This page is the notebook I wish somebody had handed me two years ago. I'm not a professional and I don't pretend to be. I'm a guy with a 35mm camera, two kids, a small apartment and one bathroom, who wanted to see his own negatives come up in the developer instead of paying the drugstore to do it badly. Everything below is what I actually do, in the order I do it, with the numbers I use. Where it's my number and not the manufacturer's, I say so. Read the sheet that comes in the box. The sheet is always right and I am only usually right.

A darkroom needs three things: total darkness, running water, and a surface to put trays on. A bathroom has two of those. I built the third.

The darkness took the longest. Light leaks under the door, around the door, and around the exhaust fan. I put weatherstripping around the door frame, a rolled towel at the bottom, and a piece of black foam-core taped over the fan grille. To test it: go in, shut the door, sit for ten minutes in the dark, and then look around. If you can see your hand, it's not dark. It took me four tries. The last leak was the keyhole.

The surface is a sheet of ¾-inch plywood, cut to fit over the bathtub, resting on the rim, with a strip of wood screwed to the underside on each end so it can't slide. Three trays fit side by side. The enlarger stands on a board across the sink. Everything comes out when I'm done, because two kids need a bath in the morning, and it takes about twenty minutes to set up and fifteen to break down. Not ideal. But you learn more in a bathroom you actually use than in a perfect darkroom you're still planning.

Almost everything is used. Camera swaps, the want ads, a retiring high school photo teacher, and one yard sale. New, this list would be well over a thousand dollars. Used, it came to about $330 over two years.

Ongoing: film, paper and chemicals. Tri-X runs a few dollars a roll. A 25-sheet box of 8x10 paper is around $20 to $25. A packet of D-76 makes a gallon and costs a few dollars. Fixer about the same. Cheaper than the drugstore, once you've got the gear, and the prints are yours.

Kodak Tri-X, 400 speed, is the film I use for everything. It's forgiving, it's been around forever, and everybody's darkroom notes are written for it. D-76 is Kodak's standard developer, a powder you mix into a gallon of stock solution. Here's my routine, start to finish. Temperature is everything. Everything is at 68°F (20°C). If your water is warmer, set the graduate in a bowl of cold water until it reads 68. If it's cooler, warm it. Then check the developer again right before you pour.

1. Load the film. In the changing bag, in total darkness: pop the cassette, trim the leader square, feed the film onto the reel, put the reel in the tank, lid on. Now you can take it out into the light. Film is panchromatic, meaning it's sensitive to all light including the safelight, so from the moment the cassette opens until the lid is on, it's pitch black or it's ruined.
2. Mix the developer. I use D-76 diluted 1:1, that is, half stock solution and half water, and throw it out after one roll. (Some people use it straight and reuse it. 1:1 one-shot is more consistent for me, and it's cheaper per roll than you'd think.) One roll of 35mm in my tank takes 300 ml, so 150 ml stock plus 150 ml water, at 68°F.
3. Presoak (optional). I fill the tank with plain 68° water for a minute and dump it. Gets the tank and film to temperature. Not everyone does it. I do.
4. Develop. Pour in the developer, start the timer, tap the tank on the counter twice to knock off air bubbles. My time for Tri-X in D-76 1:1 at 68°F is 10 minutes. That's my time, for my enlarger and my taste, arrived at over a year. The data sheet in the film box gives Kodak's starting time, and that's where you should begin. If your negatives come out too dense (dark) and hard to print, cut the time; too thin, add to it.
   Agitation: continuous for the first 30 seconds (slow inversions, over and back, about one a second), then 5 seconds of inversions every 30 seconds after that. Agitate the same way every time. Set the tank down gently in between.
5. Stop. At the end of the time, pour the developer out and pour in stop bath (I use the indicator kind, diluted per the bottle) for 30 seconds with constant agitation. Plain water for a minute works too. The stop bath halts development instantly so your time means something.
6. Fix. Pour out the stop, pour in fixer. With regular Kodak Fixer, 5 to 10 minutes; with a rapid fixer, 2 to 4. Agitate 5 seconds every 30. Fixer dissolves the unexposed silver that's still in the film; until it's fixed, the film is still light-sensitive. After about a minute in the fixer you can open the tank in the light to peek, but let it finish. Fixer can be reused; keep a count of rolls on a piece of tape on the bottle.
7. Wash. This is the step everyone rushes and shouldn't. Leftover fixer will turn your negatives brown in a few years. Either: hypo clearing agent for 2 minutes, then 5 minutes running water. Or: no clearing agent, 20 to 30 minutes running water at about 68°. I fill and dump the tank a dozen times over that span instead of leaving the tap running.
8. Wetting agent. 30 seconds in water with a couple of drops of Photo-Flo so the film dries without water spots. Don't agitate, just a slow dunk.
9. Hang to dry. Clip the film to the shower curtain rod, a clip on the bottom for weight, in the bathroom with the door shut so dust stays out. Two hours, or overnight. Don't squeegee it. Don't touch it. Go to bed.
10. Cut and sleeve. In strips of six, into plastic negative pages. Write the date and subject on the page. Number the pages. Future you will thank you.

