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Monochrome Massif A Resource Site for Philippines-based Photography   [25 March 2003]   Darkroom Ideas: Had a great idea the other day. Before that, let me give you a bit of an idea about the raw space I'm converting into a dedicated darkroom. The space is an extra bathroom that is connected to my home office / hobby shop. It's perfect because it's where I keep all my computers and photo equipment (as well as my other hobby stuff--scuba gears, videography... etc). The bathroom is a rectangular space 2x3 meters in size. The door is along the long wall (3m) and a window to the outside is on the short wall (2m). The door is near the corner, and the window is on the wall farthest from the door. The height of the ceiling is 2.4 meters. Well, I'm thinking... instead of just boarding up the window... why don't I just build a hood over it? The hood will have vents situated just a few inches above where the sink area will be. The hood won't be powered... that is, it won't suck air in. Rather, I'll have a carpenter cut a hole in the wooden door and attach a small 8cu.m/min fan on it... blowing INWARDS. That means positive pressure inside that should escape through the hood. On the outside of the fan/door I'll build an intake baffle to keep out the light.. more like a wooden scoop that points downwards. I'll just have to ask the carpenter to make a groove at the bottom so I can fasten a piece of cloth on the intake to serve as a dust filter. Kills several birds with one stone: 1. Adequate ventilation... it should change the entire contents of the room every 2-3 minutes. 2. It keeps dust out of the room, due to the positive pressure. 3. The hood seals out light from the window. It should work. I just have to design the baffles right to ensure that no light comes through. That should be relatively easy since most light travels in straight lines. I just have to finish the insides matte black. Now to find a carpenter who's good enough to follow design drawings. Any suggestions are definitely welcome. posted on 4:16 PM   The EBAY EXPERIENCE: It wasn't as difficult as I thought. In fact, it was downright easy after reading all about it on the list. All that's left now is to receive confirmation that my seller has received payment (via bidpay.com), and for him to ship the thing over. I'm not having the thing shipped to the Philippines, though. That's because the guy refuses to. So I'll send it through Horace, who's such a nice guy to be willing to receive the enlarger and bring it over to Johnny Air Cargo. So far, everyone says the same thing... use Johnny-Air, and there's less likelihood of crazy taxes being slapped on the shipment. It also gives me the option to buy more stuff online and have it sent to Horace... so he can stuff it in the box. Nothing fragile of course. But maybe that SB28 manual that I've been missing. Too bad I'm broke. posted on 4:01 PM   The EBAY EXPERIENCE: Well, the waiting is killing me. I took quite a huge risk and just bought the damn thing. It's Horace's fault, of course. In any case, I'm talking about a Beseler 23CII-XL Enlarger with Dichroic Head that I bid for on Ebay. I got the thing for 345 dollars (plus 37 for shipping). It seemed to be quite a good deal... and it does jumpstart my darkroom project. Initially, I was expecting to just learn the film-processing side first, while I save up for the enlarger. Well, after reading so much about buying photo equipment from Ebay (from the ph-photo board, no less) I decided to go for it. The Hidalgo expedition only proved to strengthen my resolve since there was no equivalent quality enlarger available last week. I guess now, I'm past the point of no return. I spend a lot of my free time sketching ideas for darkroom layout and placement. But I guess this is just wishful thinking since a lot will depend on how I'm able to fit the Beseler (at 44 inches high) into a 2x3 meter bathroom. Oh well. We'll all learn the hard way. posted on 3:58 PM   Lots of updates in the past few days... I've updated the supplier's section based on new info from the Hidalgo trip. I've also uploaded the FAQ section. The FAQ's aren't complete yet, since the EBAY FAQ is still pending. posted on 3:54 PM         Copyright 2003 Taj Deluria. All rights reserved.