Last time, I was explaining how I became the proud owner of a darkroom setup, and how I came to receive all my awesome loot. Part of that package was a Watson bulk film loader. For those of you who don't know, rather than buying a bunch of individual rolls, you can purchase a 100ft spool of film and, with reusable film canisters, roll your own film. There's a slight economic benefit to this - at Bluemoon Camera and Machine, a 100ft roll of Ilford HP5+ is $67.50. When you roll it yourself, you get can around 20 rolls or so, which makes it $3.37 a roll vs $6.10 individually. Anyway, the Watson roller provides a light proof compartment, as well as a light trap so you can safely roll your film.
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Darkroom Finds /
For quite some time now, I have been toying with the idea of setting up a darkroom in my bathroom. Developing and printing gives you that extra latitude to control your exposures, be it from pushing/pulling in development or dodging and burning. It also gives you an added economic benefit. Not so long ago, I purchased a roll of Fuji Provia 400x at the tune of around $17 for the roll. 35mm Kodak Portra goes at almost $10. And this does not include the cost of developing and scanning (around $9-$15, with the high end for E-6 and B+W). As you can probably tell, it adds up quickly, and I really wanted to find a way to minimize these costs.
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