The Pure Silver laboratory planner
The planner answers the question every beginner asks and every course avoids: what does this actually cost, and when do I need it? It lists every item of equipment, glassware, material and chemistry the written parts require, tagged with the part that first asks for it, whether it is essential or optional, how much of it, a relative cost band from £ to ££££, and — where the course could establish one — a dated price with the listing it was read from. Each item also says whether it can be built rather than bought, whether it is sensible to buy second-hand, how it must be stored, how important it is to safety, and how long it should last.
Nothing here is a shopping list somebody thought would be useful. Every item names the page whose Materials, Chemicals, Equipment or Parts section asks for it, a build-time check refuses a path that does not resolve, and a second check refuses an item filed under a part later than the page that first needs it. If the course does not ask you to own something, it is not on this page.
The short answer
Section titled “The short answer”Before Part I you need a self-healing cutting mat, a steel rule, a craft knife, black tape, a cardboard box, kitchen foil, black card, matt black paint, a sheet of picture-frame glass with its edges taped, a notebook and a pencil, a timer, a packet of sewing needles, and — for the two assignments — four sheets of resin-coated photographic paper and six to eight sheets of pre-coated cyanotype paper. Most of it is already in the house. The cutting mat and the steel rule are the purchases worth making properly, because they are the protective equipment for every cutting session in the course.
Before Part II the laboratory begins: gloves, eye protection, an apron, a balance, graduates, a thermometer, storage bottles, labels, a containment tray and an eyewash bottle.
Before Part IV the two items that change the hazard assessment arrive: sealed splash goggles, and the silver-bearing waste container that stands open on the bench for the whole of any session with silver in it. Part IV is also where the tray sequence starts, which means paper, dishes, tongs, a safelight and three concentrates.
By Part VIII you are buying almost nothing new. The flagship developer part needs four common solids, two bottles, two rolls of film and a mask for the weighing. Everything else it uses was bought for Part II. That is the shape of the whole course: the spending is front-loaded into protection and measurement, and the chemistry is cheap.
The stages, and where they stop matching the parts
Section titled “The stages, and where they stop matching the parts”Items are grouped into the seven purchase stages the what you need page sets out: safety and the chemistry laboratory; film processing; the pinhole camera; contact printing; the enlarger and timer; the emulsion laboratory; and the alternative processes.
A stage is a set of kit, not a moment in the reading order, and the two have come apart. The stage model was written expecting a reader to process film before printing, which is the order most darkroom books use. The course as written does not do that. Part IV puts a full tray sequence in front of the reader — paper, dishes, tongs, a safelight, developer, stop and fixer — two parts before the first film is processed in Part VI, because seeing a latent image become visible is what Part IV is about. So stage 3 arrives before stage 1, and a reader who buys strictly by stage number arrives at Part IV without any of it.
The fix is not to renumber the stages, which several pages already refer to by name. It is to read the planner by the part that first needs an item, which is what the next table gives you, and to treat the stage groups as what they are: a way of buying related things together.
Two stages are not settled. Stage 4 waits on Parts XVI and XVII, which build the enlarger and the timer and are not written; the one item it carries is an enlarger, which a Part IV page names as an optional convenience, and that single sentence is the whole of what the written course can trace. Stage 6 waits on Parts XXI to XXV. The one alternative-process material the written course actually buys is pre-coated cyanotype paper for Part I’s photogram, and it is listed in stage 0, where a reader will need it.
The budget paths
Section titled “The budget paths”| Path | Stages | Essential items | Priced floor | Not yet priced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Explorer | 0, 1, 2, 3 | 78 | £466.05–£765.11 | 49 |
| Complete Silver Darkroom | 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 | 78 | £466.05–£765.11 | 49 |
| Full Pure Silver Laboratory | 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 | 97 | £533.35–£832.41 | 66 |
- Explorer. The smallest complete route: the chemistry laboratory, film processing, the pinhole camera and contact printing.
- Complete Silver Darkroom. Adds the enlarger and the timer, and the broader chemistry of fine printing and toning.
- Full Pure Silver Laboratory. Adds emulsion making, glass plates and the alternative processes — everything the advanced and specialist levels need.
| Stage | Settled by the written parts? | Items | Essential | Priced floor, essential only | Not yet priced |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0. Safety and the chemistry laboratory | Yes | 53 | 51 | £204.22–£348.35 | 37 |
| 1. Black-and-white film processing | Yes | 10 | 8 | £117.23–£170.13 | 2 |
| 2. The pinhole camera | Yes | 13 | 10 | £22.99–£35.79 | 8 |
| 3. Contact printing | Yes | 11 | 9 | £121.61–£210.84 | 2 |
| 4. The enlarger and the timer | No, not yet | 1 | 0 | — | 0 |
| 5. The emulsion laboratory | Yes | 20 | 19 | £67.30 | 17 |
| 6. Alternative processes | No, not yet | 0 | 0 | — | 0 |
Explorer and Complete Silver Darkroom come to the same figure today, and that is not an error: the only difference between them is stage 4, whose single traceable item is an optional enlarger. The two paths will separate when Parts XVI and XVII are written and the enlarger, the timer, the lens and the easel become items the course actually requires.
A priced floor is the sum of the essential items the planner could price. It is a floor and not a total: the last column of each table says how many essential items in that scope carry a cost band and no number, and every one of those adds to the real figure. Read the floor as “at least this much”, and read the unpriced count as how much of the answer is still missing.
The floors also exclude everything optional, and some of the optional items are the expensive ones — a second-hand sheet-film holder, a contact printing frame, an enlarger. That is deliberate. The essential set is what the course cannot be done without, and it is the number a reader is entitled to trust.
What to buy before each part
Section titled “What to buy before each part”The items
Section titled “The items”Stage 0 Safety and the chemistry laboratory
Protection, the bench, the instruments, the containers and the first chemistry — plus the handful of household materials Part I asks for before any of it, because Part I comes before the first solution is poured.
Essential 51 of 53 items · Priced floor £204.22–£348.35 plus 37 essential items with no price
Camera and optics
Coloured lighting gels£essentialfrom Part 1
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One swatch book, or a small piece each of red, green, blue, orange and yellow
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Flat, out of heat, with the maker and filter number kept with them
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Years
Record the maker and the number of every gel you use. A gel without its number is a filter whose transmission nobody can look up, and Parts IV and V both compare materials through them.
Opaque blackout material£essentialfrom Part 1household object
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- Enough to cover one window with 100 mm spare all round
- Budget
- Bin liners and several thicknesses of cardboard
- Recommended
- Blackout curtain lining or heavy black polythene
- Build or buy
- Test any candidate by holding it up to a bright window and looking: it must pass no light at all
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Folded, dry
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Years, and it is the beginning of the darkroom Part XVI builds
- Asked for by
- the camera obscura
Rigid cardboard box, aluminium foil and stiff black card£essentialfrom Part 1household objectused up
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One box about 250 to 350 mm on its longest side, one roll of heavy-duty foil, two or three sheets of black card
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Dry and flat. The box has to survive until Part VI, where it is the tin route’s ancestor
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- The box lasts one course; the foil and card are consumed
Heavy-duty foil is easier to pierce cleanly than the thin sort, which matters because the aperture is the instrument.
Chemistry
Distilled or deionised water£essentialfrom Part 2household objectused up
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- 2 L for the commissioning session; 1 L for the pH session; about 175 ml a batch for Part V’s emulsions
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Capped. Open deionised water picks up carbon dioxide and drifts acid within days
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Consumed
Sold by the five litres for steam irons in every supermarket. Part II does not need it for the chemistry and asks for it anyway, to remove one variable from the gravimetric check and to start the habit.
Sodium chloride£essentialfrom Part 2household objectused up
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- About 150 g for the commissioning session; 0.58 g in Part IV; 2.0 g a batch in Part V
- Budget
- Supermarket table salt, plain, without anti-caking agent or iodide if you can get it
- Recommended
- The same, with the label kept and the form recorded
- Laboratory grade
- A reagent-grade salt, which the course needs only where it is the reagent rather than the prop
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Dry and capped, with its label
- Safety
- No safety role. The one substance Part II commissions on precisely because it lets a first-time reader concentrate on the instrument rather than the hazard.
- Lifetime
- Indefinite if it stays dry
pH buffer standards at 4.01 and 7.00££essentialfrom Part 3used up
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- Two sachets or about 100 ml of each: one for calibration, one kept sealed as a check
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Sealed, cool, and never poured back into the bottle after use
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. Composition varies by supplier. Read the safety data sheet that comes with yours; a buffer sachet is a good first real use of the skill Part II teaches.
- Lifetime
- They have a shelf life printed on them and they are consumed. Budget for them again
- Asked for by
- measuring ph
Sodium carbonate, anhydrous£essentialfrom Part 3used up
£7.20 per 500 g, anhydrous — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Firstcall Photographic, Bellini Sodium Carbonate anhydrous - 500g, £7.20)
Part III measures the pH of washing soda from a supermarket, which is the decahydrate and costs a fraction of this. The photographic-grade anhydrous salt is what Part VIII's aerial oxidation experiment weighs, because the arithmetic assumes the anhydrous molar mass.
- How much
- About 10 g of supermarket washing soda for the pH session; 27.0 g of the anhydrous salt for the oxidation experiment
- Budget
- Supermarket washing soda, which is usually the decahydrate — 286.14 g/mol against 105.99, so 37.0 per cent carbonate by mass. Note on your label which form you have
- Recommended
- The photographic-grade anhydrous salt, which is what the oxidation experiment’s arithmetic assumes
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Dry and capped. The anhydrous salt takes up water from the air and becomes a hydrate you did not weigh
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. Chemical Safety Card 1135 records severe eye irritation, which is why eye protection is worn for the pH session as well as for the developer one.
- Lifetime
- Years dry
- Asked for by
- measuring ph, aerial oxidation experiment
Household ammonia solution£optionalfrom Part 4household objectused upsafety-critical
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- 20 ml, for the optional stage only
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Capped, cool, and never near an acid or a bleach
- Safety
- Safety-critical. An optional stage with a quench note attached, which is to be read before the bottle is opened rather than after.
- Lifetime
- It loses strength in the bottle as ammonia escapes
- Asked for by
- precipitating the silver halides
Plain culinary gelatin£essentialfrom Part 4household objectused up
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- 1 g, to make 50 ml at 2 per cent w/v
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Dry, capped
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Indefinite dry
- Asked for by
- precipitating the silver halides
Part IV explicitly accepts any plain culinary gelatin, because there it is a demonstration of what a colloid does to a precipitate. Part V needs the inert photographic grade, which is a different item and a different price.
Potassium bromide££essentialfrom Part 4used up
£23.00 per 250 g — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Firstcall Photographic, Bellini Potassium Bromide - 250g, £23.00)
Part IV weighs 1.19 g of it and each of Part V's emulsion makes weighs 5 g, so 250 g is roughly forty makes. It is also the restrainer of every developer in Part VIII.
- How much
- 1.19 g in Part IV; 5 g a batch in Part V; a few tenths of a gram as a restrainer in Part VIII
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Dry and capped, with the rest of the halides
- Safety
- Safety-relevant.
- Lifetime
- A 250 g jar is roughly forty emulsion makes and a lifetime of restrainer
Potassium iodide££essentialfrom Part 4used up
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- 1.66 g in Part IV; 0.1 g a batch in Part V, dispensed as 1 ml of a 10 per cent w/v solution
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Dry, dark and capped. It yellows in light and air as iodine is liberated
- Safety
- Safety-relevant.
- Lifetime
- The smallest jar sold will outlast the course at 0.1 g a batch
Silver nitrate££££essentialfrom Part 4used upsafety-critical
£59.95–£112.90 per one jar: 25 g at the lower figure, 10 g at the higher — a range across named suppliers, checked 5 September 2026 (Parallax Photographic Coop, Silver Nitrate 25g, £59.95; Firstcall Photographic, Bellini Silver Nitrate - 10g, £112.90)
Read this one carefully before you budget. Per gram the two listings are £2.40 and £11.29, a factor of 4.7, and the course cannot explain the difference from the listings alone — the cheaper one was out of stock and the dearer one is a small photographic-grade jar. Silver is also the one substance here whose price moves with a commodity market rather than with a retailer. Treat the low figure as what silver nitrate ought to cost and the high figure as what you may actually have to pay for a small jar today, and check both before you commit: Part V's five emulsion makes need 5 g each, which is one 25 g jar for the first five sessions.
- How much
- Under 1 g for the whole of Part IV’s experiment; 5 g for each of Part V’s four makes
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- In the dark, in its own container, in the tray, away from every organic material and every reducing agent. Part II’s handling page owns the rules
- Safety
- Safety-critical. H272, may intensify fire; H314, severe skin burns and eye damage; H400 and H410 for aquatic toxicity, all from the harmonised CLP entry. The glove permeation guide this course read has no entry for it at all, so gloves are splash protection and not an immersion barrier.
- Lifetime
- Years in the dark. It stains everything it touches, including you, and the stain darkens in daylight over days
The one substance in the course that has its own handling lesson — Part II’s silver nitrate page — its own standard operating procedure and its own waste stream. Budget it as the item that decides Part V’s cost, and read the price record before you do: the two UK listings the planner found differ by a factor of nearly five per gram.
Sodium thiosulfate pentahydrate£essentialfrom Part 4used upsafety-critical
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- 5 g for Part IV, then 490 g for Part XI’s mixing lab — 250 g for a litre of plain hypo at 25 per cent w/v and 240 g for a litre of the acid hardening bath
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Dry and capped, and never beside an acid
- Safety
- Safety-critical. Thiosulfate meeting an acid releases sulfur dioxide. It is one of the pairs on Part II’s incompatibility matrix and it is kept apart from the stop bath on the shelf, not only in the tray.
- Lifetime
- Years dry
The salt, not a bought rapid fixer. Part IV makes its own fixing bath from it so that the reader can watch a silver halide dissolve into a complex and can compute what that bath’s capacity is. Part XI mixes two litres from it, which is where the packet size starts to matter: buy the largest you will use inside a couple of years.
Borax, decahydrate£essentialfrom Part 8used up
£9.98 per 200 g, decahydrate — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Firstcall Photographic, Bellini Borax - 200g, £9.98)
2 g per litre of D-76, so 200 g is a hundred litres and a lifetime's supply. The general-chemical suppliers list borax decahydrate from about £2.95, but without a stated pack size the figure could not be used.
- How much
- 2.0 g per litre of D-76
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Dry and capped
- Safety
- Safety-relevant.
