{"id":11616,"date":"2018-05-19T06:56:57","date_gmt":"2018-05-19T10:56:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/?p=11616"},"modified":"2018-05-18T13:39:52","modified_gmt":"2018-05-18T17:39:52","slug":"tools-of-the-trade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/tools-of-the-trade\/","title":{"rendered":"tools of the trade"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

A 1980 film darkroom<\/p><\/div>\n

Toronto<\/strong>. In \u00a0this era of digital photography we need a computer and printer (and what house doesn’t \u00a0have at least one of each) to “process” and print the digital images. Not so in the recently departed film era.<\/p>\n

The film had to be developed and then printed – usually with an enlarger, timer, thermometer, darkroom trays, safelight (if B&W), easel, and perhaps a focussing aid. And most homes DID NOT have a darkroom and enlarger, etc., etc.<\/p>\n

Only professionals and dedicated amateurs possessed the necessary darkroom. Others resorted to community darkrooms (usually camera clubs) or used commercial services. As a youth, I used a high school camera club darkroom, later building my own. The photo here shows my set up in the fall of 1980. To save money I bought 8×10 photographic paper and cut it to a smaller size either before, or as shown, after exposure and processing in a drum (Colour) or trays (B&W).<\/p>\n

The enlarger was a Durst M35<\/a>, the top of the line 35mm enlarger featuring all the details noted by Gilbert Durst in Italy. The enlarger takes colour filters which I kept in a Rollei slide box and tray (2.25 in square slides). I used a Variac and a “true RMS” iron vane meter to keep the voltage to the enlarger bulb constant (Toronto power seemed okay but Montreal in the 1960s and 1970s had terribly unreliable voltage levels).<\/p>\n

The Gralab<\/a> timer was modified with a fuse, relay, start button, etc. The Heathkit Colorval<\/a> was also modified to have a digital binary timer built-in to match the enlarging lens f\/stop settings. The timer uses a 555 timer chip and a tantalum capacitor to control the chip. Switches and resistors determined the exposure time of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, or 32 seconds (using two or more switches gives 1 to 63 seconds in 1 second intervals for the truly anal). \u00a0I made all the modifications at home.<\/p>\n

The inexpensive pictures in an hour<\/em> shops pretty much eliminated home darkroom colour processing other than for those who wanted to crop or enlarge to a size bigger than the 4×6 or 5×7 prints of the commercial shops like Eddie Black’s or Japan Camera.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toronto. In \u00a0this era of digital photography we need a computer and printer (and what house doesn’t \u00a0have at least one of each) to “process” and print the digital images. Not so in the recently departed film era. The film … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[286,1151,574,1934,1933],"class_list":["post-11616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-processes","tag-darkroom","tag-durst","tag-easel","tag-graylab","tag-m35"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11616"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11626,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11616\/revisions\/11626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}