Yeah, I know this isn't a digital camera question but I'm sure some folks here would be able to make some suggestions.
I recently purchased a very expensive Holga camera ;-) that shoots 120 film. My problem is, I don't have a darkroom in my house and don't know where a good place to get film developed would be. I'd appreciate any suggestions.
Thanks!
Yes, as people have suggested, get yourself a developing tank and a changing bag, or, if you have a room in your dwelling that you can make light-tight, use that. If it has small windows, you can rig up removable covers without too much difficulty, and the right kind of draft-sealing tape round the doors can make them light tight. I used to have a downstairs bathroom I used for this. I also made a little U shaped bench that went over the WC to act as an enlarger table (a bit inconvenient if taken short whilst developing, but you can't have everything). If you decide to lightproof a room, then test it out by going in, shutting all the doors, turning off the light, waiting quarter of an hour and then see if you can detect any glimmers of light leaking through. If you can't, you should be OK.
Loading the tank can be tricky. Best to practice in the light first (you'll trash the film you use, but that's better than trashing an exposed film). When you've got the hang of it, try it in the dark. When you can load a film in the dark, you're ready to try with an exposed film. Once you load it in the tank and close the tank, you can do the rest in the light. First prepare your chemicals according to the instructions given. You need different sests of chemicals for B&W, colour negative and 'chromagenic' B&W (almost invariably C41 process) and colour reversal (almost invariably E-6). I would suggest going for chromagenic B&W (Ilford XP2 being the best known example) and colour negative, because you can use the same chemicals. An advantage of chromagenic film is that you can choose the ISO you use between about 50 and 1600 or so, so it's quite like using digital.
When you've mixed the chemicals, get them up to temperature in a water bath. PET soda bottles are fine for mixing and tempering the chemicals (wash them out first) and the water bath can just be in a sink, or you if you can find a suitable basin or bucket, use that. If you make it hold a lot of water, you can get it to the right temperature by adding hot or boilng water a bit at a time until the temperature is right (you need a thermometer, a modern digital kitchen thermometer is just fine). If you've got a lot of water it will hold the heat well enough to keep the temperature stable. If it does dip, you can add a bit more hot water to the bath.
Once the chemicals are up to temperature, you can process according to the instructions. You need somewhere to pour the used chemical. In the old days we used to empty them down the sink, but this is frowned on these days, so you'll need a container to empty into (if using one-shot processes) and find out where in your neighbourhood you can dispose of them. The final process is washing and drying. If you've kept your water bathe clean you can wash with that - it's a bad idea for the wash to be at a different temperature to the chemicals. Also, you might want to ad some 'rinse agent' to avoid drying marks. You can dry the film by hanging it up somewhere warm and dust free.
Now you have a strip of negatives. The question then is what you are going to do with them. You could get yourself an enlarger, some paper and developing dishes and go for that - or you could just scan them and do the rest digitally. That's probably the easier option these days, but you'll need some kind of scanner. For 120 a good flatbed scanner can work quite well, but is another expense.
Don't think that film is cheaper than digital, you'll find that it can eat up money very fast indeed.