- Lifetime
- A 200 g pack is a hundred litres of D-76 and will outlive the darkroom
- Asked for by
- mixing d23 and d76
One of the two weights in D-76 where ±0.1 g is ±5 per cent, and Kodak’s own statement is that the quantity of alkali governs the energy of a developer. This is the item that argues for the 0.01 g balance.
Hydroquinone££essentialfrom Part 8used upsafety-critical
£11.89 per 50 g — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Firstcall Photographic, Bellini Hydroquinone - 50g, £11.89)
One jar is ten litres of D-76 at 5 g each, or twenty of the aerial oxidation experiment's hydroquinone stock.
- How much
- 5.0 g per litre of D-76; 2.44 g for the oxidation experiment
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Dry, dark and capped
- Safety
- Safety-critical. H317 allergic skin reaction, H318 serious eye damage, H341 suspected genetic defects and H351 suspected carcinogen, from the harmonised CLP entry with ECHA notifications agreeing above 99 per cent.
- Lifetime
- A 50 g jar is ten litres of D-76
- Asked for by
- mixing d23 and d76, aerial oxidation experiment
Metol££essentialfrom Part 8used upsafety-critical
£16.20 per 50 g — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Firstcall Photographic, Bellini Metol - 50g, £16.20)
Part VIII's lab uses 9.5 g of it, so one jar is five makes of D-76 and D-23 together, and about £0.32 per litre of D-76.
- How much
- 9.5 g for a litre of each of D-76 and D-23; 1.50 g for the oxidation experiment
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Dry, dark, capped and cool. It oxidises in the jar and a discoloured metol is a weakened one
- Safety
- Safety-critical. H317, may cause an allergic skin reaction, in 100 per cent of ECHA notifications and in the harmonised CLP entry. Skin sensitisation is the reason the developer pages insist on gloves rather than suggesting them, and the reason a mask is worn for the weighing.
- Lifetime
- A 50 g jar is five litres of D-76 and D-23 together; it ages faster in the jar than you will use it
- Asked for by
- mixing d23 and d76, aerial oxidation experiment
Sodium sulfite, anhydrous££essentialfrom Part 8used upsafety-critical
£13.68–£19.98 per 1 kg, anhydrous — a range across named suppliers, checked 5 September 2026 (Firstcall Photographic, Bellini Sodium Sulphite anhydrous - 1kg, £13.68; Firstcall Photographic, Laboldtech Sodium Sulphite Anhydrous - 1kg, £19.98)
At 100 g per litre in both D-76 and D-23, a kilogram is ten litres of developer and is the bulkiest thing on the chemistry shelf. It is also the substance with the shortest useful life once opened, because it oxidises in the jar.
- How much
- 100 g per litre in both D-76 and D-23, so 200 g for the lab; 9.0 g for the oxidation experiment; 15 g of the anhydrous salt, or 30 g of the crystals, for Part XI’s acid hardening fixer
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Dry and tightly capped, away from acids. It oxidises to the sulfate in a loosely closed jar
- Safety
- Safety-critical. H314, severe skin burns and eye damage, in its aggregated ECHA classification, and it releases sulfur dioxide on contact with acid. Part II changed its own commissioning session away from sulfite for exactly that reason.
- Lifetime
- A kilogram is ten litres of developer, and the bag ages once it is opened
The bulkiest thing on the chemistry shelf and the one whose weight matters least: ±0.1 g on 100 g is undetectable. Which is why Part VIII uses it to teach where tolerance does and does not matter.
Containers and containment
Shallow plastic tray or basin, dedicated£essentialfrom Part 1household object
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One, larger than your paper
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- With the darkroom kit, never with the kitchen
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. Kept for this work and nothing else; never a container also used for food.
- Lifetime
- Years
- Asked for by
- cyanotype photogram
Superseded by proper developing dishes at Part IV, but it is what washes the first cyanotype and it stays useful as the fourth tray every wet session needs.
Containment tray for the working area£essentialfrom Part 2household objectsafety-critical
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One, large enough to hold the entire contents of the largest vessel standing in it
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- On the wet side, empty, ready
- Safety
- Safety-critical. This is the secondary containment Part II’s storage page requires, and on the silver pages it is what gets stained instead of the worktop, the grout and the sink.
- Lifetime
- Years
A cat-litter tray or a large seed tray does the job. Size it by the largest bottle, not by the bench.
Silver-bearing waste container£essentialfrom Part 2household objectsafety-critical
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One of about 1 L to begin with, standing open in the tray; a larger sealed drum once you are processing regularly
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Open on the wet side during a session, sealed and labelled between sessions, out of the light
- Safety
- Safety-critical. It stands open in the tray for the whole of any session with silver in it, because a container you have to go and fetch is a container that does not get used. Nothing silver-bearing goes down the drain.
- Lifetime
- Until it is full and taken to a reception site
Storage bottles with sealing caps££essentialfrom Part 2safety-critical
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One 500 ml and one 250 ml to begin with; two 1 L brown or opaque bottles for Part VIII, plus two spares
- Budget
- Rinsed high-density polyethylene bottles that never held food, relabelled
- Recommended
- Bought HDPE or brown glass bottles with lined caps, in sizes that match the volumes you actually mix
- Laboratory grade
- Amber glass with a PTFE-lined closure, which matters for anything that oxidises in the bottle
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Upright, in the tray, labelled to Part II’s scheme before anything goes in them
- Safety
- Safety-critical. Never a food or drink container, however well labelled. Part II’s labelling and storage pages own this rule.
- Lifetime
- Years, until a cap stops sealing
Brown or opaque for developers. A developer in a clear bottle in a lit room is a developer oxidising where you can watch it.
Darkroom
Picture-frame glass or a clip frame£essentialfrom Part 1household object
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One, slightly larger than your paper
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- A charity-shop clip frame is the cheapest good answer and holds pressure evenly
- Storage
- Edges taped, flat, where it cannot be knocked over
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. Tape the edges before the first use. This is the cut hazard of Parts I, IV and V and it is entirely preventable.
- Lifetime
- Years
This is the course’s contact printing frame until Part XVI builds a real one. Parts IV, V and VII all print under glass and a weight and say so.
Glassware and vessels
Beakers and mixing jugs££essentialfrom Part 2
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- Two of about 500 ml for dissolving; six 100 ml for the pH session; two 1 L jugs for mixing a litre of developer
- Budget
- Polypropylene jugs from a catering supplier, dedicated and labelled
- Recommended
- Borosilicate beakers for anything warmed, polypropylene for everything else
- Laboratory grade
- Graduated borosilicate throughout, which buys accuracy the course does not use: these are holding vessels, not measuring ones
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Dry, inverted, on the wet side, never returned to the kitchen
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. Dedicated utensils that never go back to food use is one of Part II’s five standing requirements.
- Lifetime
- Years
Small laboratory sundries: funnel, stirring rod, spatula, wash bottle and lint-free tissue£essentialfrom Part 2
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One of each, plus a waste beaker for rinsings
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- On the wet side, dedicated, never in a kitchen drawer
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. The spatula and the rod are the two things that most often travel back to a kitchen by accident.
- Lifetime
- Years
The tissue is for blotting a pH electrode, never for wiping it: wiping charges the bulb and the reading drifts.
Graduated syringes without needles£essentialfrom Part 4
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- Four of 5 ml for Part IV, never shared between solutions; 1 ml, 10 ml, 20 ml and 50 ml for Part V
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Dry, in the tray, one per solution and marked as such
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. Without needles. They are dispensers here, and a needle adds a sharps hazard the work has no use for.
- Lifetime
- Months to years; the plunger seal stiffens with repeated use
Test tubes and racks££essentialfrom Part 4
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- Fourteen tubes of about 15 ml and two racks for Part IV; six tubes of at least 30 ml with sealing caps for Part VIII
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- In the rack, dry, on the dry side
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. One rack must be carryable, because Part IV’s exposed and shielded racks have to stand side by side in daylight.
- Lifetime
- Years
Part VIII needs the caps as much as the tubes: the whole experiment is about what air does to a solution, so a tube that does not seal is not a control.
Volumetric flasks or graduated bottles, 100 ml££essentialfrom Part 4
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- Four, one per stock solution
- Budget
- A measuring cylinder, which Part IV accepts — with the note that your uncertainty will be larger and you will record it
- Recommended
- Four graduated bottles, so each stock keeps its own vessel
- Laboratory grade
- Class A volumetric flasks with stoppers
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Stoppered, labelled with the substance, the concentration and the date
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Years
- Asked for by
- precipitating the silver halides
Measurement
Timer that will run to an hour£essentialfrom Part 1household object
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One, and a separate watch with a second hand for the sessions that time the subject and the exposure separately
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Wherever you will find it in the dark
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Years
A phone is fine outdoors and awkward in a darkroom, where the screen is a light source. Part VII’s night assignment needs one that runs for an hour without the screen waking.
Balance reading to 0.01 g££essentialfrom Part 2
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One
- Budget
- A 0.1 g kitchen or pocket balance, which Part II accepts as the worst case and Part VIII shows costs you ±5 per cent on the two small weights in D-76
- Recommended
- A 0.01 g balance of 200 to 500 g capacity, which is what Part VIII says outright is the number to buy
- Laboratory grade
- A 0.001 g balance with a draught shield, which the course never needs: the smallest mass it weighs is 0.75 g
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Level, on the dry side, away from the tray and out of a draught. Pans corrode if a salt is left on them
- Safety
- No safety role. No safety role. Its job is the arithmetic.
- Lifetime
- Years, if it is checked against a mass and kept dry
The one instrument whose specification changes a result. Part VIII’s arithmetic is the argument: ±0.1 g on 100 g of sulfite is undetectable, and the same ±0.1 g on 2.0 g of metol or borax is ±5 per cent of the developing agent or of the alkali.
Calibration mass, 50 g or 100 g£essentialfrom Part 2
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- In its case, handled with the tweezers or a tissue, never with bare fingers
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- A lifetime, if it is never dropped and never handled
- Asked for by
- commissioning your laboratory, measurement and uncertainty
Without it the balance check in the commissioning session has no reference and the calibration log has nothing to record. The session’s alternative route exists for readers who have none.
Graduated cylinders££essentialfrom Part 2
£4.66–£15.30 per one graduate, 50 ml to 1200 ml — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Firstcall Photographic, AP Measuring Cylinder 50ml, £4.66; Firstcall Photographic, AP Measuring Cylinder 100ml, £5.47; Firstcall Photographic, AP Measuring Cylinder 1000ml, £13.00; Firstcall Photographic, Paterson Measuring Cylinder 1200ml, £15.30)
These are darkroom graduates, moulded in polypropylene, and their tolerance is not stated by either maker. Part II teaches you to measure your own uncertainty rather than trust a moulding, which is why the course does not ask for laboratory glass here. Budget for one graduate per solution: the course's rule is that they are never swapped.
- How much
- One 100 ml, one 250 ml and one 1 L to begin with; then one per solution, because the course never swaps them
- Budget
- Moulded darkroom graduates in polypropylene, in different colours so they cannot be confused in a dim room
- Recommended
- The same, one per solution, each labelled with the solution it is for and nothing else
- Laboratory grade
- Class B borosilicate glass cylinders, which the course does not need: Part II teaches you to measure your own uncertainty rather than to trust a moulding
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Inverted on the drainer after rinsing, on the wet side
- Safety
- No safety role. The safety rule attached to them is the one about never sharing a graduate between a developer and a fixer.
- Lifetime
- Years. They craze and the scale wears; replace when you cannot read the graduation
Thermometer reading to 0.5 °C£essentialfrom Part 2
£7.60–£26.99 per one thermometer, spirit, dial or digital probe — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Firstcall Photographic, Firstcall Thermometer - Spirit, £7.60; Firstcall Photographic, Kood Thermometer Dial with 5in probe and clip, £9.49; Firstcall Photographic, Firstcall Digital Thermometer - 4.7in (120mm) Probe, £26.99)
Part II checks the digital probe against the spirit thermometer, on ILFORD's own reasoning that very little can go wrong with a liquid-in-glass one. Two thermometers at £7.60 and £26.99 is therefore not extravagance; it is the calibration.
- How much
- Two: one liquid-in-glass and one digital probe, so that each checks the other. Part V wants two more that live in the bath and in the emulsion
- Budget
- One spirit thermometer
- Recommended
- A spirit thermometer and a digital probe, checked against each other and at the ice point
- Laboratory grade
- A probe with a calibration certificate, which the course does not ask for: it teaches you to check the instrument you have
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Flat, in a case or a tube. A dropped glass thermometer is a spill and a cut at once
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. A mercury-in-glass thermometer is not used; the spirit sort is what the course means by liquid-in-glass.
- Lifetime
- Years for the glass; a battery life at a time for the digital
ILFORD’s process-control guidance treats the glass thermometer as the reference for the probe, on the grounds that very little can go wrong with it. That is why the course asks for two cheap ones rather than one expensive one.
Narrow-range pH indicator papers£essentialfrom Part 3used up
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- Two packs, covering about 4 to 7 and 7 to 10
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Dry, capped, away from vapour — an open pack in a room with an acid stop bath in it is a pack that reads wrong
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- A pack lasts a long time; the papers are used once each
- Asked for by
- measuring ph, mixing d23 and d76
ILFORD state their own pH figures with the same honesty the course asks for, and papers are a legitimate fallback recorded as such rather than a failure to own a meter.
pH meter with a combination glass electrode£££essentialfrom Part 3
No price established. Cost band £££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One
- Budget
- Narrow-range indicator papers alone, which Part III teaches as a legitimate instrument with an honest resolution rather than as a poor substitute
- Recommended
- A pen-type meter with a replaceable electrode, whose limits Part III makes part of the lesson
- Laboratory grade
- A bench meter with a stand and automatic temperature compensation
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Electrode wet, in its storage solution — never in distilled water, which strips the bulb. Read your own manual before the session
- Safety
- No safety role. One electrode caution matters: the Vernier sensor manual lists silver ions among the solutions its electrode must not enter, and used fixer contains dissolved silver. Check your own manual before you put a probe in a photographic bath.
- Lifetime
- The body lasts years; the electrode is a consumable measured in months to a couple of years
- Asked for by
- measuring ph, mixing d23 and d76
Small spirit level£essentialfrom Part 5
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One of 150 to 200 mm
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Flat, where it will not be dropped: a dropped level is a level that lies
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Years
Two jobs, two parts. It sets the coating bed coarsely before the water test refines it, and it is the whole method of Part VII’s architecture assignment, where an eyeballed level is routinely two or three degrees out and that is a visible convergence.
