While stationed at Bitburg Air Base, in Bitburg,Germany from 1968 till 1972 I had a side job as manager of the base Photo Hobby Shop. The hobby shop was oepn to all members of the military and their dependants for the rediculous fee of $.25/hr and that included all equipment and chemicals. the only thing you had to buy was film & Paper. The hobby shop had 5 film developing booths, all of which were set up for B&W & one was set up for the E-4 process to develope Ecktachrome Slides. We also had 14 separate printing booths. Ten had enlargers that could handle all formats from 8mm up to 2-1/4 x 3-1/4, one that could handle 35mm through 4x5 sheet film and one that could handle up to 8x10 sheet film. The hobby shop was open daily Monday -Friday from 6pm until 10:30pm and on Saturday from 9am till 8pm.
One of my duties as manager was to mix all the chemistry,D-78 in 5gal lots and Dektol & Hypo in 10gal lots, then measure it out into individual containers for the film developing booths and the print booths. When the patrons came in they would stop at the desk long enough to sign in, then they would go to the chemistry room and select the chemistry they needed, either for film developing or printing and take it to the respective booth. Each printing booth had a dry section with the enlarger, a small work counter area and a paper safe, and if you turned around there was a wet section directly behind you with a large sink and three trays for developer, stop and hypo and a fourth tray filled with water that you kept your prints in until you had enough to make a trip out to the washer & dryer room.
In those days we didn't have resin coated paper so all prints required a 30min to 1hr continuous agitated wash. To handle that we had a Pako drum washer that could hande 200 8x10 prints at a time and we had a commercial Pako rotary drier that had a 40" wide web and a 4.5ft diameter ferrotype drum and that unit could dry 300 prints an hour, again, those were plain paper prints, not quick drying resin coated paper.
In those days we didn't have much choice for B&W film. For super fine grain we used Kodak Panatomic X 64ASA (ISO),for daylight we used Kodak Plus X 125ASA and for cloudy days, indoors or where we needed a faster shutter speed we used Tri-X 400ASA In a pinch if we were off base and had to buy film we generally bought AGFA 100, and we souped them all in Kodak D-76.
In 1969 Ilford came out with a 1,000ASA film, and we thought that was amazing since the best we could get with what we had was 800ASA by pushing Tri-X one stop. However we didn't use much of the Ilford 1,000 because it was $8.25 for a 24exp roll and it required a special developer that was $3.50 for a one roll, one shot package. That works out to $11.75 for a 24 exposure roll at a time when I could buy a 100ft bulk roll of Plus-x or Tri-x for $11.00.
My primary duty was to greet new patrons and walk them through the facility and if they had no prior experience I had to give them one -on-one hands on training for both film developing and printing as well as the washing & drying phase.
Believe me, after two years of teaching developing & printing to beginners I have seen or done just about every mistake one could imagine, and many more that have never been officially catalogued..
So allow me to impart some of what I learned:
1. It is nearly impossible to create a room dark enough to load film in the tank. Even a tiny bit of light peeking through the crack under the door will sooner or later fog a film, and that generally happens when your working on a film that you really want. The Solution- Get a changing bag and use it for all film loading. They are cheap & easy to use.
2. Chemistry should be stored in lightproof bottles. You can buy 1 or 2 quart brown chemical bottles relatively cheap, but as soon as you get the bottle, be sure to permanently mark the bottle with large letters indicating which chemical it holds. You don't want to pour your chemical in the developing tank and discover you accidently grabbed the hypo instead of the devloper.
3. Processing film is strictly a time & temperature process.
a.Get an accurate probe type dial thermometer (about $10) and use it faithfully. Make absolutely sure your developer is the correct temp before pouring it in the film tank. Actually to prevent reticulation all three chemicals, dev, stop & hypo should be at or very near the same temp. I like to keep them not more than +/- 3degrees. That may sound difficult but its not really. Before you start your developing process get a bucket that can hold all three chemistry bottles, place the bottles in the bucket in your sink, adjust the tap water to the desired temp, then fill the bucket and allow your bottles to set in the bucket for 15 or 20 minutes to stablize their temps before you start processing. (I like to have a fourth bottle of plain water that I use to pre-wet the film before I pour the developer in the tank.)
4. For beginners I like to use a Paterson Plastic Daylight film tank. The reason I like those is because the reels are selfloading. You insert the end of the film about an inch into the outermost slot, then you hold the reel steady with your left hand while holding the opposite side of the reel with your right hand, You then rotate the right hand side clockwise about a 1/4 turn, rotate it back and continue that rotating motion until the entire film is loaded on the reel. Another advantage of the Patterson reels is that you can grip both sides of the reels and pull them outwards and the reel will expand wide enough to handle 120 & 220film which loads the same way. The only difference with the patterson tanks is that instead of turning the tank upside down and right side up again to agitate, the patterson tanks have a small plastic dowel handle that goes down the middie of the top opening and you agitate by rotating the dowel.
5. If you elect to buy a stainless steel tank, I would highly recommend you get a 4 reel tank and get four reels. You may only be souping one roll at a time now, but as you become more proficient you will soon want to do up to four rolls of film at one time to save time. One caveate here. You can process 1,2,3 or 4 rolls at the same time,but regardless of how many rolls of film you load, besure to put all the reels in the tank to take up the space. If you were to only put one reel in a 4reel tank as you invert the tank to agitate, the reel slides to the opposite end of the tank causing the developer to accelerate as it passes through the sprocket holes and you run a very high risk of over developed streaks across your negatives.
NOTE: When buying a stainless steel tank you will see ads for Nikor tanks, which have a stainless steel lid, and sometimes you can find Kinderman tanks, which are stainless steeel tanks with the same reels as a Nikor tank, but the Kinderman has a rubber lid. The both work identically the same, the only difference is that the Kinderman tank is usually about 1/2 the price of the Nikor tank.
If you begin with the stainless steel tank & reels I would strongly suggest you get an old roll of film that you can afford to throw away and practice loading the reels in daylight about 20 or 30 times, then repeat the practice in your changing bag about another 20 or 30 times or until you feel comfortable with the process before you begin loading film that you really want to come out correctly.
6. And last, but certainly not least, as I mentioned above, time is critical. If you feel that you will go on with the developing process i would strongly encourage you to get a Gralab darkroom timer. The Graylab time is a countdown timer that can be set for minutes or seconds and it has a large face and all markings and the clock hands glow in the dark. The gralab timer also two 110volt outlets so later when you start printing you can use the same timer for your enlarger and safelight. Out of curiosity I checked ebay and found about a dozen or more graylab timers for about $40, which I think is a real bargan when I consider I bought mine in 1971 and I paid $79 for it then...LOL
