Welcome to the Darkroom Logbook where I share aspects of my darkroom and its process. For the first instalment, I’m sharing about creating a light-tight space and the darkroom lamp that I use.
One of the hardest steps to starting your own darkroom is to lightproof your space. I live in sunny Singapore and have large windows in my room that I need to block out.
Lightproofing
Getting blackout curtains is the easy part. Just hanging the curtain the normal way is not enough as there are gaps where light will leak. I want to come up with a solution where I can flush the curtain to the wall and have it easily removable to ventilate the room.
My solution was to use these velcro strips that has double-sided tape at the back and stick it to the wall. The other side was stapled to the curtain.
It’s the same for the entrance of the room. The height of the curtain helps me to enter and leave the room after I set them up. The curtain, if too low will prevent the door from opening.
The flexible quality of the velcro tape allows me to cover difficult angles easily.
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Darkroom Lighting (Safelight)
Fortunately, we don’t need to work completely blind in the darkroom. There are these safelights that we can use to help us get around. The darkroom paper does not react to the electromagnetic wavelengths from these lamps and, hence, these lights are safe-lights.
This is the safelight that I use, it is amber in colour as the black-and-white papers I use are not sensitive to them. It is quite old and I’m worried that the sides may leak non-safe light, so hence the black tape.
No matter what brand you use, I would recommend that you do a safelight test. Here are two links that will teach you how to perform the test:
https://www.kodak.com/content/products-brochures/Film/KODAK-A-Guide-to-Darkroom-Illumination-K-4.pdf
https://www.ilfordphoto.com/amfile/file/download/file/605/product/613/
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Thank you for reading. Next, I will be sharing about my darkroom enlarger and lens. Let me know if this helped you and what you’d like to learn.