Protection
Sun protection: brimmed hat, ultraviolet-blocking sunglasses, long sleeves and sun cream£essentialfrom Part 1household objectsafety-critical
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One set
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- With the camera bag, because that is where you will want it
- Safety
- Safety-critical. The protective equipment for every outdoor session in the course. ICNIRP put the ocular exposure ratio at about 0.5 for sunglasses alone and about 0.02 for sunglasses with a brimmed hat, so the pair is worth far more than either; most summer clothing gives a protection factor above 10.
- Lifetime
- Years, except the sun cream, which has a date on it
Apron or overall kept for laboratory work£essentialfrom Part 2household object
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One
- Budget
- An old shirt with sleeves you can push clear of a tray
- Recommended
- A PVC or coated apron that a splash runs off rather than soaks into
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Hung on the wet side, washed separately from household laundry
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. HSE’s COSHH essentials sheet instructs minimising clothing contamination; the apron is that control.
- Lifetime
- Years. Developer stains it and does not weaken it
Disposable nitrile gloves£essentialfrom Part 2used upsafety-critical
£6.64–£14.99 per box of 50 to 100 disposable gloves — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Screwfix, Site Nitrile Disposable Gloves Blue, 50 pack, £6.64; Screwfix, Site SDG102 Nitrile Disposable Gloves Blue, 100 pack, £13.29; Screwfix, Site SDG230 Nitrile Disposable Gloves Blue, 100 pack, £14.99)
A builders' merchant rather than a laboratory supplier, which is where most readers will buy. None of these listings states a glove thickness, and the course's own control is HSE's 0.2 mm single-use nitrile: read the box before you buy, because a thin examination glove and a 0.2 mm splash glove are sold from the same shelf at the same price.
- How much
- One box of 100 to start, then roughly a box a year at one or two sessions a month
- Budget
- A builders’ merchant box of unspecified thickness, which is what most readers will buy
- Recommended
- Single-use nitrile of 0.2 mm, the splash-resistant grade HSE’s COSHH essentials sheet P1 names for manual film and plate development
- Laboratory grade
- A boxed grade with the maker’s own permeation data for the substances you handle — which, for silver nitrate, the guide this course read does not carry at all
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Never. Single-use means single use.
- Storage
- In the box, out of sunlight and away from ozone; nitrile hardens and cracks with age
- Safety
- Safety-critical. The Level A controls require gloves whenever solutions are handled, so a session without them is not classified.
- Lifetime
- One operation. Changed the moment they are splashed, and off before you touch anything on the dry side
Buy the thickness, not the box. Part II’s protective equipment page explains permeation, penetration and degradation, and why the glove that resists one substance may fail against another.
Safety spectacles with side protection£essentialfrom Part 2safety-critical
£2.59–£13.99 per one pair of safety spectacles with side protection — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Screwfix, Site SEY229R Smoke Lens Safety Specs, £2.59; Screwfix, Site SEY228R Clear Lens Safety Specs, £2.69; Screwfix, Bolle Tracker II Clear Lens Safety Specs, £13.99)
Clear lens, not smoke: the darkroom is dim enough. The listings quote impact grades rather than the EN 166 marking the course asks for, so check the frame itself for the standard.
- How much
- One pair, plus a spare pair for anyone who works with you
- Budget
- A clear-lens builders’ spec at under three pounds
- Recommended
- A clear-lens spec marked to EN 166 with an optical class you can read on the frame
- Laboratory grade
- Overspecs, if you wear prescription glasses: ordinary spectacles are not eye protection
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- In a case, on the dry side. A scratched lens is a lens you stop wearing
- Safety
- Safety-critical. The Level A controls require eye protection whenever solutions are handled.
- Lifetime
- Years, until the lens is scratched or crazed
Sterile eyewash bottle£essentialfrom Part 2used upsafety-critical
£5.89–£22.99 per one sterile eyewash refill bottle, or a complete wall kit — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Screwfix, Wallace Cameron Astroplast Sterile Eyewash Kit Refill, 500 ml, £5.89; Screwfix, Wallace Cameron Astroplast Eyewash Salinepods, 25 x 20 ml, £6.29; Screwfix, Wallace Cameron Piccolo Eye Wash Kit, £15.99; Screwfix, Wallace Cameron Mezzo Eye Wash Kit, £22.99)
Sterile eyewash has an expiry date printed on it and is replaced whether or not it is used, so treat it as a recurring cost. Part II's position is that the tap is the eyewash and the bottle is the bridge to it.
- How much
- One 500 ml bottle or a box of sealed pods, within reach of the wet side and in date
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Mounted or standing where you can reach it with your eyes shut, which is the condition it will be used in
- Safety
- Safety-critical. HSE’s first-aid guidance treats a sterile eyewash bottle as the bridge to running water rather than the substitute for it, and Part II puts the tap within reach of the wet side for exactly that reason. Part V calls eyewash within reach and tested non-negotiable from the first session that opens a silver nitrate jar.
- Lifetime
- It has an expiry date and is replaced whether or not it is used
Chemical splash goggles that seal against the face£essentialfrom Part 4safety-critical
£15.99 per one pair of sealed chemical splash goggles — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Screwfix, JSP EVO Single Lens Safety Goggles, £15.99)
One listing only, so this is a data point rather than a range. Goggles that seal against the face are a different item from safety spectacles and are what Part IV requires before the silver nitrate bottle is opened.
- How much
- One pair
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- With the spectacles, on the dry side
- Safety
- Safety-critical. A different item from safety spectacles. Part V’s emulsion pages say goggles rather than spectacles and give one reason — silver nitrate’s H314 — and call it sufficient on its own.
- Lifetime
- Years
Needed from the first session that opens a silver nitrate bottle, which is Part IV, and worn from before the cap comes off until after the clean-up.
Disposable particulate respirator, FFP3£essentialfrom Part 5used upsafety-critical
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- A few. One per weighing session; they are not cleaned and reused
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Sealed, dry, out of the dust it is meant to keep out
- Safety
- Safety-critical. On the developer pages it is the single control that lets a Level B weighing sit inside a Level A session. HSE require an assigned protection factor of at least 20, CE or UKCA marking, and fit-testing to the individual: facial hair or glasses lift the seal.
- Lifetime
- One session
A mask that does not fit is not protection, it is the appearance of protection. Buy one you can fit-test, and do the test.
Records and storage
Laboratory notebook, pencil, and printed record sheets£essentialfrom Part 1household objectused up
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One bound notebook and a soft pencil, plus printed sheets for the exposure log and the batch record
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- On the dry side, out of the splash zone
- Safety
- No safety role. Pencil, not pen: ink runs, and it does not survive a storage envelope or a wet glove.
- Lifetime
- A notebook a year is generous
The notebook, the labelling scheme and the calibration log are the three records Part II opens and the rest of the course depends on.
Adhesive labels and a pen that survives water£essentialfrom Part 2household objectused upsafety-critical
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- A roll or sheet of labels and one permanent marker, replaced when it dries
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- With the bottles, so the label goes on before the bottle is filled
- Safety
- Safety-critical. An unlabelled bottle is a hazard with no name on it. Part II’s labelling scheme — substance, concentration, dates, hazard wording, initials — is one of the three habits the part exists to start.
- Lifetime
- Consumed. A permanent marker on a label with clear tape over it survives the wet side
Sensitised materials and substrates
Pre-coated cyanotype paper££essentialfrom Part 1used up
£18.95–£36.95 per 20 to 50 pre-coated sheets, 8 x 10 in — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Parallax Photographic Coop, Parallax Cyanotype Paper 8x10, 20 sheets, £18.95; Parallax Photographic Coop, Parallax Cyanotype Paper 8x10, 50 sheets, £36.95)
£0.95 a sheet in the 20-sheet pack, £0.74 in the 50. Part I's photogram needs six to eight sheets. The course verified the published chemistry of one make in detail and will not recommend by brand where a maker does not publish its composition, so apply the three tests on the assignment page to whatever you buy. Coating your own from a kit was £35.95 to £49.99 on the same day, and the raw sensitiser salts from £5.95 for 20 g of potassium ferricyanide and £9.95 for 50 g of ferric ammonium citrate.
- How much
- Six to eight sheets, A5 or larger
- Build or buy
- Coating your own is Part XXI’s subject and is not taught yet; a bought kit at 36 to 50 pounds is the interim route
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Cool, dry, sealed and in the dark. The manufacturer gives sensitised paper a working life of about six months and notes that it may darken without being spoiled — test it rather than throwing it away
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. Nothing on the sheet is weighed, opened or poured, so the protection here is sun protection and hand hygiene rather than chemical protection.
- Lifetime
- About six months from coating. Buy what you will use
- Asked for by
- cyanotype photogram
Apply the three tests on the assignment page before you buy: does the maker name ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide; does it wash in plain water alone; and is it yellow-green rather than blue in the packet. The one family to avoid is diazo "sun print" paper, which is a different chemistry that happens to be blue.
Workshop and bench
Black photographic tape, gaffer tape and masking tape£essentialfrom Part 1household objectused up
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One roll of each
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Cool. Gaffer tape left in the sun leaves its adhesive behind
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- A roll of black tape lasts through the camera build and the commissioning session; expect to replace it
Gaffer holds on painted plaster and masking tape is kinder to the paint. Black photographic tape is the one that goes inside a camera, because it stays matt.
Card, tracing paper and rigid board£essentialfrom Part 1household objectused up
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- A few sheets of each: tracing or drafting film for screens and overlays, hardboard or thick mounting card for backing
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Flat and dry
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Consumed steadily from Part I to Part VII
Craft knife and spare blades£essentialfrom Part 1used upsafety-critical
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One knife and a packet of blades. Foam board blunts a blade in about a metre of cutting
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Blade retracted or capped, in a drawer, not loose on the bench
- Safety
- Safety-critical. A blunt blade needs more force and slips further. Changing the blade is the safety measure, not sharpening it.
- Lifetime
- The handle lasts years; the blades are consumed
Matt black paint, water-based£essentialfrom Part 1household objectused up
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- 100 ml for the camera build; a few millilitres for the pinhole plates
- Budget
- Black poster paint or black sugar paper
- Recommended
- Matt black acrylic, which stays matt and does not lift when taped over
- Laboratory grade
- A proprietary optical black, which the course has not tested and does not ask for
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Capped, frost-free
- Safety
- No safety role. A household product that dries by evaporation of its water. Read its own label; there is no laboratory hazard here.
- Lifetime
- A 100 ml pot covers the whole camera and the plates
Interior reflections are the enemy of contrast in every camera the course builds. Both faces of every pinhole plate get painted, not just the inner one.
Self-healing cutting mat£essentialfrom Part 1safety-critical
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One, A3 for Part I and A2 for the camera build
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Flat. A mat stored on its edge takes a permanent curve
- Safety
- Safety-critical. Protective equipment on these pages rather than a convenience: it holds the work still and stops the blade skating on a hard surface. Part I says to buy it before anything else on the parts list.
- Lifetime
- Years of light use
Sewing needles and fine pins£essentialfrom Part 1household object
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- A packet of assorted sizes
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- In their packet or a cork, not loose
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. Part VI is explicit that gloves are not worn while piercing, because a glove that catches on a needle moves your hand where you did not intend.
- Lifetime
- Years, though a point that has been through metal is no longer a fine point
A range of shank diameters is what gives you a graded set of apertures, which is the whole instrument in Part VI.
Steel rule£essentialfrom Part 1safety-critical
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One of at least 300 mm; a 500 mm straight-edge as well if you take the board route through the camera build
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Flat, dry. A rusted edge is a rough edge
- Safety
- Safety-critical. The reason it is steel is the reason it is protective equipment: a plastic or wooden rule lets a sharp blade ride up over its edge and into the hand holding it, and a steel one stops the blade.
- Lifetime
- A lifetime
Magnetic stirrer££optionalfrom Part 3
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One
- Budget
- A clean glass rod and the patience to swirl the beaker, which every page that names a stirrer also offers
- Recommended
- A small whisk dedicated to emulsion, which is what the emulsion pages actually use
- Laboratory grade
- A stirrer with a hotplate, which the water bath makes unnecessary
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Dry, with its stir bars, away from anything magnetic that matters
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Years
Optional everywhere it appears. In the pH session it removes a source of drift; in the emulsion makes a whisk is what the tested practice uses.
Stage 1 Black-and-white film processing
The tank, the reels, the changing bag, the film and the three concentrates that take an exposed film to a washed negative.
Essential 8 of 10 items · Priced floor £117.23–£170.13 plus 2 essential items with no price
Chemistry
Film developer concentrate££essentialfrom Part 6used up
£33.28–£41.08 per 1 L of liquid concentrate, diluted 1+4 one-shot — a range across named suppliers, checked 5 September 2026 (Firstcall Photographic, Ilford Ilfotec DD-X Film Developer - 1L, £33.28; Parallax Photographic Coop, Ilford Ilfotec DD-X 1L, £41.08) DE: EUR 40.90 per 1 L concentrate (macodirect, 5 September 2026)
The worked example in Part VI uses DD-X because ILFORD publish a complete beginner's procedure for it. Cheaper concentrates exist on the same shelf — Foma Universal at £5.95 for 1 L, Fomadon R09 at £9.95 for 250 ml — and Part VIII's D-76 mixed from raw chemicals is cheaper still per film.
- How much
- 60 to 120 ml a film at the maker’s dilution; a 1 L bottle is many films
- Budget
- A cheaper universal concentrate, using that maker’s own times rather than ILFORD’s
- Recommended
- A liquid concentrate with a published beginner’s procedure, which is why the worked example uses ILFOTEC DD-X
- Laboratory grade
- D-76 or D-23 mixed from raw chemicals, which is Part VIII’s subject and is cheaper per film
- Build or buy
- Part VIII mixes D-76 and D-23 from four common solids (the page that builds it)
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Capped, cool, dark, and full. A half-empty bottle of concentrate is a bottle with air in it
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. The developing agents are the sensitisers; the concentrate is where they are most concentrated.
- Lifetime
- Months once opened, and the bottle tells you which months
- Asked for by
- processing your first film, landscape sky and filters
A powder is cheaper per film and is one more step to get wrong on a first film. Part VI says so and uses the liquid; Part VIII gives you the powder route and the reasons.
Wetting agent££essentialfrom Part 6used up
£28.70 per 1 L of concentrate, diluted 1+200 — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Firstcall Photographic, Ilford Ilfotol Wetting Agent Liquid - 1L, £28.70)
The most misleading number on this page. At 5 ml per litre of final rinse, one bottle is two hundred litres of rinse water and will outlast most of the rest of the darkroom. A smaller bottle exists from other makers and was not on the listing read.
