[Leica] LUG Darkroom Survey

[Edward Kowaleski <edwardkg@umd.umich.edu>]

Please add me to the darkroom list.  I've been doing my own printing 
since about 1958.  I started with a Valoy II enlarger with a 50mm 4.5 
Focotar.  I moved to a Focomat IC and added a color head.  I got hooked 
on color printing and about fifteen years ago and bought an Omega D2 with a 
Dichoric Head.  I use a Focotar II f.4.5 and a Rodigon-N 50mm for 35mm (I 
cannot see the difference in prints made at f5.6 or f8.0 but the Rodagon 
is a lot easier to focus).  I use a Focotar II 100mm f.4.0 lens for 
medium format and a 135mm Rodigon for 4x5.  I have an old Drust RCP40 
processor on which I changed gears to speed up the thru-put so I can use 
RA4 chemistry. 

I also have a V35 enlarger with a color head and 40mm Focotar.  I do not 
find it as easy to use as the Chromega; the negative carrier seems more 
secure but this impression is probably because of a longer familiarity 
with the Chromega.

I still have the Valoy II and Focomat IC enlargers; I dismantled them and 
put them away.  They were such good friends over the years that I 
couldn't sell them.  I had always hoped to given them to one of my 
children but no one has expressed any interest.  I still remember hanging 
a Valoy II base from a ceiling joist in my darkroom, projecting an image 
on the floor then unrolling Medalist paper from a 60" roll, holding it down 
with masking tape, and making an exposure wit the Valoy II and the 
older Focotar len.  I used to develop those prints in a trough I made 
with epoxy lined plywood and broomstick stock to act as a holdown and 
roller.  What a mess!  I could only develop that sort of print in the 
summer months because I had to wash the print in my children's plastic 
swiming pool; I used to let a hose run overnight on the print. I mounted 
some of these prints on masonite and they look marvellous after forty 
years.

One of these prints was made from a time exposure I took at night in 
London in the early sixties with 50mm Summicron at f.5.6 and an M3 
mounted on a table top tripod and set on a brick wall in Parliment Square 
in London.  I even remember sthe expoures of 15, 30, 60, and 120 
seconds on Panatomic X which I recall developing in Rodinal (1:100, 11 
minutes at 72 degrees!).  There is a mystique and poetry about this kind of 
darkroom work  
my words cannot eloquently express but I'll bet there are still a lot of 
darkroom workers on the LUG who have felt the same way.

Regards to all, Ed Kowaleski