That's it. The first roll I did, I stood in the kitchen with the timer going and my heart pounding like I'd stolen something. When I pulled the reel out and held the wet film up to the window and there were pictures on it, pictures I'd taken, that I'd brought out myself, I let out a yell and woke up my daughter. It doesn't get old.

A safelight is a dim lamp with a colored filter that black-and-white paper can't see, so you can work with the paper out in the open. Rules I follow:

• Film is never safe under a safelight. Film sees every color. Load it in the changing bag or in total darkness. No exceptions.
• Paper is safe under the right filter, at the right distance, for a limited time. For ordinary black-and-white papers the standard filter is the amber one (Kodak calls it OC). Bulb no brighter than 15 watts. Safelight at least 4 feet from the paper. And don't leave paper sitting out under it for ten minutes while you fiddle; keep it in the box until you need it.
• Test it. This is the one people skip. Under the safelight, take a sheet of paper out of the box, put a few coins on it, and leave it there for 4 or 5 minutes. Develop it. If you can see the shadows of the coins, even faintly, your safelight is fogging your paper: too bright, too close, wrong filter or a cracked one. Fogged paper gives you gray highlights instead of white and you'll blame everything else first. I did.
• The door. A sign on the outside that says DO NOT OPEN. My kids can read. My wife knocks. The cat does not, and the cat is why the door locks.

A contact sheet is one 8x10 print with every frame from the roll on it, the same size as the negatives. You make it first, so you can see the whole roll and pick what's worth enlarging, with a magnifier and a grease pencil.

1. Safelight on, white light off. Raise the enlarger head so the light covers a bit more than an 8x10 area on the baseboard, no negative in the carrier. Set the lens to f/8.
2. Take out one sheet of paper, emulsion (shiny) side up, on the baseboard. Lay the negative pages on top, emulsion side down (the dull side of the film faces the paper, the shiny side faces up toward the lens). Lay the sheet of glass over everything to press it flat.
3. Expose. My starting point with my enlarger is 10 seconds at f/8 with the head all the way up, but that's my setup. Do a test strip the first time and write down what works.
4. Develop, stop, fix, wash, like any print (below).

A good contact sheet has the film edges (the rebate, the part with the frame numbers) coming out nearly black. If they're gray, it needs more exposure.

Printing, the short version: the paper goes into paper developer (Dektol, diluted 1:2 with water, at 68°F) for about 2 minutes for fiber-based paper, about a minute for resin-coated. Slide it in face down and then flip it, rock the tray gently the whole time. Then 30 seconds in stop bath. Then fixer, 2 to 4 minutes with rapid fixer, and you can turn on the white light after the first minute. Then wash: resin-coated paper is done in 4 or 5 minutes of running water; fiber paper needs a good half hour or more, or hypo clearing agent first. Dry face up on screens, or resin-coated on a towel.