- How much
- 5 ml per litre of final rinse water, so 2 to 3 ml a film
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Capped. It grows things if it is left diluted in an open jug
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- A 1 L bottle is two hundred litres of rinse and will outlast most of the darkroom
- Asked for by
- processing your first film, mixing d23 and d76
The most misleading price on this page: the bottle is dear and the dose is 1+200. Buy the smallest bottle you can find.
Darkroom
Light box, or a bright window££optionalfrom Part 5household object
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One
- Build or buy
- A white LED panel behind a sheet of opal acrylic, or a tablet screen showing a white field, reads a negative well enough
- Second-hand
- A sensible used purchase.
- Storage
- Flat, dust-covered
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Years
Every page that names it also names a bright window as the alternative, so this is a convenience rather than a requirement.
Changing bag££essentialfrom Part 6
£17.89–£25.19 per one changing bag, small or large — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Firstcall Photographic, Firstcall Changing Bag - Small, £17.89; Firstcall Photographic, Firstcall Changing Bag - Large, £25.19)
Buy the large one if you will load sheet-film holders in it. The small bag is enough for a 35 mm reel and a tank.
- How much
- One. Buy the large size if you will load sheet-film holders in it
- Build or buy
- A room that can be made properly dark does the same job and costs nothing, and Part I’s blackout material is the beginning of one
- Second-hand
- Check the inner bag for pinholes against a bright light before you buy
- Storage
- Folded, dry, dust-free. Dust inside a changing bag ends up on a negative
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Years, until the light-tight inner layer wears at a fold
- Asked for by
- processing your first film, landscape sky and filters
Daylight developing tank with reels££essentialfrom Part 6
£22.70–£48.46 per one daylight tank with reels, one to eight films — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Firstcall Photographic, AP Developing Tank Mini Compact 35mm, £22.70; Firstcall Photographic, Paterson Universal Developing Tank, £27.20; Firstcall Photographic, Paterson Multi Reel 3 Developing Tank, £28.90; Firstcall Photographic, Paterson Multi Reel 8 Developing Tank, £48.46)
A spare reel is about £17.86 on the same listing. The course's Part VI session needs one tank and one reel of the format you shoot; a sheet-film holder for the same tank is a different item and was not listed on the page read.
- How much
- One tank and one reel for your format; two reels for Part VIII’s two-film comparison
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- A common second-hand item and a safe one to buy used: there is nothing in it to wear out but the light trap
- Storage
- Dry, apart, with the reel out of the tank so it does not seize
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Decades. A reel that will not load when wet is a reel that was not dried
- Asked for by
- processing your first film, mixing d23 and d76
The one substantial purchase in Part VI. Sheet-film holders for the same tank are a separate item and were not on the listing this planner read.
Film drying clips£essentialfrom Part 6
£8.29–£15.30 per a pair, one weighted and one plain — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Firstcall Photographic, Firstcall Stainless Steel Film Clips - Set of 2, £8.29; Firstcall Photographic, AP Film Clips - Set of 2, £13.00; Firstcall Photographic, Paterson Film Clips - Set of 2, £15.30)
A wooden clothes peg and a second peg as the weight will hang a film. The bought pair does not stain or rust and does not mark the film, which the peg sometimes does.
- How much
- One pair: one plain and one weighted
- Build or buy
- Two wooden clothes pegs, the lower one as the weight, will hang a film — and will sometimes mark it
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Dry. Steel clips that are put away wet rust and then stain a negative
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Years
- Asked for by
- processing your first film
Measurement
Loupe, about 8x to 10x£essentialfrom Part 6
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- A sensible used purchase.
- Storage
- In a pocket or a case; a scratched lens is worse than none
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- A lifetime
A reticle loupe with a 0.1 mm graticule does this job and the pinhole measurement in Part VI as well, which makes it the better buy if you are buying once.
Records and storage
Negative sleeves and archival storage££essentialfrom Part 6used up
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- Enough for everything you make, which by the end of Part VII is a portfolio’s worth
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Flat, dark, cool and dry — which is also how the negatives inside them are stored
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Decades, which is the point of buying the right ones
- Asked for by
- processing your first film, pinhole portfolio review
ILFORD name cellulose triacetate, polyester and pH-neutral paper for storage. Part VII asks for sleeving that passes the Photographic Activity Test, and the listings this planner read did not state whether they do — which is the whole property being bought.
Sensitised materials and substrates
Black-and-white film££essentialfrom Part 6used up
£6.37–£11.40 per one 35 mm roll, 36 exposures — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Firstcall Photographic, Kentmere PAN 200 - 35mm 36Exp, £6.37; Firstcall Photographic, Ilford FP4 Plus 125 - 35mm 36Exp, £10.69; Firstcall Photographic, Ilford HP5 Plus 400 - 35mm 36Exp, £10.81; Firstcall Photographic, Ilford Delta Pro 400 - 35mm 36Exp, £11.40)
Part VIII's D-76 against D-23 comparison needs two rolls of the same film and the same batch, so buy them together.
- How much
- One roll for the first film, plus a scrap for the clearing test; two rolls of the same batch for Part VIII’s comparison
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Cool and dry, in its canister, and used before the date on the box
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Consumed
Part VIII’s comparison needs the same film and the same batch on the same subject, so buy those two rolls together.
Sheet film, 4 x 5 in£££optionalfrom Part 7used up
£62.66 per 25 sheets, 4 x 5 in — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Firstcall Photographic, Ilford FP4 Plus 125 - 4 x 5in 25 Sheets, £62.66; Firstcall Photographic, Ilford HP5 Plus 400 - 4 x 5in 25 Sheets, £62.66)
£2.51 a sheet, against £1.34 for an 8 x 10 sheet of RC paper and £0.45 for a 5 x 7 one. This is why every pinhole assignment in Part VII is written for paper first and film second, and why film is optional in all but two of them.
- How much
- Two to six sheets an assignment, where you take the film route at all
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- In its light-tight box, cool and dry
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Consumed
At about £2.51 a sheet against £0.45 for a 5 x 7 sheet of RC paper, this is why every Part VII assignment is written for paper first and film second, and why film is optional in all but two of them.
Stage 2 The pinhole camera
Materials and tools for the modular camera, the pinhole plates and the instruments that measure them, and the tripod and meter the assignments need.
Essential 10 of 13 items · Priced floor £22.99–£35.79 plus 8 essential items with no price
Camera and optics
Bought laser-drilled pinhole££optionalfrom Part 6
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One
- Build or buy
- The whole session is about making your own; this is the reference you measure them against (the page that builds it)
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- In its carrier, in the register with the rest
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Indefinite if it is not touched
- Asked for by
- making and measuring pinholes
Buy one only if the budget allows. It is not required, and its real value is that it gives the measuring half of the session a known answer to check your method against.
Second-hand 4 x 5 in double dark slide£££optionalfrom Part 6
No price established. Cost band £££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One or two
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- This is a used-market item and always has been. Check the light trap and the dark slide for a bent edge before you buy
- Storage
- Loaded, in a light-tight bag, dust-free
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Decades if the light trap is intact
The single item that can double the camera build’s total, and it is needed for no exposure in Part VI except the sheet-film run.
Tripod££essentialfrom Part 6
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One that is actually stable
- Build or buy
- A bean bag, a wall or a stable box will hold a camera still, and Part VII’s still life says so
- Second-hand
- A heavy old tripod from a second-hand dealer beats a light new one for this work
- Storage
- Legs dry and clean; sand and salt water are what kill a tripod
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. Part VII asks for something high-visibility near the camera when it is on the ground, so that it is a marked obstacle rather than an unmarked one.
- Lifetime
- Decades
A four-minute exposure records every knock, so stability matters more than weight or price. Part VII’s architecture assignment adds a spirit level and says outright that it is not optional.
Yellow, orange and red contrast filters££essentialfrom Part 7
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One each of a Wratten 8, a 15 and a 25 or their equivalents
- Budget
- Cut squares from a stage-lighting gel swatch, which are a fraction of the price and perfectly usable behind a pinhole
- Recommended
- Gelatin or polyester photographic filter squares, whose transmission the maker publishes
- Laboratory grade
- Glass filters, which a pinhole camera has nowhere to mount and no need for
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Flat, between card, out of heat
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Years for polyester; a gel fades and warps with use
- Asked for by
- landscape sky and filters
Note what the maker actually calls the filter. A "deep yellow" from one supplier and an "orange" from another may be the same transmission or may not, and the exposure factor you apply depends on which you have.
Measurement
Digital calliper or micrometer£optionalfrom Part 6
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- In its case with the jaws closed and the battery out if it will sit for months
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Years
- Asked for by
- making and measuring pinholes
It measures the plate thickness, which matters as much as the hole diameter, and it cannot measure a hole this small. Buying it for the hole is buying it for the wrong reason.
Instruments for measuring a pinhole££essentialfrom Part 6household object
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- At least two of the three: a flatbed scanner of 2400 dpi stated optical resolution or better; a reticle loupe or a USB microscope with a calibration target; a Class 2 laser pointer of stated wavelength with a tape measure and a matt wall
- Budget
- The laser pointer and a wall, which measures the hole by its diffraction pattern and needs nothing else
- Recommended
- The scanner you may already own, plus a reticle loupe
- Laboratory grade
- A USB microscope with a stage micrometer, which is the only one of the three that gives you a picture of the edge as well as a number
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- With the plates and the register, so the measurement and the hole stay together
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. No eyewear is specified for a Class 2 pointer: the control is the beam path and the blink reflex. Remove a watch and any reflective ring before you handle it.
- Lifetime
- Years
- Asked for by
- making and measuring pinholes
The interpolated resolution printed on a scanner box is irrelevant. Interpolation computes intermediate values from samples already taken and cannot recover detail the optics did not resolve. A USB microscope without a calibration target is worth nothing at all, because its magnification is not a known quantity.
Lux meter, or a calibrated phone app£essentialfrom Part 7household object
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One
- Budget
- A phone app, calibrated once in bright sun as Part VI describes
- Recommended
- A hand-held lux meter, which does not sleep, dim or auto-expose
- Laboratory grade
- A photographic light meter with an incident dome, which reads the light rather than the scene
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- With the camera bag
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Years
Part VII takes a reading before and after every exposure, because a forty-minute exposure at dusk is an exposure during which the light changed.
Workshop and bench
Woodworking hand tools££essentialfrom Part 5
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- A fine-toothed hand saw, a try square, a bradawl, four small clamps or spring clips, a drill and a bit for the T-nut, a sanding block, a half-round file and tin snips if you take the tin route
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Hand tools are the safest thing on this page to buy second-hand; a saw can be sharpened and a square can be checked
- Storage
- Dry. A rusted saw plate binds in the cut
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. Eye protection for all cutting, drilling and filing, and without exception for the metal work.
- Lifetime
- Decades
Not needed at all: a table saw, a router or a bandsaw. Every cut in the camera build can be made with a hand saw or a knife, and the design was drawn that way on purpose. The coating station has exactly three drilled holes in it.
Camera hardware: tripod T-nut, magnets, flocking, foam and dark-slide sheet£essentialfrom Part 6
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One quarter-inch 20 tpi UNC T-nut and bolt; four 6 mm neodymium magnets; one A4 sheet of black self-adhesive felt or flocking; 100 x 125 mm of 3 mm closed-cell foam; 150 x 130 mm of 0.5 mm black polypropylene or painted aluminium
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- In one labelled box with the offcuts, because these are the parts that get lost
- Safety
- No safety role. Tape any cut metal edge before it goes into a camera you will reach into in the dark.
- Lifetime
- The life of the camera
- Asked for by
- build the modular pinhole camera
Individually trivial and collectively the difference between a light-tight camera and a fogged sheet. The flocking on the two long interior walls is what kills the flare the commissioning session goes looking for.
PVA woodworking adhesive£essentialfrom Part 6used up
£11.99–£14.29 per 5 L — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Screwfix, No Nonsense D2 PVA Adhesive 5Ltr, £11.99; Screwfix, No Nonsense PVA Adhesive 5Ltr, £14.29)
A bad buy at this size. The camera build needs 100 ml. Every stationer sells a 100 to 250 ml bottle of woodworking PVA for a few pounds and none was listed on the page read, so this figure is the ceiling rather than the sensible purchase.
- How much
- 100 ml, which is the only adhesive the build requires
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Capped and frost-free
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- A small bottle outlasts the build
- Asked for by
- build the modular pinhole camera
Buy the smallest bottle a stationer sells. The 5 L drum in the price record is fifty times what the camera needs and is there only as the ceiling.
Shim metal for pinhole plates£essentialfrom Part 6
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One small sheet of the thinnest stocked grade, which is five or six plates
- Budget
- The wall of an aluminium drinks can, which is free, pierces beautifully, and has a thickness nobody publishes — so you must measure it
- Recommended
- Brass or steel shim sold by its stated thickness, which is the whole point of buying it: you know the plate thickness before you pierce it
- Laboratory grade
- A bought laser-drilled pinhole as the reference standard against which you measure your own
- Build or buy
- The drinks-can route is free and is what most of the plates are made from (the page that builds it)
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Flat, dry, between card. A kinked shim will not lie flat in a carrier
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. Eye protection whenever piercing or sanding: the risk is a fragment of metal or a snapped needle point, not a splash.
- Lifetime
- A sheet makes more plates than the course needs
Thin plywood for the camera body£essentialfrom Part 6
£11.00–£21.50 per one sheet of thin hardwood plywood, 606 x 1220 mm to 1220 x 2440 mm — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Wickes, Non-Structural Hardwood Plywood 3.6mm, 606 x 1220mm, £11.00; Wickes, Non-Structural Hardwood Plywood 5.5mm, 606 x 1220mm, £12.00; Wickes, Non-Structural Hardwood Plywood 5.5mm, 1220 x 2440mm, £21.50)
Read the thickness. The build's cutting list is drawn for 6 mm and 4 mm birch plywood and this merchant stocks 5.5 mm and 3.6 mm hardwood ply, which is close enough for the body but is not the same material: birch ply has more, thinner plies and cuts far more cleanly by hand. The two small sheets are enough for the whole camera; the 1220 x 2440 sheet is only worth buying if you have a way to get it home.
