I finally have a studio with a functioning darkroom. It’s not the biggest photographic lab on the planet, and there is some squeezing in to work at the sink, and yes, my negative hooks are hung from rubber bands off the electrical cable pipes.
Ilford developer, stop and fix, two Paterson neg tanks and a thermometer borrowed from Jack’s chemistry set is the negative developing set up. I also have two Paterson safe lights, three A4 trays, and a Paterson lightsafe changing bag. (If the folk at Paterson read this, it’s a vintage analogue studio all purchased off eBay, and yes, the goggles also came from Jack’s chemistry set).
The changing bag is a piece of magic with two small sleeves set at one end of a big flat bag, with a zip and a second fold to keep those pesky light rays out. You put the neg tank, the liddy bits, the exposed roll of 120mm film with the neg carrier pre-set to 120mm (easily forgotten), and you stick your hands into the sleeves.
Once in, I shut my eyes and talk myself through the process. All the texts on developing negs say practice in a bit of spare film, but I didn’t have any spare and there’s nothing like a bit of live film to make you focus. So arms flailing and up to the elbows in changing bag, muttering like a nutter with my eyes shut, the film sticker is scratched off and the roll of film unrolled. Saints are invoked.
120mm film has a backing paper to protect the film from the light. When you’re in a 3’ bag, the trail of waste backing paper feels like a giant squid trying to take your life over. Finally the hard edge of the film can be felt, which first few times out you might grab enthusiastically and run the risk of the squid going wild. A few rolls later I’m into total squid dominance and don’t let anything go until that neg carrier is ratcheting round and I’m in.
The holy grail is sliding the nose of the film into the feeder sprockets in the negative carrier. First time out it went in like magic. St Veronica was probably in there with me guiding it in, and I clicked the carrier round and round, film behaving like the lights were on. Easy. I’m a darkroom queen. St Veronica is the photographers saint. She’s on my side.
St Enedoc’s chapel at Daymer Bay, thankfully freed from the sand. Unlike my Yashica 635. In the quest for transparency, this is a digital image, not analogue.
The next film, naturally a rather precious box brownie roll taken in Cornwall, was going to be fabulously easy if the first film was the benchmark.
In I dived, ready for action with the second carrier from tank number two. To ease things I helpfully removed the metal film spool, never realising this turns the mild backing-paper squid into a wild seafaring kraken. I was due home for lunch at one. The chems were waiting for me on the bench. Slightly sweaty I tried not once but fifteen times to load the spool. Every time the film twisted and turned, backing paper tangling, film buckling, as without the weight of the spool to steady the film, there was no structure. It was chaos. I finally rolled the film up, put it into the tank with the lid on, went home for lunch, and then revisited post luncheon with the other film spool and some deep meditation. It took me another five or six attempts.
St Veronica at this point was back in the Vatican pre-loading blessed 120mm onto 127mm spools to sell to Catholic photographers. Perfect exposures a part of the indulgence.
Anyway, some time later and four rolls of exposed negs hanging from the electrical pipes, I can say it was a good afternoons work. Clearly Yash has a bucket load of Cornish sand in him as the Yash film came out with half of St Minver sands on the neg. The perils of non-Catholic seascape photography.
I’m mooting St.Enedoc as the patron saint of analogue cameras. Or possibly Mr.Paterson.
