre based prints: though I don't always use fibre: it is a pain 
really ;-)

I love my darkroom. Its an escape, its a challenge, its a fight and its 
my most creative outlet. I would love to compliment it with the Devere 
Digital enlarger, but the $$$$$$ are simply ludicrous, so I am thinking 
of a printer for some colour work: Bronzing is the major issue for me, 
though it seems the new Epson r800 may have solved that. I like Glossy 
and Helen "insists" on it ;-)

If I relied on photography to make a living all the above would 
probably have gone or never arrived ;-)

Cheers to all


Alastair