- How much
- One 300 x 600 mm panel of 6 mm and one 300 x 300 mm panel each of 4 mm and 3 mm; the whole body and both frames come out of the first
- Budget
- The tin route: a rectangular tin with a press-fit lid, which is effectively free
- Recommended
- The board route in 5 mm black foam board or 2 mm greyboard, which needs no saw at all
- Laboratory grade
- The plywood route in birch, which is what the cutting plan is drawn for and what survives being carried about
- Build or buy
- Three routes reach a working camera and the part costs them all (the page that builds it)
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Flat and dry. Thin ply cups if it is stored on edge
- Safety
- No safety role. The hazard on this page is the cutting rather than the material, unless you machine-sand it indoors — which is what the FFP3 respirator is for.
- Lifetime
- The camera should outlast the course
- Asked for by
- build the modular pinhole camera
Read the thickness before you buy: the cutting list is drawn for 6 mm and 4 mm birch ply, and the general builders’ merchant stocks 5.5 mm and 3.6 mm hardwood ply, which cuts less cleanly by hand.
Wet-and-dry abrasive paper£essentialfrom Part 6household objectused up
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One sheet each of about 600 and 1200 grit for the pinholes; 120 and 240 grit for the woodwork
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Flat and dry
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Consumed slowly
The 600 takes the burr down and the 1200 finishes it. A ragged hole is not a failed hole; it is a measurement waiting to be made about why sharpness dropped.
Stage 3 Contact printing
Paper, dishes, tongs, a safelight and a measured light source. The course reaches for all of it at Part IV, not at Part XVI.
Essential 9 of 11 items · Priced floor £121.61–£210.84 plus 2 essential items with no price
Chemistry
Paper developer concentrate££essentialfrom Part 4used up
£10.52–£20.03 per 500 ml to 1 L of concentrate, diluted 1+9 — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Firstcall Photographic, Ilford Multigrade Paper Developer 500ml, £10.52; Firstcall Photographic, Ilford Multigrade Paper Developer 1L, £20.03)
Cheaper universal paper developers were listed beside it on the same page — Adox Adotol Konstant 1 L at £4.99, Champion Suprol 1 L at £11.99 — and the course's own times are ILFORD's for ILFORD chemistry, so a substitution means using the substitute maker's figures.
- How much
- 100 ml a session, diluted 1+9 to make a litre of working solution
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Capped, cool, dark. Working solution is mixed for the session and not kept
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. ILFORD recommend gloves, eye protection and an apron or overall for handling and mixing all their chemicals, and this is the bottle you open most often.
- Lifetime
- A 500 ml bottle is five sessions of a litre each
The course’s times, temperatures and dilutions are ILFORD’s for ILFORD materials. If you buy another maker’s developer, use that maker’s numbers and write down which sheet you took them from.
Rapid fixer concentrate££essentialfrom Part 4used upsafety-critical
£21.05–£25.98 per 1 L of ammonium thiosulfate concentrate, diluted 1+4 for film — a range across named suppliers, checked 5 September 2026 (Firstcall Photographic, Ilford Rapid Fixer - 1L, £21.05; Parallax Photographic Coop, Ilford Rapid Fixer 1L, £25.98) DE: EUR 21.90 per 1 L concentrate (macodirect, 5 September 2026)
The 500 ml bottle was £14.75 at Firstcall and £18.20 at Parallax on the same day; the 5 L is £59.28 at Firstcall, which is the cheapest per litre by a wide margin and is worth it only if you will use it before it ages.
- How much
- 200 ml a print session and 60 to 120 ml a film, diluted 1+4; Part V’s emulsion sessions use two litres of working solution in two baths; Part XI’s mixing lab dilutes 200 ml of concentrate to a litre and the capacity experiment works 200 ml of that litre to exhaustion
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Capped, upright, away from acids. Used fixer goes to the silver-bearing waste container and never to the drain
- Safety
- Safety-critical. An ammonium thiosulfate fixer. Its exhausted working solution is the most silver-laden liquid the course produces and it is the reason the silver-waste container stands open on the bench.
- Lifetime
- A 1 L bottle is five litres of film-strength working solution
ILFORD dilute their rapid fixer 1+4 for all film applications, and offer 1+9 as well for RC paper. The course uses 1+4 throughout and says which is which on each page.
Stop bath concentrate££essentialfrom Part 4used upsafety-critical
£10.66–£12.18 per 500 ml of citric acid concentrate, diluted 1+19 — a range across named suppliers, checked 5 September 2026 (Firstcall Photographic, Ilford Ilfostop Stop Bath - 500 ml, £10.66; Parallax Photographic Coop, Ilford Ilfostop 500ml, £12.18)
500 ml at 1+19 makes 10 L of working solution, which is many sessions. This is the cheapest bottle on the wet bench per use.
- How much
- 50 ml a print session and 15 to 30 ml a film, diluted 1+19
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Capped, upright, and nowhere near the sulfite or the thiosulfate
- Safety
- Safety-critical. An acid. Part II’s incompatibility matrix pairs it with every sulfite and thiosulfate in the room, because the reaction releases sulfur dioxide.
- Lifetime
- A 500 ml bottle is ten litres of working solution and many sessions
The cheapest bottle on the wet bench per use. A low-odour citric acid stop is what the course names; a dilute acetic acid stop is the alternative and it smells like it.
Containers and containment
Light-tight envelope or paper safe£essentialfrom Part 1household object
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One or two
- Build or buy
- The bag a box of paper came in is the standard answer; doubled black card taped shut is the other
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Flat, closed, with a pencil note of what is inside and when it went in
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Years
Pencil on the outside, never ink: Part I’s photogram sits in one for a week and ink does not survive the storage envelope.
Darkroom
Contact printing frame£££optionalfrom Part 4
£74.80–£77.99 per one frame, up to 8 x 10 in — a range across named suppliers, checked 5 September 2026 (Firstcall Photographic, Paterson Contact Printing Frame - 35mm/8 x 10in, £74.80; Firstcall Photographic, Clearfile Printfile CP-1 Contact Proofer, £77.99)
The course does not require one. Parts IV, V and VII contact print under a sheet of clean glass and a weight, and Part V says outright that this part has no printing frame, which Part XVI builds. This record exists so a reader can see what the shortcut costs.
- How much
- One
- Build or buy
- Clean glass on a board, under a weight, is what every contact print in Parts IV, V and VII is actually made under. Part XVI builds a printer with even pressure and uniform illumination
- Second-hand
- A sensible used purchase.
- Storage
- Flat, glass clean, hinges dry
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Decades
- Asked for by
- the latent image made visible, the hand coated print
Not required. Part V says outright that this part has no printing frame and uses a glass-and-board sandwich under a weight. The record exists so a reader can see what the shortcut would cost.
Developing dishes££essentialfrom Part 4
£17.34–£22.44 per set of three dishes, 5 x 7 in to 10 x 12 in — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Firstcall Photographic, Paterson Developing Dishes Set of 3, 5 x 7in, £17.34; Firstcall Photographic, Paterson Developing Dishes Set of 3, 8 x 10in, £19.38; Firstcall Photographic, Paterson Developing Dishes Set of 3, 10 x 12in, £22.44)
Buy one size larger than your paper. Every session in Parts IV to VII needs a fourth dish for washing, and any food-safe plastic tray dedicated to the darkroom will do that job.
- How much
- Three, plus a fourth for washing. One size larger than your paper
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy used only if you can be sure what was in them; a dish that held a toner is a dish that will fog a print
- Storage
- Stacked dry, on the wet side, colour-coded or written on so the developer dish is always the developer dish
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. Dedicated, never used for food, and never swapped between solutions. Contamination between dishes is the commonest darkroom fault there is.
- Lifetime
- Years
The fourth dish for washing can be any food-safe plastic tray dedicated to the darkroom, which is what Part I already had you buy.
Lamp on a stand at a measured distance£essentialfrom Part 4household object
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One, with a way to switch it for a measured time and a tape measure to set the distance
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Wherever it can be clamped at the same height twice
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. For the lamp in Part VII’s still life, the protective measure is distance and a guard rather than anything worn. A hot lamp against a paper diffuser is a fire.
- Lifetime
- Years
The exposure source for every contact print before there is an enlarger. Its distance is a number you record, because halving it quadruples the exposure.
Safelight££essentialfrom Part 4
£37.99–£68.40 per one safelight, filtered, mains — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Firstcall Photographic, AP Red Safelight, £37.99; Firstcall Photographic, Paterson Orange Safelight, £39.10; Firstcall Photographic, Kaiser Safelight 4018 - Orange, £68.40)
LED safelights on the same listing ran from £102.48 to £217.00, and a battery safelight torch from £22.90. Replacement 15 W pygmy safelight bulbs were £2.40 to £16.00. Part XVI builds a safelight and teaches the fog test; until then, a bought one is the shortest route and the fog test still has to be run on it.
- How much
- One, plus a deep red filter and a 15 W bulb for Part V’s orthochromatic make
- Build or buy
- Part V’s coating station uses a red LED string light; Part XVI builds a safelight properly and teaches the fog test, and is not written yet
- Second-hand
- Check the age of the filter: a faded safelight filter is a fogged print, and the filter is what ages
- Storage
- Where it is aimed at the ceiling rather than at the bench
- Safety
- No safety role. No personal hazard. Its failure mode is an image-quality one and it is invisible until you run the fog test, which is why the test exists.
- Lifetime
- The fitting lasts years; the filter fades and the course does not yet teach how to test it
A bought safelight is the shortest route until Part XVI builds one, and the fog test still has to be run on whatever you buy. Record the filter, the wattage, the distance and the age of the filter in your notebook every time you use it.
Protection
Print tongs£essentialfrom Part 4safety-critical
£7.99–£17.10 per a set of two or three tongs — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Firstcall Photographic, AP Print Tongs - Set of 2, £7.99; Firstcall Photographic, Firstcall Bamboo Print Tongs - Set of 3, £10.00; Firstcall Photographic, Paterson Print Tongs - Set of 3, £13.60; Firstcall Photographic, Kaiser Stainless Steel Print Tong - Pack of 2, £17.10)
The course treats tongs as protective equipment rather than a convenience, and it wants one pair per dish, marked and never swapped. A set of three is the right buy.
- How much
- One pair per dish, so three, marked and never swapped
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Hung or laid beside their own dish, never in it
- Safety
- Safety-critical. The course treats tongs as protective equipment rather than a convenience: they are the control that keeps a sensitiser off your skin for the fifty or so immersions a session involves.
- Lifetime
- Years
Sensitised materials and substrates
Graded photographic paper££optionalfrom Part 4used up
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- Four sheets, any grade
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- As the variable-contrast paper
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Consumed
- Asked for by
- the latent image made visible
Four sheets, for one station of one session, to show what a fixed-contrast emulsion does that a variable-contrast one cannot. Buy the smallest box you can find, or beg four sheets from someone who prints.
Variable-contrast resin-coated paper£££essentialfrom Part 4used up
£16.06–£44.71 per 25 to 100 sheets, 5 x 7 in, variable contrast RC — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Firstcall Photographic, Ilford Multigrade RC Deluxe Pearl 5 x 7in, 25 sheets, £16.06; Firstcall Photographic, Ilford Multigrade RC Deluxe Pearl 5 x 7in, 100 sheets, £44.71)
£0.64 a sheet in the 25-sheet box, £0.45 in the 100-sheet box — less than half the 8 x 10 rate. Part VI's camera is drawn for 4 x 5 in, so a 5 x 7 box cut down is the cheapest way to feed the pinhole assignments.
- How much
- About 20 sheets for Part IV; 16 for the camera commissioning; 10 to 14 for each of Part VII’s eight assignments. Roughly 120 sheets across Parts IV to VII
- Budget
- A 100-sheet box of 5 x 7 in at about £0.45 a sheet, cut down to the camera’s format in the dark
- Recommended
- A 25-sheet box of 5 x 7 in at about £0.64 a sheet, if you would rather not commit to a hundred
- Laboratory grade
- 8 x 10 in at £0.96 to £1.34 a sheet, which the course needs only for finished prints
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- In its light-tight bag inside its box, cool and dry, on edge so the sheets do not stick
- Safety
- No safety role. Nothing on the sheet is handled as a substance. What is present is silver halide in gelatin under a hardened supercoat, and it stays there.
- Lifetime
- Consumed. The box has a date on it and fog rises slowly after it
The single largest recurring cost in Parts IV to VII, and the one place where buying the bigger box genuinely saves money. Part IV names 5 x 7 in or cut strips; the pinhole camera is drawn for 4 x 5 in, so a 5 x 7 box cut down feeds almost everything.
Stage 4 The enlarger and the timer
A purchased enlarger, or the course’s own LED enlarger and timer builds, with the lens and easel that go with them.
Not settled yet. Parts XVI and XVII, which are not written. The one item listed here is named as an optional convenience by a Part IV page, and it is the whole of what the written course can trace.
Essential 0 of 1 items · Priced floor —
Darkroom
Enlarger££££optionalfrom Part 4
£1549.00 per one new variable-contrast enlarger with lens — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Firstcall Photographic, LPL 7700 VCCE Enlarger, £1549.00)
One listing for one new machine, and the least representative number in this file. Nothing in Parts I to VIII requires an enlarger: Part IV names one only as a convenience for four of its stations. Part XVI builds an LED enlarger and Part XVII builds the timer, and neither part is written, so the planner has no basis yet for what the build route costs. The second-hand market is where almost every darkroom enlarger comes from and this file holds no second-hand figure, because a used price is a transaction rather than a listing.
- How much
- One
- Build or buy
- Part XVI builds an LED enlarger and Part XVII builds the timer. Neither part is written, so the planner has no figure yet for what the build route costs
- Second-hand
- Almost every darkroom enlarger in use came from the second-hand market, and this planner holds no used figure, because a completed sale is not a listing
- Storage
- Dust-covered, column vertical, lens capped
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. Mains equipment. Every page in the course that needs mains-powered equipment says so in its panel.
- Lifetime
- Decades
- Asked for by
- the latent image made visible
Nothing in Parts I to VIII requires one. Part IV names it only as a convenience that makes four of its stations easier to control, and that single sentence is the whole of its traceability today. Stage 4 fills out when Parts XVI and XVII are written.
Stage 5 The emulsion laboratory
The coating station and its bath, the glassware, the substrates, and the silver, halides, gelatin and hardeners that make five emulsions.
