Tomorrow my short summer will begin sometime around noon. I have one final left in my engineering math course (diff eq and linear algebra). As it stands, I may very well end up making an A in that course. As soon as I finish that final, I’ll be picking up some darkroom chemistry, photographic paper, and more film. When I get home, it’s time to build a darkroom.

Cramped would be a good way to the space in which I’ll eventually make photographic enlargements of my B&W negatives. That’s a lot better than non-existent though and I’m hardly complaining. I need to build about five things for the darkroom. First, I need a raised platform to put the enlarger on. I’ll also need to build an extension of the sink area for the wet side of the darkroom. Drying racks for my prints will go over the print washer. Ventilation will be necessary as well, and I suspect I’ll put some fans in a duct over the wet side and vent into the adjacent bathroom to use the vent in the bathroom to get the fumes out of the house. The fifth item will be the most ambitious. I need a new timer, because I managed to destroy the one that came with my Beseler CB7. Fortunately, I came across working plans for a digital timer that’s fully programmable to the extent of my coding ability.

The timer will take some waiting, for parts delivery and to digest the existing code and decide if I wish to modify it at all. That won’t stop me from trying to make some enlargements this weekend using no more than my ability to count off seconds as a timer. I’m highly unlikely to do any dodging or burning this way (though I suppose I could) but I have a few negatives that will print just fine with a single exposure to the paper.

Once all of that is finished, I’ll move to my next set of projects. First, I’m going to finish the medium format pinhole camera I made several months ago. I’m not sure I care to really build it out of wood or anything at the moment, but I’m going to use some Liquid Nails to stick a tripod mounting hole to the bottom so I can put it on a tripod. I’ve cut a hole in the back, which I need to cover with some red transparency material, so I can see the frame numbers on the paper backing of the film. No sense wasting film by having no idea how far to wind the take-up spool. After I finish that, I’ll be building another pinhole camera. My enlarger will take 4×5″ negatives but I have nothing that produces 4×5″ negatives. Sounds like a perfect excuse for another pinhole camera. For now I’m thinking that a 4″ focal length with a .012″ pinhole (which I intend to make by shoving a guitar string through a piece of thin brass stock) will do nicely. That should give a wide angle of view, somewhere around 75 degrees, and a very small aperture of roughly f/340. Even in full sunlight exposures on an ASA100 film will be several seconds. Perfect for the simple blade type shutter I intend to make to cover the pinhole. I’ve got more than enough bits of scrap this and that to make a large format pinhole camera without having to spend money on anything but a few film holders (though I suppose I could just make those myself too).

Stay tuned. I’ll certainly be posting progress of the build sooner than later.