Lighting A Dark Room

M

MattSegerFilms

Active member
Hello,

In the upcoming weeks I will be shooting a Cinema-Verite style documentary on 35mm vs Digital Photography from loading the camera to printing. I need to shoot most of the 35mm section inside of a darkroom. I am able to bring lights into the room, and setup whatever is needed to make it look good. What are some lighting techniques, equipment, and gels that I might need to pull this off. I have access to LED's, Fresnels, HMI's and whatever other equipment is necessary.

Thanks everyone.

- Matt Seger
 
MattSegerFilms said:
Hello,

In the upcoming weeks I will be shooting a Cinema-Verite style documentary on 35mm vs Digital Photography from loading the camera to printing. I need to shoot most of the 35mm section inside of a darkroom. I am able to bring lights into the room, and setup whatever is needed to make it look good. What are some lighting techniques, equipment, and gels that I might need to pull this off. I have access to LED's, Fresnels, HMI's and whatever other equipment is necessary.

Thanks everyone.

- Matt Seger
Click to expand...

In most, if not all, depictions of 'darkrooms' that I've seen in The Movies, they have all been 'lit' with normal lighting in mind, relative to the sensitivity of the film/sensor used to capture the scene by the camera.

Sure, there's a 'red' light glow/cast covering everything, but the levels of illumination are far higher than what would be allowed for an operational dark room, which for Black and White processing of Prints, would be a low wattage (like about 10-15W) bulb behind a dark Safelight filter.. in other words, almost nothing... for 'hand' developing 35mm film, it would be canisters for the film and developing solutions. Once the 35mm had been loaded onto reels in either an absolutely 'dark room', or via a 'changing bag', the processing with the canisters could take place in open lighting.

For 4x5 'hand' development there may be 1) frames for the 4x5 negatives, 2) tank to hold frames and solutions, or alternatively, 3) 'hand' cycling the negative sheets in an open tray.... all under absolute darkness for the entire process until the beginning of the wash cycle. For some types of 'ortho' films one could have a 'safe' light on during the process but again it would be a pretty low intensity, such as for print work, since B&W is essentially an orthgraphic film...

Industrial 35mm processing would involve creating a 'long' reel of multiple 35mm still film segments, and feeding that reel through a series of tanks, with the film dipping into each tank for the time required. (there are some variations of that theme...). But again, the room were the tanks were located would be pitch black for the processing time.

For color printing, absolute darkness would be required. (Well... Ok, I recall there being an incredible low light/filter combo tha could be used to fumble one's way around... but for the most part the process is 'pitch black' dark...).

Also, while it may have been the case for some 'darkrooms', in the one's I used, and the ones I've built at home, no one put wet prints on a clothesline... we had racks of screens that allowed the prints to 'air dry' or a drum dryer for more 'mass production' or 'quick dry' operations. Even for Resin Coated (RC) paper, racks were used. The process was:

1) remove image from water wash,
2) Squeegy excess water off print, both sides.
3) lay on drying rack, or conveyor to drum.
4) Wait till dry.

For just finished fixer review of the print...

Place print in small tray, go to 'light' area via a light trap doorway. One could turn on the lights in one's home darkroom, provided one had light safes for papers...
 
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This was covered in a long thread some time back.

Looking at movies from the darkroom days, it seems they're generally lit sort of low key and filtered red-orange. Here in the modern day, I'd do something like day-for-darkroom and re-color in post. I'd try to work it where any shots of a print "developing" are done in post as well - just fade the image onto a blank paper, maybe play with your lights to shoot a displacement map of any liquid distortion over the print. The water's not deep so displacement would be minimal anyway. If you want someone moving the print, put some tracking marks on it.
 
MattSegerFilms said:
Precisely, yes.
Click to expand...

You realize that exposed film is still light sensitive, yes? Any light you use in a dark room during film development will expose the film and ruin it -- it's called a dark room for a reason. What you can do, is use infrared. You'd have to use infrared lights, and some way to translate infrared into wavelengths that your camera can see (if your camera won't do infrared -- and some do go down fairly far into the infrared part of the spectrum). The reason to do this is that you can actually pull the partially developed film out of the developer and "see" how the image changes as it develops. It's a technique called "development by inspection". Do a websearch on that term and you'll pull a bunch of stuff on it.

Or, you can fake it, which is what I recommend. Use fully processed film for your demo, water in place of chemicals (so you don't contaminate anything), and light as you need. If you want it to look "authentic" then simulate filming through an infrared detector by making your image black and green (as opposed to black and white) in post. Add lots of grain, as most infrared detectors are fairly low resolution (big pixels).

Darkroom safelights for printing (not film developing, but making prints), use an amber filter (not red, amber). You can find out which color exactly from the Kodak website (IIRC you're looking for an OC filter). I'm sure there are gels to use on lights to give you that color, but I've never had any need of them myself. Depending on the darkroom, they may be using an old Thompson safelight -- which can put out a surprising amount of light -- enough to film under. And it will be the correct wavelength. What you'll get with this will be black and amber (again, as opposed to black and white). No other colors will show -- all other colors will show as grades of amber, depending on what they can reflect back to you of course.
 
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