Essential 19 of 20 items · Priced floor £67.30 plus 17 essential items with no price
Chemistry
Chrome alum, potassium alum and sodium hydroxide££essentialfrom Part 5used upsafety-critical
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- 0.03 g of chrome alum a batch, dispensed as 0.6 ml of a 5 per cent stock; 15 g/L of potassium alum in a hardening fixer if plates frill; about 200 ml of 2 per cent w/v sodium hydroxide for the deep clean; 15 g of potassium alum for the litre of acid hardening fixer in Part XI’s mixing lab
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Dry, capped, the caustic soda away from everything and in its own secondary container
- Safety
- Safety-critical. Sodium hydroxide carries H314, severe skin burns and eye damage, under its harmonised CLP entry. Eye protection and gloves specifically for the one occasion the chrome alum jar is open, and a disposable dust mask if you are making the stock from a bulk packet — a precaution against a fine powder rather than compliance with a limit, since the exposure limit is an airborne concentration and you are not measuring one.
- Lifetime
- Chrome alum is bought once and lasts for years at 30 mg a batch
Citric acid£essentialfrom Part 5household objectused up
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- 0.5 g a batch
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Dry and capped, away from the sulfite and the thiosulfate
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. An acid, and therefore on the wrong side of Part II’s incompatibility matrix from every thiosulfate in the room.
- Lifetime
- Years dry
- Asked for by
- chlorobromide warm tone emulsion
Erythrosin, disodium salt££essentialfrom Part 5used upsafety-critical
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- 3 to 4 mg a batch, as 3 to 4 drops of a 2 per cent w/v stock. Buy the smallest quantity offered, on CAS 16423-68-0
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- In an amber dropper bottle of about 60 ml, dark and capped
- Safety
- Safety-critical. Permitted at Level B in this one project on stated conditions, weighed once with a mask and a tray. The course carries the FDA revocation with its rat-specific mechanism and says "unclassified on a thin evidence base" rather than "harmless".
- Lifetime
- The smallest jar sold is a lifetime at 4 mg a batch
- Asked for by
- design an emulsion make an orthochromatic one
It will stain a plastic spoon red for ever, and the page tells you to expect that and to dedicate one.
Ethanol, 95 per cent££essentialfrom Part 5household objectused upsafety-critical
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- 2.5 to 15 ml a batch, plus 25 ml of stock solvent for the dye
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Capped, cool, away from every ignition source and out of the sun
- Safety
- Safety-critical. Flammable. It is the one flammable liquid in the emulsion laboratory and it belongs nowhere near the water bath’s element.
- Lifetime
- Indefinite capped
The course specifies drinking-grade, which is what a domestic reader can actually buy. Note that Part V’s first project names it in the source’s tool list and not in its recipe, and the page says so rather than placing it.
Halide salts for emulsion making: potassium chloride and ammonium bromide££essentialfrom Part 5used up
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- 3 g of potassium chloride a batch; 4.1 g of ammonium bromide a batch
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Dry and capped with the other halides
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. The course holds no GHS record for potassium chloride and therefore states none, and does not infer one from a neighbouring salt in the same group. Read the safety data sheet for the grade you buy: that is a Tier 1 document and it is the right authority for the container in your hand.
- Lifetime
- Years dry
Sodium chloride would substitute for the potassium salt chemically, and Part V’s second project uses it. It is not substituted in the first, because the published formula specifies potassium chloride and a substitution would make the make a variant of a tested recipe rather than the recipe itself.
Photographic gelatin, inert££essentialfrom Part 5used up
£17.45 per 100 g, inert photographic gelatin — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Parallax Photographic Coop, Rollei Black Magic Gelatine 100g RBM4, £17.45)
One listing, out of stock. Part IV's precipitation experiment uses plain culinary gelatin from a supermarket at a fraction of this, and says so; Part V's makes need the inert photographic grade, and use 7 to 25 g each.
- How much
- 7 g a batch for the bromide make, 25 g for the chloride one, 10 g for the rehearsal coat
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Dry, sealed, cool. Gelatin takes up moisture and then takes up whatever was in the air with it
- Safety
- No safety role. It arrives as sheets or granules and is dissolved in water. No powder is weighed and a dust mask is not among the controls for it.
- Lifetime
- Years dry
Inert by design, which is why a modern make is slower than the historical formulas expect: Wall’s formulas assume active gelatin, and sulfur sensitisation had not been invented when he wrote. Expect a slower emulsion than the book does, and record what you get.
Darkroom
Deep red safelight filter and a 15 W bulb££essentialfrom Part 5
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One filter of the class the manufacturers specify for orthochromatic material, and one 15 W bulb
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Flat and cool. Heat is what fades a safelight filter
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. Not a personal hazard but a material one: a dye-sensitised emulsion sees green, and the amber safelight that is right for the other four projects will fog this one.
- Lifetime
- The filter fades with hours of use and there is no published life for it
- Asked for by
- design an emulsion make an orthochromatic one
Glassware and vessels
Borosilicate jars and beakers dedicated to emulsion££essentialfrom Part 5
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- Two each of 250 ml and 600 ml, plus two nesting heatproof cups so the inner one holds the emulsion and the outer stands in the bath
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- With the station, never shared with food preparation
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. Borosilicate because these go into a bath at 49 to 52 °C and come out of it. Dedicated because Part II says so about everything.
- Lifetime
- Years
Measurement
Digital hygrometer with a thermometer£essentialfrom Part 5
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Inside the drying box, because that is what it reads
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Years
- Asked for by
- build an emulsion coating station
It reads the box, not the room. A coating that dries in a room at 50 per cent relative humidity may be drying in a closed box at 80.
Kitchen scales reading to 1 g£optionalfrom Part 5household object
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One set, for the validation coat only
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- With the station
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Years
- Asked for by
- build an emulsion coating station
The station’s validation coat weighs 20 g of gelatin, and 1 g resolution is plenty for it. Every real make uses the 0.01 g balance.
Transmission step wedge, 21 steps££essentialfrom Part 5
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One
- Build or buy
- A stepped exposure printed on your own paper, which Part VI’s commissioning session makes and calls a step ladder (the page that builds it)
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Flat, in a sleeve, clean. It is an instrument and a fingerprint on it is a bad reading
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Decades if it is kept clean
The instrument that makes every emulsion in Part V comparable with every other. The printed alternative is honest and coarser, and the page says which it is using.
Sensitised materials and substrates
Hot-press cotton watercolour paper££essentialfrom Part 5used up
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- 90 lb or heavier, cut to 11 x 15 in: four to six sheets a session, and at least six for the assignment
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Flat, dry, dust-free, and handled by the edges once it is coated
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Consumed
Buy the same paper for the rehearsal coat as for the projects, so that today’s coats are comparable with next month’s. Part V notes that four sheets of good watercolour paper can cost more than the silver in the batch.
Liquid photographic emulsion£££essentialfrom Part 5used up
£49.85 per 250 g bottle — one supplier’s listing, checked 5 September 2026 (Parallax Photographic Coop, Foma Photo Emulsion 250g, £49.85)
Part V's first coating session uses 150 to 250 ml of bought emulsion, so one bottle is that session and most of the alternative route through the rest of the part. The course names no product and prints no melting temperature for one, because it has obtained no current technical leaflet for any of them; the leaflet in the box is the authority.
- How much
- 150 to 250 ml for the first coating session; one bottle coats far more than the session needs
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Cool and dark, and remelted only as often as the maker’s leaflet allows
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. Silver halide in gelatin, handled as a liquid. The waste from the session is silver-bearing and goes to the container.
- Lifetime
- The bottle carries its own shelf life. The surplus from the first session is what the alternative route through the rest of Part V runs on
- Asked for by
- coating your first emulsion
The course names no product and prints no melting temperature, coating rate, drying time, hardener dose or safelight recommendation for one, because it has obtained no current technical leaflet for any of them. Copy the seven figures off your own bottle’s leaflet into the batch record before the session.
Thin glass for dry plates££essentialfrom Part 5safety-critical
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- 1/16 inch, about 1.5 to 1.6 mm, bought cut to size. An 8.5 x 11 in sheet yields four 4 x 5 in plates
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- On edge in a rack or an egg box, dry, dark once coated
- Safety
- Safety-critical. Arris every edge with a 220-mesh diamond hand pad before you do anything else with it. Cotton gloves or edges-only handling before coating, because a fingerprint on a plate is a coating defect you will not see until the fixer.
- Lifetime
- Plates are reusable if they are not scratched
- Asked for by
- coating glass dry plates, coating your first emulsion
Workshop and bench
Base board, levelling feet and drying box£essentialfrom Part 5household object
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One rigid board larger than the bed glass; three M6 bolts with wing nuts and washers, or screw-in furniture levellers; one 60 to 80 litre plastic box with a close-fitting lid; one or two wire cooling racks; about 0.5 square metre of fine open-weave fabric
- Build or buy
- This is the build. Three drilled holes and no woodworking if you take the tray route (the page that builds it)
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- The box is the store: the station lives in it between sessions
- Safety
- No safety role.
- Lifetime
- Years
- Asked for by
- build an emulsion coating station
Three feet, not four. A three-point support cannot rock, and the levelling is what decides whether an emulsion pools at one end of the sheet.
Coating rod, brushes and blade£essentialfrom Part 5
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One glass rod 8 to 10 mm by 250 mm with epoxy putty end plugs; one 50 mm hake brush; 25 and 50 mm foam brushes; one stiff plastic card or squeegee blade
- Build or buy
- The puddle pusher is a length of glass rod with two plugs on it, and the build page makes it (the page that builds it)
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Dry, in the box, rod horizontal so the plugs do not take a set
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. Dress the cut ends of the glass rod before the epoxy goes on.
- Lifetime
- The rod is indefinite; brushes wear
Diamond hand pad, 220 mesh£essentialfrom Part 5safety-critical
No price established. Cost band £ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One
- Budget
- Wet-and-dry paper on a block, used wet, which is slower and works
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- Buy new.
- Storage
- Dry
- Safety
- Safety-critical. This is the tool that turns a cut glass edge into a safe one, and it is used before the glass is used for anything else.
- Lifetime
- Years
Float glass for the coating bed and the setting slab££essentialfrom Part 5safety-critical
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One sheet of 4 to 6 mm about 450 x 600 mm for the bed; one piece of 10 mm or more, or a marble tile, about 300 x 400 mm for the chilled slab
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- A glazier’s offcut, or the glass from a large picture frame, if the edges are dressed
- Storage
- On edge in a rack or flat under card. Never leaning where it can slide
- Safety
- Safety-critical. Eye protection while glass is cut, dressed or drilled, and something between your hands and a cut edge until every edge has been dressed. This is cut protection, and nitrile splash gloves are the wrong control for it.
- Lifetime
- Indefinite
- Asked for by
- build an emulsion coating station
The bed must be bigger than your largest sheet by at least 50 mm all round. Mass is the whole point of the slab, so thicker is better.
Potato ricer, vacuum flask and straining bag££essentialfrom Part 5household object
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One stainless or plastic ricer; one wide-mouth vacuum flask of about 1 L; one cotton jelly or straining bag that hangs inside it; a second flask or lidded box of crushed ice; 8 to 12 litres of cold water for the six changes
- Build or buy
- Bought. The course offers no route to make this one.
- Second-hand
- A charity-shop ricer is the obvious answer, and once it is an emulsion ricer it is never food equipment again
- Storage
- With the station, labelled, apart from anything used for food
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. You handle cold wet emulsion by hand through a bag. Silver halide on skin darkens in daylight and takes days to wear off, so gloves matter more in this session than the substance list suggests.
- Lifetime
- Years
Temperature-controlled water bath££essentialfrom Part 5
No price established. Cost band ££ only — see what could not be priced.
- How much
- One
- Budget
- A pan of hot water on a stove with a nested jar standing in it, a thermometer and a kettle. The practitioner whose paper recipes this part follows coats with exactly this
- Recommended
- A slow cooker, or a seedling heat mat with a plug-in thermostat, which holds a band without attention through the thirty to seventy-five minutes of ripening
- Laboratory grade
- An immersion circulator in a deep container, which holds temperature closely and stirs while it does it
- Build or buy
- The pan-and-jar route is a build in everything but name (the page that builds it)
- Second-hand
- A second-hand slow cooker is, in this part’s own words, the single best value item in the station
- Storage
- Dry, with the thermometer that lives in it
- Safety
- Safety-relevant. Mains equipment near water, and a bath at 49 to 52 °C. Dry hands at any switch is protective equipment even though you cannot buy it.
- Lifetime
- Years
The item that decides the spread inside Part V’s cost band. The immersion circulator is also the only item in the station the course cannot quote a specification for, so buy on the maker’s figures and then measure it yourself against the temperature log.
Stage 6 Alternative processes
A ultraviolet exposure source, coating tools, suitable papers and the process chemistry.
Not settled yet. Parts XVI and XXI to XXV, none of which is written. The one alternative-process material the written course buys is pre-coated cyanotype paper for Part I’s photogram, and it is listed in stage 0 where a reader will actually need it.
