![]() In the early 'aughts I went to great lengths to find and buy a second one, thinking I would one day continue doing darkroom work. The problem was that Kindermann stopped making them twenty years ago. The old one was much better made, of a rubbery material, with a top that fit and never leaked, and a design that allowed a free and easy exchange of liquid. NOT the current Kindermann tank-top (sorry, but that's what it is), which is the plastic molded variety. So what do you want? The best one I ever found was marketed long ago by Kindermann in Germany. I guess you get used to it if it's all you have, but it's a poor design. The problem with those is that the light baffle only lets in a tiny dribble of liquid, and it takes forever to exchange solutions. These are marketed by Kalt and Omega and various other brands.īut you also don't want the classic old-fashioned stainless top: ![]() They can work all right, but they're cheap and will get damaged or start to leak sooner or later. You do not want the common molded top that looks like this: The other problem with stainless tanks is the tops. Expensive, yes, but they'll pay you back every time you use them. Plus, Hewes reels are much easier and smoother to load because they're polished and smooth and dead true. Then, when you go dark, the hard part is already done, and you don't have to fumble with opening the cassette, cutting the film end, and loading the darned spring clip in the dark. Then just set it there within easy reach where you can find it in the dark. When you go into your dark closet or wherever you go to load your exposed film on the reels, you can get all set up before you even turn off the lights: clip the end of the roll square with scissors, then attach the film to the center prongs and get it started with a turn or two, all in room light. To indicate that it's exposed, just fold the leader over. What you do is to get into the habit of not winding your exposed film all the way back into the cassette before you remove it from the camera. Not only are they superbly made and much heavier and stronger than typical stainless reels, but, crucially, instead of those infernal spring clips that most reels have, they have two little prongs in the center that fit into the sprocket holes of your filmstrip. Which, by the way, I thought were extremely expensive when they cost $30 each! But you only need a few, and they will last your entire lifetime, and then the entire lifetime of the person who gets them after you. I swear allegiance to the beautiful reels made by Hewes in the UK. Being out of true is what causes all the problems. If you manage a group darkroom, which I have done, you have to become skilled at fixing cheap reels and trying to get them more or less back into true. Cheap school- and group-darkroom reels bend if you drop them, so they're usually all bent up, or have been bent and bent back. The main one is that you need good reels in good condition. But sometimes you need to do another tank right away, and it's very frustrating to stand there endlessly with a hair dryer trying to get all the moisture out of the nooks and crannies of a plastic reel, only to find when you get in the dark that you didn't stand there long enough.īut there are problems with stainless tanks and reels too. ![]() That's all well and good if you only develop one tank every two or three days. The reason being that they only work right when they're absolutely dry. I never used plastic reels and plastic tanks except to help students with them, and I don't like 'em. It mainly has to do with which kind of reel is easier for you to load. Some people like one, some people the other. There are two kinds of developing tanks: the plastic ones, called Paterson-style, that look like this, and metal ones, made of stainless steel. I was very surprised.Ī little background first. One of the rarest and most elusive bits of darkroom equipment I've ever discovered is actually still available. However, I made a welcome and unexpected discovery that I thought I'd throw out there for people who are developing their own film in 2022. I could still write that article, but I'll have to research some of it. I used to be able to recite it all without any effort. Timings, dilutions, details about equipment and the history and lore of materials. It's been 22 years since I last developed film regularly, and some of the details I thought I would never forget, I've forgotten. Reason? It's no longer on the top of my head! I figured it would be easy to write because I could do it off the top of my head.Īnd I found that.I couldn't. I had everything worked out to a fare-thee-well. Over the past couple of days I tried to write an article about my method of developing small-format film, a method I carefully built up over many years and through much research.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |