Just watching the print appear in the tray of chemicals, is one of those magical moments that will for ever stay with you. It has been a very very long time since I last used my wet darkroom, perhaps over 36 years ago. I am absolutely sure the last paperI used, was the heavenly Kodak Elite, a paper so expensive to produce that Kodak had to discontinue it due to cost. Good on you to try and get into wet printing . It just makes you a more complete photographer, a crafts person as well as an artist.
Ah amazing! Yes I’ve heard all about Kodak’s papers. A friend of mine recently got his hands on some expired stuff that was really hard to come by and the results looked great! And thank you!
Hi Sophia, thanks for sharing this! Have you found the darkroom setup worthwhile/do you use it a lot? I'm fortunate to have a community darkroom about a 45 minute drive away, so I go make prints once every couple of weeks, but am wondering if having an in-home setup like yours would be useful. Nice to see the Intrepid enlarger in action as well; I own two of their cameras but have never used the enlarger.
Hi! Great question! So far, I’ve only used it to print black and white. I still go to a community darkroom about once every other month to print colour but that’s mostly because they have a processing machine which makes it much easier when it comes to temperature regulation etc. That being said, I don’t see the point in printing black and white at all at all community darkroom anymore. I think I’ll always do that at home now and, most likely, will move onto strictly printing colour at home too once I develop a better skill set. The whole set up, including the enlarger, takes me about half an hour to set up so if I have a spare afternoon I can manage to get a few hours of printing down before a quick 30 minute pack down, which I think is pretty good and really the time it takes me to set it all up is probably the time I’d usually spend travelling to the darkroom anyway. So, in short, yes, definitely been worthwhile for me so far!
I'm in the same situation. There is a darkroom I can use, but it's just under an hour away, and with the membership fee, I figured the inttrepid was a better option long run. I find the setup time is a little bit of a pain, takes me about 40 mins to get to an actual print (having a copy stand rather than a tripod, I could probably speed things up a bit), but I have to convert my dining room. The actual ergonomics of the enlarger are OK, it's definitely compromise. if you can get past the initial frustrations of adapting to the limitations, the end results seem great. I've even had a go at colour, which I didn't think I'd ever do.
@@SophiaCarey FWIW, I've done a few runs of colour RA4 using my intrepid. I only do stuff at room temp, using a drum (2 mins for each step, I got a cheap 8x10 cibachrome drum off ebay). The results look fine to me. The +/- 2 adjustment steps seem to result in quite big changes, but I've not done colour on a "real" enlarger. From what I've read, there may be some issue with reproducability of prints doing stuff at room temp, and I don't think it's advised if you want total accuracy on colour, but neither of those are a big concern for me.
re: focusing, I think I might have commented on one of your unboxing video, but switching the focusing knob around (slide it all the way out and flip it around), makes focusing a lot easier,. In the original orientation just touching the focusing knob causes everything to wobble. When it's above the enlarger everything is much more stable (and my arms don't get in the way).
I ran an extension cable under the gap in the bottom of the door (and used a black bag to seal the gap once the wire was through) to the plug socket in the hallway
Just watching the print appear in the tray of chemicals, is one of those magical moments that will for ever stay with you. It has been a very very long time since I last used my wet darkroom, perhaps over 36 years ago. I am absolutely sure the last paperI used, was the heavenly Kodak Elite, a paper so expensive to produce that Kodak had to discontinue it due to cost. Good on you to try and get into wet printing . It just makes you a more complete photographer, a crafts person as well as an artist.
Ah amazing! Yes I’ve heard all about Kodak’s papers. A friend of mine recently got his hands on some expired stuff that was really hard to come by and the results looked great! And thank you!
How nice! It's always cool to see darkroom work.
Thank you! Been having fun with it!
Great video. Lovely images and love seeing your setup. Thanks.
Thank you! Thanks for watching!
Super cool n sickkk images!!
Thank you so much!
This is so awesome. Been really enjoying following your darkroom journey!
Thank you so much!!
Hi Sophia, thanks for sharing this! Have you found the darkroom setup worthwhile/do you use it a lot? I'm fortunate to have a community darkroom about a 45 minute drive away, so I go make prints once every couple of weeks, but am wondering if having an in-home setup like yours would be useful. Nice to see the Intrepid enlarger in action as well; I own two of their cameras but have never used the enlarger.
Hi! Great question! So far, I’ve only used it to print black and white. I still go to a community darkroom about once every other month to print colour but that’s mostly because they have a processing machine which makes it much easier when it comes to temperature regulation etc. That being said, I don’t see the point in printing black and white at all at all community darkroom anymore. I think I’ll always do that at home now and, most likely, will move onto strictly printing colour at home too once I develop a better skill set. The whole set up, including the enlarger, takes me about half an hour to set up so if I have a spare afternoon I can manage to get a few hours of printing down before a quick 30 minute pack down, which I think is pretty good and really the time it takes me to set it all up is probably the time I’d usually spend travelling to the darkroom anyway. So, in short, yes, definitely been worthwhile for me so far!
I'm in the same situation. There is a darkroom I can use, but it's just under an hour away, and with the membership fee, I figured the inttrepid was a better option long run. I find the setup time is a little bit of a pain, takes me about 40 mins to get to an actual print (having a copy stand rather than a tripod, I could probably speed things up a bit), but I have to convert my dining room. The actual ergonomics of the enlarger are OK, it's definitely compromise. if you can get past the initial frustrations of adapting to the limitations, the end results seem great. I've even had a go at colour, which I didn't think I'd ever do.
@@SophiaCarey FWIW, I've done a few runs of colour RA4 using my intrepid. I only do stuff at room temp, using a drum (2 mins for each step, I got a cheap 8x10 cibachrome drum off ebay). The results look fine to me. The +/- 2 adjustment steps seem to result in quite big changes, but I've not done colour on a "real" enlarger. From what I've read, there may be some issue with reproducability of prints doing stuff at room temp, and I don't think it's advised if you want total accuracy on colour, but neither of those are a big concern for me.
Lovely video
re: focusing, I think I might have commented on one of your unboxing video, but switching the focusing knob around (slide it all the way out and flip it around), makes focusing a lot easier,. In the original orientation just touching the focusing knob causes everything to wobble. When it's above the enlarger everything is much more stable (and my arms don't get in the way).
Simple question, how did you get power in your bathroom?
I ran an extension cable under the gap in the bottom of the door (and used a black bag to seal the gap once the wire was through) to the plug socket in the hallway
You should have mentioned the most important step when printing in a bathroom: "Last call for the bathroom! Use it or hold it!" 😮
Hahah very true! 😂