Essential 0 of 0 items · Priced floor —
What is used up, and what is bought once
Section titled “What is used up, and what is bought once”46 of the planner’s 108 items are used up rather than kept, and 62 are bought once. That split is the whole difference between what a course costs to start and what it costs to continue.
| Item | From | How much the course uses | Price per pack |
|---|---|---|---|
| Black photographic tape, gaffer tape and masking tape | Part 1 | One roll of each | not priced |
| Card, tracing paper and rigid board | Part 1 | A few sheets of each: tracing or drafting film for screens and overlays, hardboard or thick mounting card for backing | not priced |
| Craft knife and spare blades | Part 1 | One knife and a packet of blades. Foam board blunts a blade in about a metre of cutting | not priced |
| Laboratory notebook, pencil, and printed record sheets | Part 1 | One bound notebook and a soft pencil, plus printed sheets for the exposure log and the batch record | not priced |
| Matt black paint, water-based | Part 1 | 100 ml for the camera build; a few millilitres for the pinhole plates | not priced |
| Pre-coated cyanotype paper | Part 1 | Six to eight sheets, A5 or larger | £18.95–£36.95 per 20 to 50 pre-coated sheets, 8 x 10 in |
| Rigid cardboard box, aluminium foil and stiff black card | Part 1 | One box about 250 to 350 mm on its longest side, one roll of heavy-duty foil, two or three sheets of black card | not priced |
| Adhesive labels and a pen that survives water | Part 2 | A roll or sheet of labels and one permanent marker, replaced when it dries | not priced |
| Disposable nitrile gloves | Part 2 | One box of 100 to start, then roughly a box a year at one or two sessions a month | £6.64–£14.99 per box of 50 to 100 disposable gloves |
| Distilled or deionised water | Part 2 | 2 L for the commissioning session; 1 L for the pH session; about 175 ml a batch for Part V’s emulsions | not priced |
| Sodium chloride | Part 2 | About 150 g for the commissioning session; 0.58 g in Part IV; 2.0 g a batch in Part V | not priced |
| Sterile eyewash bottle | Part 2 | One 500 ml bottle or a box of sealed pods, within reach of the wet side and in date | £5.89–£22.99 per one sterile eyewash refill bottle, or a complete wall kit |
| Narrow-range pH indicator papers | Part 3 | Two packs, covering about 4 to 7 and 7 to 10 | not priced |
| pH buffer standards at 4.01 and 7.00 | Part 3 | Two sachets or about 100 ml of each: one for calibration, one kept sealed as a check | not priced |
| Sodium carbonate, anhydrous | Part 3 | About 10 g of supermarket washing soda for the pH session; 27.0 g of the anhydrous salt for the oxidation experiment | £7.20 per 500 g, anhydrous |
| Graded photographic paper | Part 4 | Four sheets, any grade | not priced |
| Household ammonia solution | Part 4 | 20 ml, for the optional stage only | not priced |
| Paper developer concentrate | Part 4 | 100 ml a session, diluted 1+9 to make a litre of working solution | £10.52–£20.03 per 500 ml to 1 L of concentrate, diluted 1+9 |
| Plain culinary gelatin | Part 4 | 1 g, to make 50 ml at 2 per cent w/v | not priced |
| Potassium bromide | Part 4 | 1.19 g in Part IV; 5 g a batch in Part V; a few tenths of a gram as a restrainer in Part VIII | £23.00 per 250 g |
| Potassium iodide | Part 4 | 1.66 g in Part IV; 0.1 g a batch in Part V, dispensed as 1 ml of a 10 per cent w/v solution | not priced |
| Rapid fixer concentrate | Part 4 | 200 ml a print session and 60 to 120 ml a film, diluted 1+4; Part V’s emulsion sessions use two litres of working solution in two baths; Part XI’s mixing lab dilutes 200 ml of concentrate to a litre and the capacity experiment works 200 ml of that litre to exhaustion | £21.05–£25.98 per 1 L of ammonium thiosulfate concentrate, diluted 1+4 for film |
| Silver nitrate | Part 4 | Under 1 g for the whole of Part IV’s experiment; 5 g for each of Part V’s four makes | £59.95–£112.90 per one jar: 25 g at the lower figure, 10 g at the higher |
| Sodium thiosulfate pentahydrate | Part 4 | 5 g for Part IV, then 490 g for Part XI’s mixing lab — 250 g for a litre of plain hypo at 25 per cent w/v and 240 g for a litre of the acid hardening bath | not priced |
| Stop bath concentrate | Part 4 | 50 ml a print session and 15 to 30 ml a film, diluted 1+19 | £10.66–£12.18 per 500 ml of citric acid concentrate, diluted 1+19 |
| Variable-contrast resin-coated paper | Part 4 | About 20 sheets for Part IV; 16 for the camera commissioning; 10 to 14 for each of Part VII’s eight assignments. Roughly 120 sheets across Parts IV to VII | £16.06–£44.71 per 25 to 100 sheets, 5 x 7 in, variable contrast RC |
| Chrome alum, potassium alum and sodium hydroxide | Part 5 | 0.03 g of chrome alum a batch, dispensed as 0.6 ml of a 5 per cent stock; 15 g/L of potassium alum in a hardening fixer if plates frill; about 200 ml of 2 per cent w/v sodium hydroxide for the deep clean; 15 g of potassium alum for the litre of acid hardening fixer in Part XI’s mixing lab | not priced |
| Citric acid | Part 5 | 0.5 g a batch | not priced |
| Disposable particulate respirator, FFP3 | Part 5 | A few. One per weighing session; they are not cleaned and reused | not priced |
| Erythrosin, disodium salt | Part 5 | 3 to 4 mg a batch, as 3 to 4 drops of a 2 per cent w/v stock. Buy the smallest quantity offered, on CAS 16423-68-0 | not priced |
| Ethanol, 95 per cent | Part 5 | 2.5 to 15 ml a batch, plus 25 ml of stock solvent for the dye | not priced |
| Halide salts for emulsion making: potassium chloride and ammonium bromide | Part 5 | 3 g of potassium chloride a batch; 4.1 g of ammonium bromide a batch | not priced |
| Hot-press cotton watercolour paper | Part 5 | 90 lb or heavier, cut to 11 x 15 in: four to six sheets a session, and at least six for the assignment | not priced |
| Liquid photographic emulsion | Part 5 | 150 to 250 ml for the first coating session; one bottle coats far more than the session needs | £49.85 per 250 g bottle |
| Photographic gelatin, inert | Part 5 | 7 g a batch for the bromide make, 25 g for the chloride one, 10 g for the rehearsal coat | £17.45 per 100 g, inert photographic gelatin |
| Black-and-white film | Part 6 | One roll for the first film, plus a scrap for the clearing test; two rolls of the same batch for Part VIII’s comparison | £6.37–£11.40 per one 35 mm roll, 36 exposures |
| Film developer concentrate | Part 6 | 60 to 120 ml a film at the maker’s dilution; a 1 L bottle is many films | £33.28–£41.08 per 1 L of liquid concentrate, diluted 1+4 one-shot |
| Negative sleeves and archival storage | Part 6 | Enough for everything you make, which by the end of Part VII is a portfolio’s worth | not priced |
| PVA woodworking adhesive | Part 6 | 100 ml, which is the only adhesive the build requires | £11.99–£14.29 per 5 L |
| Wet-and-dry abrasive paper | Part 6 | One sheet each of about 600 and 1200 grit for the pinholes; 120 and 240 grit for the woodwork | not priced |
| Wetting agent | Part 6 | 5 ml per litre of final rinse water, so 2 to 3 ml a film | £28.70 per 1 L of concentrate, diluted 1+200 |
| Sheet film, 4 x 5 in | Part 7 | Two to six sheets an assignment, where you take the film route at all | £62.66 per 25 sheets, 4 x 5 in |
| Borax, decahydrate | Part 8 | 2.0 g per litre of D-76 | £9.98 per 200 g, decahydrate |
| Hydroquinone | Part 8 | 5.0 g per litre of D-76; 2.44 g for the oxidation experiment | £11.89 per 50 g |
| Metol | Part 8 | 9.5 g for a litre of each of D-76 and D-23; 1.50 g for the oxidation experiment | £16.20 per 50 g |
| Sodium sulfite, anhydrous | Part 8 | 100 g per litre in both D-76 and D-23, so 200 g for the lab; 9.0 g for the oxidation experiment; 15 g of the anhydrous salt, or 30 g of the crystals, for Part XI’s acid hardening fixer | £13.68–£19.98 per 1 kg, anhydrous |
What could not be priced
Section titled “What could not be priced”34 of 108 items carry a dated price. The rest carry a cost band and nothing else, and here is why, item by item, with what it would take to close each one.
- Balance reading to 0.01 g, and a 100 g calibration mass
- The instrument Part II commissions the laboratory on and Part VIII says outright is the one to buy. Two UK electronics and tool distributors were tried on 5 September 2026; one returned no matching page and one timed out. What would settle it: A listing from a UK laboratory or catering supplier that states the capacity and the readability together, because a 0.01 g balance and a 0.1 g balance are sold under the same words.
- pH meter with a combination glass electrode, buffer standards at pH 4.01 and 7.00, and narrow-range indicator papers
- Required by Part III's measuring session and used again in Part VIII. The photographic retailers stock none of the three: a search of the largest returned stop baths and light meters and no pH instrument at all. What would settle it: A listing from a UK laboratory or aquarium supplier, which is where a pen meter and sachet standards are actually sold.
- Laboratory glassware: beakers, volumetric flasks, test tubes, racks, a funnel, a wash bottle, a stirring rod, a spatula and graduated syringes
- Parts II, III, IV, V and VIII between them ask for all of these. No UK laboratory glassware supplier reached on 5 September 2026 returned a readable price list. What would settle it: A UK educational-laboratory supplier's listing, priced per item and per pack, since these are bought as sets rather than singly.
- Storage bottles in HDPE or glass, 250 ml to 1 L, with sealing caps
- Part II fills two on its first evening and Part VIII needs two brown 1 L bottles with tight closures. Not stocked by the photographic retailers read, and not searched at a laboratory supplier. What would settle it: A UK laboratory or homebrew supplier's listing, stating the material and whether the cap has a liner.
- Self-healing cutting mat, steel rule and craft knife
- Part I calls the mat and the steel rule protective equipment rather than conveniences, and Part VI repeats it. The builders' merchant searched sells industrial floor matting under the same words; the craft retailer searched returned category counts and price bands but no individual product with a price. What would settle it: A named product listing from a UK art or craft retailer, at A3 and A2 for the mat and 300 mm and 600 mm for the rule.
- 21-step transmission step wedge
- Part V uses one in three sessions and Part VI's commissioning session prints its own substitute. The largest UK photographic retailer searched returned zero results for the term on 5 September 2026. What would settle it: A listing from a UK sensitometry or alternative-process supplier, or an import price with duty and shipping stated — and the planner should carry the homemade alternative's cost beside it either way.
- Silver-halide salts other than potassium bromide: potassium iodide, potassium chloride, ammonium bromide
- Part IV weighs the iodide and Part V's makes need all three. The photographic retailers stock the bromide and none of the other three; the general chemical suppliers list some of them without a pack size, which makes the price unusable. What would settle it: Any listing that states the pack size and the grade together.
- Hardeners and cleaning alkali: chrome alum, potassium alum, sodium hydroxide
- Part V's chlorobromide make carries 30 mg of chrome alum a batch, the alum goes into a hardening fixer if plates frill, and the caustic soda is the deep clean for glass. None was listed by the suppliers read. What would settle it: A UK photographic or general chemical supplier's listing with the pack size stated. Sodium hydroxide is also sold as drain cleaner in every hardware shop, and that price would be worth carrying as the household alternative.
- Erythrosin, disodium salt
- The one dye in Part V's orthochromatic make, at 3 to 4 mg a batch, bought on CAS 16423-68-0. No UK listing found. What would settle it: A laboratory or dye supplier's listing for the smallest quantity offered, which is what the page tells the reader to buy.
- Coating-station hardware: float glass cut and dressed, a marble or thick-glass setting slab, a 60 to 80 litre lidded box, a digital hygrometer, freezer blocks, and the water bath in its three forms
- Part V's build page names all of them and gives three budget paths for the bath alone. None was priced: glass is cut to order and quoted rather than listed, and the bath's three routes span a slow cooker, a seedling heat mat with a thermostat, and an immersion circulator. What would settle it: A glazier's price per square metre for 4 to 6 mm float glass cut and arrised, and one listing for each of the three bath routes — the middle of which the page already says is best bought second-hand.
- Glass plates, 1.5 to 1.6 mm, cut to 4 x 5 in
- Part V's dry-plate session gets four plates from an 8.5 x 11 in sheet of thin glass. Thin glass at this thickness is a picture-framing or microscopy item and no UK listing was found. What would settle it: A framing supplier's or laboratory supplier's price for 1.5 mm glass by the sheet, cut.
- Hot-press cotton watercolour paper, 90 lb or heavier, 11 x 15 in
- Part V coats every emulsion on it and the page notes that four sheets of good paper can cost more than the silver. An art retailer was not reached. What would settle it: A UK art supplier's listing per sheet and per block for a named 300 gsm hot-pressed cotton paper.
- Pinhole-making stock: brass or steel shim of stated thickness, wet-and-dry abrasive paper, a pin vice and a bought laser-drilled pinhole
- Part VI's session turns on buying shim by its stated thickness, so that the plate thickness is known before the hole is pierced. No UK listing was found for shim, and none for a laser-drilled pinhole. What would settle it: A model engineering supplier's listing for shim by thickness, and any alternative-process or pinhole specialist's listing for a drilled plate.
- Camera build hardware: a quarter-inch UNC T-nut, 6 mm neodymium magnets, self-adhesive black felt or flocking, thin closed-cell foam, black polypropylene or aluminium sheet, and a rectangular press-lid tin
- The reference camera's whole non-timber parts list. Individually cheap and collectively unpriced; no single supplier was read that carries them all. What would settle it: One listing each from a UK fixings, model or photographic accessory supplier. The tin route is a household object and should carry a household estimate rather than a listing.
- Second-hand 4 x 5 in double dark slide
- The one optional item Part VI says can double the build's total. It is a used-market purchase and this file holds no used prices, because a completed sale is not a listing. What would settle it: A range across a dealer's current used stock, dated — which is the only honest form a second-hand price can take.
- Tripod, loupe, light box, lux meter and small spirit level
- Parts VI and VII require all five, and Part VII says the spirit level is not optional. None was priced. What would settle it: Listings from a UK photographic retailer for the first three and a builders' merchant for the last two, noting for each whether a phone can stand in and what it costs in accuracy.
- Yellow, orange and red contrast filters
- Part VII's landscape assignment uses a Wratten 8, 15 and 25 or their equivalents, and notes that lighting-gel offcuts are a fraction of the price of photographic filters. Neither route was priced. What would settle it: A photographic retailer's listing for gelatin or polyester filter squares, and a stage-lighting supplier's price for a swatch book, so the reader can see the gap the page describes.
- Sleeving that passes the Photographic Activity Test
- Part VII's portfolio review makes it most of the session's cost. Negative pages were listed by the photographic retailer read, but none of the listings stated whether the material passes the PAT, which is the whole property the page asks for. What would settle it: A conservation supplier's listing that names the PAT explicitly.
- FFP3 disposable respirator
- Part VI specifies one for prolonged indoor sanding and Part VIII specifies a particulate mask for the weighing step. It is the control that lets a Level B weighing sit inside a Level A session, so it is a safety-critical purchase and it is unpriced. What would settle it: A builders' merchant or safety supplier's listing, which must also state that the mask is fit-tested to the wearer — a mask that does not fit is not protection.
- United States equivalents for anything at all
- The brief asks for EU and US equivalents where they can be established. Two large US photographic retailers were tried on 5 September 2026 and both refused the request. Two EU equivalents were established, both from one German retailer. What would settle it: Any readable US retailer listing for the ILFORD chemistry line, which is the set of products most likely to be sold identically in all three markets and therefore the best anchor for a cross-market comparison.
