Yateley Darkroom - Welcome!
At Yateley Darkroom, we maintain a modern, safe and well-equipped Darkroom. Our Darkroom is available for daily or half-day hire and can even be used as a gift experience!
Our Darkroom has a “dry” side (for image storage and enlargement) and a “wet” side using the large sink for print making and film processing. We also have a bench dedicated to other clean and dry activities such as print spotting, masking and framing, film preparation and scanning. For black and white printing we use truly safe Safe Lighting.
The Dry Side
Used to make enlargements of negatives on enlarging paper using our colour enlargers.
We can produce enlargements up to 16 x 20 inch using our 2 and 4 blade easles. We have two enlargers. A 100 W Jobo C6600 for smaller (35mm) prints and a large 200 W LPL-7451 enlarger for larger prints, handling 35mm, medium format and large format negatives.
The timer is designed for easy split-grade printing using either the colour head or Ilford multi-grade contrast filters (recommended). You can use linear timing or F-stop timing.
The Wet Side
We have a sink that is large enough to produce prints up to 16 x 20 inches. The water is temperature-controlled and flows through the washer at about 3L/minute. The wet side is also used to process films; conventional black and white negatives or C41 and E6 process colour films. A water heater is provided to maintain the precise 38 degrees C required by these colour processes.
Safe Lighting
Red safelights must be used for black and white print making (black and white enlarging paper is not sensitive to red light.) The darkroom has a completely separate lighting circuit that controls the enlargers and safelights and conventional lighting used on “Low” for print inspection and “Main” for flooding the darkroom with bright light.
Film is sensitive to our safelights so must be loaded into the processing tanks in complete darkness (though a changing bag can be used) i.e. safelights off.
Print Drying
After a print has been thoroughly washed, it must be dried. Resin coated prints only need a few minutes wash time and dry flat in air within 15-20 minutes on a drying rack or hung up. Fibre Base (FB) prints require longer washing and drying processes. FB prints can be dried on a drying rack overnight, emulsion-side down. Alternatively, we have an electric print drier that will produce dry FB prints within 15-20 minutes providing the prints are squeegeed or blotted first.
FB prints should be dry and fairly flat, but would benefit from further flattening between mount boards and heavy books for a couple of days.
Comfort and Safety
Yateley Darkroom is comfortable, clean and safe. It features a light-tight air intake-extraction system that is powerful enough to quickly remove fumes from the sink and also stops the air in the darkroom becoming stale. An electric fan heater maintains a comfortable temperature at any time of year. Comfy chairs and books are provided should you wish to relax. Refreshments can be provided.
Access
Our Darkroom has disabled access. The benches are fixed at approximately 90cm high, wet and dry benches are approximately 96cm apart and access is via a standard doorway (approximately 70cm).
Summary
Our Darkroom is provided to encourage the traditional making of Silver prints, but it can also cater for a wide range of alternative workflows. Film processing, scanning and the hybrid workflow are also catered for. Traditional black and white prints are hand-crafted and are superior to the finest ink-jet prints and can last for a lifetime. Give film a try!
Yateley Darkroom is available for daily private hire and/or training. Have a look at our competitive Prices and do contact us for further details.