The Ilford pop up darkroom

A brief review.

Anyone who has used a changing bag for film will know that they come with downsides, most significantly that they’re small, and just generally far less convenient than loading a tank at a table. I’ve found myself in a situation where I have a significant backlog of unprocessed film and a darkroom which is taking a lot longer to finish than it should, and this looked like a wonderful solution: I could set it up, with a table inside it, load tanks, and then process them as usual, in daylight. It might be cramped with an enlarger (not to mention making it very hard to keep dry and wet sides away from each other), but the problem I needed to solve was far simpler.

So how did it work out? Badly, but not for the reason you might expect. In particular I’m sure the thing would be an almost perfect solution to my problem in theory: it’s well made, and folds up into something which could live in a cupboard. If I could use it.

Why can’t I use it? Well, the answer is in Ilford’s setup video, if you look closely. The tent, installed, claims to be 2.2m high and have a floor area of 1.3m by 1.3m, and I am sure that’s right. What is not obvious is that, to set it up requires much more space. So unless you have a room which is very much larger than the final size of the tent, you can’t set it up. How much bigger? I think perhaps 4m by 4m or more (perhaps 13ft6in square, or more). I have a room big enough to set it up … but the passage between that room and the room I want to use it in is not large enough. This is apparent in the video, if you pay attention: it’s being set up in a large room.

Another issue which is also apparent in the video is that you don’t want to set it up on a floor that might get damaged. You’ll be OK on a carpet, but it absolutely is going to make a mess of a wooden or slated floor. We don’t have many carpets.

So these are things to bear in mind, at least, before buying one of these: you want to be very sure you have the space, and that you really don’t care about the floor.

I think there are two cases where it would be ideal. The first is for somebody with a big enough garage with a concrete floor. The second is for anyone doing wet-plate, or who needs to load film-holders for a large-format camera outside. I suspect that the second case is what it’s really for.

But it’s not for me, sadly.