When I got back into film photography, I told myself that I would go as far as developing my own negatives, but after that I would just digitize them and not go as far as doing prints in the darkroom. Yeah right! I held out a couple of years, but this winter/spring the thought of making my own prints grew on me and finally I decided that I just had to make my own makeshift darkroom. I wanted to see my images appear in front of my eyes, not just as a digital image on the screen. I wanted something tangible and not just in the form of a negative.

so where would I start? My house is not big enough so that I can have a permanent darkroom, but one of the storage rooms where big enough, so that I could set up a mobile darkroom. Easy to put up and easy to take down. There was only a small window in the room which was pretty easy to cover with a black board. I also found some lightproof fabric which I lined with velcro. added velcro to the frame around the window too. Did the same to the door since there was a thin ray of light getting through it. and that was it. The room was lightproofed. And the nice thing is that in the adjacent room, I have a sink.

Now I just needed some equipment, so I went to the internet and started to search on ebay and other sites to find what I needed. I didn’t want to spend a whole lot of money before I knew if I was going to spned a lot of time in a darkroom. Maybe I got bored after a short while. So I found trays, tongs and used chemical bottles and payed next to nothing actually. Not everything analog costs an arm and a leg.

But I still needed the most important thing. An enlarger. And there are plenty of them both on ebay and more local markedplaces on the internet. But none of them “spoke” to me. There were really cheap 35mm enlargers out there and also enlarger for medium format that didn’t cost that much. But an enlarger that only did 35mm was out of the question. I wanted one that could handle both that and medium format. Most of the ones I found at a fair price did 6x6. At the time being that’s the format I use the most, but in the future I hope to get a 6x9 camera of some sort and it would be to bad if I couldn’t enlarge those.

My solution was to construct my own. and yes I know. Intrepid sell an enlarger that actually does this, but know I had decided that a DIY enlarger was what I wanted. I also like to build, tinker and work with my hands, so why not. I had to get a few parts that I couldn’t make myself. For one, a lens. And also a socket for the light. Through ebay I found a lamp socket from a Durst M301 that suited me well. With these two things acquired I could start the construction.

I decided to first make a simpe prototype, so after doing some measurements I built mye prototype with tape and cardboard for the most parts. Put it all together in just a few days and you know what? It worked. It actually gave me a better result than I had thought from a simple prototype.

I made the focus mechanism from an old macro rail I had and a set of cheap bellows I found on ebay. It took a lot of tape to put it together and to make it as lightproof as possible all other places than the light that should go through the lens. I found a piece of frosted acrylic plastic in the garage and cut that to size.

As I said, it was a great success and from there I decided to build the whole thing in a sturdier material. That material was basically 3mm plywood. Not to thick and not to thin. I had to recheck and redo a few measurements but for the most part, my first drawings were good. So between work, renovating projects and a lot of other things I began constructing my enlarger in the garage. I reused the lift mechanism and a few other things and after finishing up I had a more or less exact copy of my first enlarger, but now in a better material that would hold up a lot better and that would be practical to use.

The enlarger was done and I had a copystand bought on ebay to which I mounted the enlarger to. That first day I made 6 enlargements on paper. I spent a lot of time in that darkroom and I loved every second of it. For the first time since the late 80’s I was back into printing in the darkroom.

I had made negative carriers for 35mm and for 6x6 and they both came out as it should. The enlarger was a bit rough around the edges and when it came to edges they could have been sharper too, but it worked. So for a short while this was good enough for me. Right until a friend of mine who saw what I had made told me that he was really into 3D printing. Well, I guess it’s no surprise that just after a few minutes of talk, a 3D printed version of my enlarger was being planned. I went back to my drawings and measurements and sat down in front of my computer and tried to learn just what was needed to draw this thing in Sketchup.

And now it’s done. It has been printed, mounted on the copystand and tested. It also works like a charm and everything about it is a bit more precise and sophisticated than the one made of plywood. I ‘ve also added a mount for a holder for contrastfilters below the lens, a better difuser than the first one and a glass plate that sits in the negative carrier so that the negatives are completely flat. The only addition I’m still waiting for is a taller copystand than the small one i got today. Right now I’m able to do 25x25cm prints, but with the new copystand I probably can make 40x40 prints without turning the enlarger 90 degrees and using the wall.

Except for taking up film photography again, this is the most fun I’ve had with my hobby in a long, long time. The joy of creating something cannot be beat. So now I can control the whole process myself. I take the pictures, I develop the negatives, I go into the darkroom and make enlargements on paper and finally I make my own frames.

And one more thing. I mentioned that I wanted an enlarger that could do both 35mm and up to 6x9 medium format. This one does… and further more… It can actually handle 4x5 large format it seems. I haven’t tried it since I don’t do large format, but my calculations and a CAD design for a 4x5 negative holder, carrier and masks tells me that it should work. I’ve given my CAD files to someone that does 4x5 photography so maybe in a while I’ll get the answer. Will practice back up my theory. Time will show.

Bulding an enlarger

My analog-digital workflow