[Leica] Who Still Has a Darkroom?

[TTAbrahams at aol.com (TTAbrahams@aol.com)]

 I still have a darkroom. A Focomat 1C, a Focomat IIc, US military custom 
built with a point source head and a very dead electronic control panel. 
Cluttering up the office is a Valoy II and here and there are Focotar-2 lenses  in 
various cabinets and drawers.? The Elcan enlarger ( Focomat IIc) has a Nikkor 
63/2,8 on it, everything else Focotar II's. The analyzer is the Analyzer Pro from 
RH design in UK (paid for itself in less than a year). One 96" x 30" 
stainless steel sink and a deep (18") 30x30 stainless steel sink for washing. Water 
supply is filtered and on a 220/3 phase water heater. You dial in the 
temperature and it keeps it steady for however long you want to run it! I also have a 
large supply of Paterson tanks and reels (80+). For many years I used stainless 
reels, but the Paterson  is more robust. Drop a stainless reel and even the 
slightest kink in the spiral will make it impossible to load them. Paterson 
reels bounce nicely. The  1500ml (5 reel tanks) also fits on my old colordrum base 
and is used for fixing. However much I like darkroom ? agitating film is 
somewhat boring. Of course, like everyone else I dont get in there often enough. 
One advantage with the onslaught of digital is that darkroom stuff is getting 
cheap,
 I also have an old Sony short-wave radio on a shelf, an original 8x10 Leica 
easel (the fancy one, 4 blades cast alloy base etc.) and the Saunders Pro for 
11x14. As the space is small, (9x11 feet) I limit the size I print to maximum 
11x14. Doing bigger prints would be possible ( I have done 20x24") but it is 
uncomfortable. Like most of us I did the kitchen, the bathroom and closet 
darkrooms for years. We lived in Paris for a year and I loaded the tanks in a 
small, very cramped toilet area, surrounded by militant Parisian cockroaches and 
then processed (Tri-X/D-76) in the bathtub!  Yes, the digital darkroom has it's 
advantages, but staring at a computer screen is no substitute for leaning over 
the sink, watching that image coming up. It is still magic to me, even after 
40+ years of doing it. Admittedly, spotting with a computer beats trying to 
get Spotone to limit it's wanderings on glossy paper.
 I went in there this week and knocked out 60 prints (8x10) from 55 different 
negatives in 8 hours. Not "masterprints" but good enough for reproduction 
purposes. The RH Analyzer pro gives you filter/time with almost perfect accuracy. 
It screws up with pyro souped film (could be recalibrated for it, if I could 
understand the manual) but otherwise it is great. Paper is mostly Ilford 
Multigrade IV (less than Can $400 for 1000 sheet packages) and the developer are 
home-made. I go through 400-500 rolls of Tri-X a year, so using outside 
processing would be too expensive and also to risky.
Long live Gralab 300's ( and they do!).
Tom A