Never guess the exposure for a print. Make a test strip. It costs one-quarter of a sheet of paper and saves you three whole sheets.

1. Negative in the carrier, enlarger focused with the grain focuser, image composed on the easel, lens stopped down to f/8 or f/11. Safelight only.
2. Cut a sheet of paper into strips, in the dark (keep the rest in the box). Lay one strip across an important part of the image, something with a highlight and a shadow in it, like a face.
3. Set the timer for 3 seconds. Cover all but one-fifth of the strip with a piece of cardboard. Expose 3 seconds. Move the card to uncover another fifth. Expose 3 more. And so on, five times. Now the strip has bands of 3, 6, 9, 12 and 15 seconds.
4. Develop it for the full time (don't pull it early because it "looks done"; that's the number one beginner mistake and the print will lie to you). Stop, fix, and look at it under the white light.
5. Pick the band where the highlights have detail and the shadows are black but not solid. Say it's 9. Make the print at 9 seconds. If it's between two bands, split it.

If the whole strip is too dark, close the lens down a stop and try again. If it's all too light, open up. Write the final exposure and f-stop on the back of the print in pencil. Two years from now you'll want to print it again and you'll have it.

A negative almost never prints perfectly straight. There's a face that's too dark or a sky that's blank white. Dodging and burning is how you fix that, one part of the picture at a time, with your hands and some cardboard. Remember: on a print, more light makes it darker.

Dodging holds light back from a part of the print to keep it lighter. Cut a small shape out of cardboard, tape it to a piece of stiff wire, and during the exposure hold it over the too-dark spot (a face in shadow, say) for part of the time. If the print is 12 seconds, dodging the face for 4 of them gives the face 8 seconds and everything else 12. Keep the tool moving, a little wiggle the whole time, or you'll print a hard-edged shape of the cardboard and the wire.

Burning gives extra light to a part of the print to make it darker. After the main exposure, hold a big piece of cardboard with a hole in it (or just your cupped hands) over the easel so light only reaches the part you want darker (a washed-out sky), and give it more time. Same rule: keep it moving. A sky might get 5 or 10 seconds extra. A bright window might get 20.

I make a little pencil map of every print I dodge or burn, on the back of the test strip: "face -4, sky +8, corners +3." When it works, the print looks like nothing was done to it. That's the goal. Nobody should be able to tell.

Nothing exotic. I don't travel. I photograph what's within about ten blocks of the apartment, because that's where I am.

The neighborhood. The fire escapes, the corner store with the hand-painted sign, the men who play dominoes on the folding table outside the barbershop, the laundromat at night with every window lit, the elevated train and the light it throws under the tracks in the afternoon. I've been photographing the same six blocks for two years and I'm not done with them. Black-and-white film sees a city differently than your eye does. The grime turns into texture and the light turns into the subject.

My kids. A daughter, 7, and a son, 4. Not posed; I stopped trying. I keep the camera loaded and on the shelf by the door, and I've learned to work at f/2.8 by the window light in the kitchen without the flash, which they hate. The best print I've ever made is my daughter reading on the floor with the afternoon coming across the linoleum. It's not a good photograph by any rule I've read. It's the one that's on the wall.

The weekly roll. One roll a week, 36 frames, developed Sunday night after they're asleep. Some weeks I get one frame worth printing. Some weeks none. That's the average, I'm told.

I don't own a scanner, and I'm not buying one before I buy a bigger enlarger lens. The public library branch on our street has a flatbed scanner on one of the computers you can sign up for, half an hour at a time. I'm on the list for two Saturdays in October. Plan is six prints from the neighborhood and two of the kids, scanned small enough to load on a modem. The daughter-on-the-floor print will be first. Check back.