On Sat, 19 Sep 2015 16:54:42 +0100, Chris French
wrote:

Eldest daughter (14) is very much getting into photography. Digital of
course, but she likes the idea of having a play with film.

Someone on the local Freecycle was offering a load of darkroom gear,
which I've acquired. And I've rooted out my old film SLR. So now need to
construct some sort of darkroom space.

Never had one myself, though did do a little bit a few times with a
friend many moons ago. But' I'm pretty sure plenty of folks here have
done such things in the past.

So any pointers/suggestions for setting it up are welcome. something at
least semi permanent would be preferable I think, and we have a few
places that might be suitable. What is the essentials, what would be
nice.

don't want to spend to much money as it might be a bit of a flash in the
pan.

One possibility is the cellar - a bit damp, but ok plenty of space,- has
power, but no water or drainage. There a few different spaces down there
and only one small window in a light well that doesn't really do
anything much except provide a little ventilation, so making it dark
would be easy.

Another thought is that we have a dressing room that isn't really
properly used. We I could use one end of that. It has two entrances, so
I could partition one end off with black plastic say - no window at that
end (power, accessible drainage and water. We do have plans to create an
en suite bathroom, and a separate storage room with a a partition wall
across dividing the room, so could potentially do the partition wall now
anyway.

Good for her: one of our local high schools is a Creative and Media
Studio School and I know the photography people there plunge students
straight into work with film cameras as a precursor to digital. If she
decides to take it up seriously then all this interest in film will
stand her in good stead.

One of my sons has gone back to film photography and develops his own
b&w stock. The lightproof stuff doesn't take up much room in a drawer
and is good enough to work with in the bathroom without too much fuss.
After he has created the negatives he scans them into his computer and
enlarges and prints digitally. I understand quite a lot of people do
that now. The colour negatives he sends away to a lab in the USA (he
lives just over the border in Canada)

Heck: I suppose I should say that I've gone back to using film too
since I've just bought a second SLR, a compact and a couple of
medium-format cameras to play with. It's like valve guitar amps vs
transistor; vinyl records vs CDs: place them side-by-side and the
differences are obvious but you can't say one is "better" than the
other. And I still reach for my digital camera first.

Nick