A darkroom comedy

TMax 100
The last time that I was in a darkroom was right before I left home to begin my life as an adult. Sometime around late 1983, early 1984. So, about a good 25 years ago. Today, even though I am suffering from flu-like symptoms, I had to take a stab at developing at least one roll of film from my Mamiya 645.

I had to first go online to look for the proper mixes and times for the various films that I have shot. Note to self: Choose one film, like back in the day, and stick with it! The first roll that I developed was TMAX 100. The guy who sold me the camera was nice enough to include it as well as a roll of TMAX 400. I’ll develop that later.

Into the makeshift darkroom I go. AKA, the bathroom. I made it light tight with a blanket hung over the door to prevent the light around the edges and top and a towel to take care of the light coming in at the bottom. After setting my tank and film in place, I closed the door, made sure that everything was light tight. Then, I began to unroll the film and attempt to get it onto the reel. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts, I realized that I hadn’t spaced the reels wide enough for this film. While attempting to do that, i promptly dropped the film on the floor. Now, as I said, it was DARK. So, I had to get down on hands and knees and use a serpentine motion with my hands. I finally found it. After a number of failed attempts at getting the reel the right width, in the dark, I managed it.

Uh oh! What’s this? My nose is starting to run! Drip! Drip! Drip! Well, I finally get the film into the tank, sans nasal drippings, and got the top securely in place and could turn on the light. The rest of the development went according to plan as I only needed to pour in the solution for the correct amount of time: 9 minutes for developer, 10 seconds for stop bath, 5 minutes for fixer, rince for a few minutes and viola! I had negatives!

Dang it! I don’t have any way to hang them! Hmmm??? Ah ha! Chip clips! I have two of them, so that is what I used. I hung them in the laundry room. Oops. One more problem. No way to cut them. I don’t have any scissors! I had to go out and get some. Also, no sleeves to put them in. Hey! This guy is prepared! Looks like envelopes will have to do until I get sleeves! Indeed CF Cards are a lot easier to work with BUT there is a certain joy in seeing the negatives come out! I’m pumped up!

The final battle was with the scanner. I use and Epson Perfection 3200, now outdated and no longer produced, to scan. It tries to be smart using the medium format holder and thinks that you are using square negatives and always seems to divide one negative into two. I finally wrestled it to the ground and got it to submit to my will!

So, here are a couple of scans from my first roll. I’m happy to say that the camera works quite well even if the darkroom technician has forgotten many of his skills! I didn’t do any changes to these. They are as they came out of the scanner. Both with scanned at 2400 dpi, which will give a long side dimension of about 5400 pixels as 645′s image area is slightly under 6 cm. That said, at 2400 dpi, one could get a very nice 16 x 20 quite easily.

No related posts.