Early Work In Photography
A Text-book For Beginners

82 Early Work in Photography. off from bench to floor upon each side, so as to avoid the possibility of hypo being splashed into the adjoining spaces. One of the other spaces should be divided into racks for storing development and toning trays, and the other space should contain a well-made cupboard for storing dry plates, mounts, and apparatus in security against dust and damp. It would be convenient to have a couple of drawers fitted above the cupboard, just beneath the top of the bench, for storing various things (such as cutting shapes, and so on) in use. As it will be quite possible for an amateur to use such a room for printing as well as development, it would be well to provide a spring blind of canary fabric to draw over the window while cutting up P.O.P. paper, or trimming prints. We advise a spring roller, because tne blind will then be out of the way of splashes when not in actual use. A small window (about io or 12 inches square) at one end of the enlarging bench, should be fitted with a series of “kits,” or carriers, to take all sizes of plate from % pl. up to 10 x 8, or 12 by X 10; this, also, should have a sliding shutter. A reflector should be fitted outside this window at an angle of 45° in order to throw the light from the sky upon the surface of the negative undergoing enlargement. Should the room be large enough to permit of the enlarging bench being a permanent fixture, instead of on the drop-table principle, we should strongly advise the student to let it form the top of a long cupboard or series of cupboards and drawers. Plenty of bench room and plenty of cupboards will be found most useful; in fact the benefits of accommo- dation of that kind cannot be over-estimated. If it is possible to provide cupboards in that space, we should then reserve one of the lower compartments of the development bench for washing tanks, large bottles of stock solutions, jars of hypo, alum, &c. In addition to the articles we have named many more may be added, according to the inclination or purse of the student; some are luxuries, some mere fads, but none actually neces- sary for the present.