Advantages of an own Darkroom

A photo is more than just the pressure on the shutter release.

Only the photographer himself can complete what he has begun with the exposure of the film. This point of view is not based on dreaming, but on a simple fact: from every negative, an almost infinite number of positives can be conjured up, all of which differ from one another in expression. And only you, who took the picture, can determine which of the positives is the right one. Because it is your picture.

Let’s get one thing straight at this point: there is no modern photochemical process, other than Kodachrome, that you can’t bring under perfect control in your own lab. There is nothing you can’t do better yourself than what is done for you on a contract basis. The way to good, yet affordable images … is through your own lab.

The possibilities that your own darkroom offers are practically unlimited. And the results you can achieve are at least equal to those of a professional laboratory, often even superior in technical quality. The reason for this is simple: You can work according to methods that are not necessarily “rational” but chemically and from a processing-standpoint optimal.

Since real quality is important to you in your photos, everything starts with the film development, apart from the successful shooting with the camera: During this development, the latent image is developed and fixed in the film layer. Everything else is then just a transmission chain that at its end puts the signals on paper in the desired form.

What is not contained in the film, no magician can transfer to paper. If, for example, you give a black-and-white film to be developed, then it runs through the big machine in some laboratory, is brought out in a standard developer, which is equally good or, better said, equally bad for all black-and-white films on the market. The results turn out accordingly: The gray values are graded averagely, the uniformity of the grain structure, the sharpness of the contour and the resolving power leave much to be desired. And you don’t even need to ask for a possibly increased sensitivity utilization: The industrial lab has no way of catering to your special requests.

If you give a color film for development, you are better off in some respects: there are precisely coordinated standard development processes for all slide and negative color films. And if the developing machine runs without malfunctions and the chemistry is sufficiently regenerated, your developed films will then conform to the standard.

Of course it’s different, if you want to achieve increased sensitivity with a slide film. The special development required for this is only carried out in a few laboratories. With color negative films, hardly any will be willing to develop more sensitivity for you: Any deviation from the standard is not only associated with risks, but above all with an economically unjustifiable expense.

In an in-house lab, however, such considerations play no role. In both film and color paper development, you work according to a method that cannot be surpassed in terms of perfection and that no specialist laboratory can offer you, if only for reasons of time. You work with carefully coordinated chemical processes where the guarantee of success is practically built in, as long as you only follow the processing instructions. Even the increased sensitivity utilization in the development of your films, often marveled at as a magic trick from the photographic witches’ kitchen, is no problem for you. You will learn to master the necessary procedures within a few hours.

And even the first color film you develop yourself will show flawless results, no matter how much you tremble inside during development.

The same is true afterwards for transferring to paper, for enlarging in color and black and white. You can enlarge negatives of all kinds and, of course, color slides in your own lab, correcting all kinds of shooting errors and using some little tricks to give your pictures perfection.

To do this, you can choose from so many different papers with such a variety of surfaces that no lab could ever have them ready for you. There are hardly any limits to your individual wishes: Everything you have ever seen, and many things you have only dreamed of. can be put into practice. What is especially important: A good picture only works if you can show it in a correspondingly large size. Large images from a professional lab cost a fortune. But in your own lab, you only pay for the material. And so, in the end, you get large images of good or even excellent quality at an economically bearable price.