- A sealed, certified, low-voltage-triggered mains appliance switch
- Not a pricing gap but a product gap, and it is recorded here so the negative is visible where a reader shops. A survey of the United Kingdom market on 5 September 2026 - maker relay modules, the North American sealed-appliance archetype, commercial darkroom timers, enclosed solid-state relays, smart plugs and a stage-lighting relay pack - found nothing that is both a sealed appliance the reader never opens and a device that accepts a low-voltage trigger carrying the timer's own interval. Open question 1.4 records the criteria, every candidate and the criterion each one failed. Part XVII therefore builds no mains channel and the planner needs no such item. What would settle it: A manufacturer's listing for a BS 1363 plug-and-socket appliance with a documented dry-contact or logic-level trigger input that holds the output on while it is asserted, naming the standard it is certified against, stating the isolation between the trigger and the mains side, and priced materially below the cheapest certified enlarger timer.
- Gold chloride (chloroauric acid), as the dry salt or as a made-up 1 per cent solution
- The most expensive consumable in Parts XXII to XXIV after the platinum metals, and three Part XXII pages, Part XXIII's toning lab and Part XXIV's permanence lab all state that their toning row cannot be priced. Searched on 7 September 2026: the readable listings for the salt are United States ones, sold by two US retailers on behalf of one US maker, and this file's market is the United Kingdom; the UK alternative-process retailer whose catalogue would carry it did not resolve from the machine the search ran on, on either its shop or its main domain. A packaged gold toner of undisclosed strength was found and is now recorded under `toner`, and it cannot stand in for the salt. What would settle it: A dated UK listing that states the pack size AND the form beside the price, because 1 g of the dry salt and 10 mL of a 1 per cent solution are sold under the same two words and are not the same quantity. What such a price would multiply is already established: Reilly gives 0.1 to 0.2 g of the salt per litre of working toner for a matte salted paper against 0.4 to 0.5 for a glossy albumen, and Bostick and Sullivan's replenishment rule of about 5 mL of a 0.2 per cent solution a print works out at 0.010 g of the salt per print.
- Palladium and platinum salts, and the ready-made sensitiser solutions sold in their place
- Sodium tetrachloropalladate(II) and potassium tetrachloroplatinate(II), or the made-up palladium solution the kits sell instead. This is the most consequential missing figure in the file: every practical page in Part XXV reports its consumables subtotal as a floor with the dominant row empty, and the cost lesson can price a print in metal - about 40 mg of palladium on an 8 by 10 coated with a rod - but not in money. Searched on 7 September 2026: the one UK route found is a made-up platinum and palladium kit whose page did not resolve from this machine, and the suppliers that do list the salts are industrial ones quoting research quantities at prices they say move weekly with the metal, which is a quotation and not a listing. What would settle it: A dated UK listing for the salt or the made-up solution, stating the pack size beside the strength. Two traps for whoever adds it: a supplier prices the salt and not the metal, so a gram of the anhydrous palladium salt carries about 0.36 g of palladium and a gram of the trihydrate about 0.31 g; and a made-up solution is priced by volume, so its strength has to be on the listing or the figure cannot become a cost per print.
- Ferric oxalate, as the ready-made solution or as the solid
- The second consumable of every practical page in Parts XXIV and XXV, and the largest per-print cost of a kallitype after the silver. Not priced and not previously named here. The obstacle is not that nobody sells it but that the bottle is not one product: three suppliers publish three different strengths - 20, 25 and 27 per cent w/v - under the same name, so a price with no strength beside it cannot become a cost per coated sheet. What would settle it: A dated UK listing stating the strength of the solution, or the weight of the solid. Either is usable, and a price without one of the two is not.
- The clearing-bath and sensitiser solids of the iron-silver and platinum processes: potassium oxalate monohydrate, oxalic acid, disodium EDTA dihydrate, sodium citrate, ammonium citrate, tartaric acid and Rochelle salt
- Together these are the whole wet chemistry of a Van Dyke, a kallitype and a palladium print, which the Part XXV pages estimate at about a pound a session and cannot show. The survey of 7 September 2026 closed citric acid as a solid, which is now recorded, and the one UK retail range of photographic raw chemicals carries none of the others. The UK alternative-process retailer that lists potassium oxalate by the 100 g did not resolve from the machine the search ran on. What would settle it: Dated UK listings for each, at the pack sizes a student would buy, with the hydrate stated: the monohydrate of potassium oxalate and the dihydrate of disodium EDTA are what the formulas specify and are not the same weight as their anhydrous forms.
- Sodium sulfide, for the residual-silver test and for sulfide toning
- Part XII's residual-silver test, the break-fix session in Part XXVIII and the capstone's permanence work all call for a stock solution of it, and the capstone lists it among the consumables it cannot price. Searched on 7 September 2026: the UK suppliers found list it as a bulk industrial chemical in 25 kg sacks with no retail price at all, and the 100 g photographic pack is a United States product. No UK listing in a quantity a darkroom would buy was found. What would settle it: A UK listing in a pack of 100 g or less, or a UK listing for the made-up residual-silver test solution, whose dilution its own sheet states. Either would let the permanence pages cost a test that currently reads as free.
- Thiocyanates: potassium thiocyanate for DK-20, sodium thiocyanate for the albumen gold toner, ammonium thiocyanate for the kallitype toner
- Three salts of one anion, wanted in three different places and none of them priced. DK-20 carries the potassium salt as its extra-fine-grain silver solvent, and the film-developer matrix has refused that formula a cost band since it was written for exactly this reason. The other two are 15 to 20 g a litre in one of the two toners Part XXIII offers, and the same chemistry again in the noble-metal toning of Part XXIV. None of the three was listed by either of the two UK photographic retailers read on 7 September 2026. What would settle it: A listing from an alternative-process or general chemical supplier stating the pack size and naming which salt it is, because the three are not interchangeable by weight and each formula is written for one of them.
- Eggs
- Part XXIII's coating lab consumes about 35 large eggs per litre of albumen - Reilly's figure is about one ounce of albumen from each large egg - which makes them the largest row in that session's consumables table and the only food in the whole planner. Searched on 7 September 2026: the supermarket product pages the search returned did not render a price to the tool that read them, so nothing was read that could be recorded. What would settle it: A dated UK supermarket listing for large eggs by the dozen. One listing settles it, and the point of having it is that a reader would see that the albumen and not the silver is what makes the first sheet expensive.
- Glacial acetic acid
- Two millilitres per litre of albumen, and the reagent several other formulas in this course name. The survey of 7 September 2026 priced acetic acid at 80 per cent, which is what the photographic trade sells and is a different product at a different strength; that record is in this file and says so on its face. The UK laboratory supplier found publishes pack sizes of 2.5, 25 and 200 litres and quotes rather than lists. What would settle it: A dated UK listing for glacial acetic acid at 99.5 per cent, stating the concentration and the pack size, in a pack a darkroom would buy. The 80 per cent is already priced here and the arithmetic to substitute it is straightforward; what is missing is the reagent the formulas actually name.
- Isopropyl alcohol at 70 per cent or stronger, by the litre
- The hardening bath of Part XXIII's double-coating route is a shallow tray of 70 per cent isopropanol, so the session consumes it by the tray rather than by the wipe. Not stocked by either of the photographic retailers read on 7 September 2026, and not searched at a pharmacy or a hardware supplier, which is where it is actually sold. What would settle it: A dated UK listing stating the concentration and the volume. A pharmacy or hardware price is the honest route for this one and should be recorded as that rather than waited on from a photographic supplier.
- Ammonium chloride
- Fifteen grams a litre in the albumen itself and again in the alcohol bath of the double-coating route, so both of Part XXIII's labs consume it. It is not in the one UK retail range of photographic raw chemicals surveyed on 7 September 2026, which is where this file's other photographic solids are priced. What would settle it: A dated UK listing stating the pack size, from an alternative-process or general chemical supplier.
- Kaolin
- About 15 g per litre of silver bath, for decolorising it, and the only route the course can cite for keeping a working salted-paper silver bath usable across sessions. Small money and a real row: the consumables table names it and cannot price it. It is not a photographic product - it is sold as a pottery body and as a cosmetic ingredient - and neither trade was searched on 7 September 2026. What would settle it: A UK pottery or cosmetic-ingredient supplier's listing per kilogram, stating the grade.
- Thin, smooth, unbuffered all-rag paper for hand coating, at the sizes these processes print
- This file already names hot-press cotton watercolour paper at 11 by 15 in as a gap, and this is a different requirement rather than the same one restated. Albumen wants a stock thinner and smoother than a watercolour paper - Reilly names a one-ply plate finish as the closest ordinary approximation, and current instructions name Arches Platine at 310 gsm and Bergger COT320 - and the platinum cluster prints at 8 by 10 on paper from Ware's named unbuffered list. Part XXI cites a retailer's dated figure for one of them, Hahnemuhle Platinum Rag 300 gsm, 8 by 10 in, 25 sheets at 23.95 pounds on 6 September 2026 and shown out of stock; that is a citation on a page and not a record here, because the listing it was read from is not recorded here. What would settle it: A retailer's listing stating the sheet count beside the sheet size for one of the named papers, in stock. The Part XXI citation becomes a record in this file the moment the URL it was read from is supplied.
- Developing agents this file still cannot price: catechol, p-aminophenol as the raw hydrochloride, potassium metabisulfite, and sodium metaborate in both its hydrates
- The survey of 7 September 2026 closed most of this gap and not all of it. Pyrogallol, phenidone, ascorbic acid and sodium bisulfite are now priced, and packaged XTOL is priced at two retailers, so Part XXVII's developer comparison can cost three of its four developers where before it could cost two. These four remain, and two of them are why PMK and the rodinal-type concentrate still cannot be costed at all: PMK's B solution is 300 g/L of the metaborate tetrahydrate, and the rodinal-type concentrate carries 150 g/L of potassium metabisulfite, which is a different salt from the sodium bisulfite now recorded. What would settle it: Dated UK listings naming the salt unambiguously and, for the metaborate, stating the hydrate. The listing that prices sodium bisulfite here is titled for two different salts at once and does not say which is in the tub, and that is the failure mode not to repeat.
- Conservation and presentation materials: mount board in buffered and unbuffered forms, hinging tissue and starch paste or corners, a portfolio box or presentation folder, and a spotting medium
- Seven of the twelve consumables the capstone cannot price are these, and requirement 11 of the portfolio specification depends on all of them. No conservation supplier was reached on 7 September 2026. The related gap for sleeving that passes the Photographic Activity Test is recorded separately and for a different reason: sleeving is listed, and the listings do not state the property. What would settle it: A UK conservation supplier's listing, per sheet for the board and per pack for the rest, with the buffered and unbuffered forms priced separately and named as such on the listing. That distinction is the whole property the capstone selects on, and a board sold as acid-free has not answered it.
- Wash water, as a metered cost per session
- Every archival wash in Parts XVIII and XIX and the break-fix session in Part XXVIII consume it, the consumables tables carry it as a row, and no page in the course can cost a wash. It has never been searched because it is not a retail listing at all: it is a water and sewerage tariff, and the volume is a property of the wash sequence rather than of a shop. What would settle it: A dated UK water company's tariff per cubic metre with the standing charge stated separately, together with a measured or published volume for one archival wash. Both halves are needed, and either alone gives a number that means nothing.
- Bench stationery and workshop consumables: labels and a chinagraph pencil, solder and flux, and office paper for the report
- Individually trivial, collectively named in four consumables tables, and unpriced. None was searched on 7 September 2026, because none of them is laboratory equipment and this file holds no household estimate for any of them. What would settle it: A household estimate for each, recorded together with the household-estimate basis, which is the shape this file already uses for objects nobody sells as laboratory equipment. A listing would be better and is not necessary.
- Digital calliper reading to 0.01 mm, and the pinhole measuring route beside it
- Part VI's planner carries digital-calliper, pinhole-measuring-kit and laser-drilled-pinhole at stage 2, and three pages send the reader to the price file for them. The file names the pinhole-making stock and the tripod-and-loupe group as gaps and does not name these. No dated observation was taken on 7 September 2026; they were not in that survey's scope, which covered chemistry and paper. What would settle it: A dated UK listing for a calliper stating its resolution rather than only its range, since 0.01 mm and 0.1 mm instruments are sold under the same words; and, for the drilled pinhole, a listing that states the hole diameter and its tolerance, because a pinhole sold without a stated diameter cannot be used for the measured work Part VI asks for.
- Sheet-film holder, and the camera fixings for the modular pinhole body
- film-holder and camera-fixings are planner items at stage 2 with firstPart 6, and the build pages accept a bought holder as a route. Neither is named among the file's gaps and neither carries a price. What would settle it: A dated listing for a holder in the format Part VI's body is built around, stating the format rather than a model number alone; second-hand prices vary too widely to record as a range.
Three of those gaps are worth calling out, because they are not merely missing numbers.
Silver nitrate. The two UK listings the planner found differ by a factor of nearly five per gram — £2.40 against £11.29 — and nothing in the listings explains the difference. The cheaper one was out of stock and the dearer one is a small photographic-grade jar. Silver is also the one substance here whose price follows a commodity market rather than a retailer. The record carries both figures and says which is which, because a single averaged number would hide exactly the thing a reader needs to see.
The step wedge. Part V uses a 21-step transmission wedge in three sessions and it is the instrument that makes one emulsion comparable with another. The largest UK photographic retailer the planner searched returned no results for the term at all. Part VI’s commissioning session prints its own step ladder on photographic paper and that is a genuine alternative, but it is a coarser one and the course should be able to say what the real thing costs.
United States equivalents. The brief asks for EU and US equivalents where they can be established. Two large US photographic retailers refused the request outright, and the two European figures that exist both come from a single German retailer. So the planner’s US column is empty, and it is empty because the research failed rather than because the products do not exist there.
How to read a price on this page
Section titled “How to read a price on this page”Each figure names the kind of evidence it rests on, and the kinds are not equivalent.
One supplier’s listing is a single shop’s price on a single day. It tells you the order of magnitude and no more. A range across named suppliers is two or more shops’ listings for the same product, which is the strongest thing this page can offer short of a manufacturer’s own figure, and it also shows you how much a shop’s margin varies — the same litre of rapid fixer was £21.05 at one and £25.98 at the other. An estimate for a household object is what the planner gives for things nobody sells as laboratory equipment: a cardboard box, a drinks can, an old shirt.
Where a price seems absurd for what the course actually uses, it usually is, and the record says so. One litre of wetting agent at 1+200 is two hundred litres of final rinse. Five litres of PVA adhesive is fifty times what a pinhole camera needs. Two hundred grams of borax is a hundred litres of D-76. In each case the listing is the smallest pack that supplier had, not the sensible purchase, and the note says which.
How this page stays honest
Section titled “How this page stays honest”Three build-time checks run over the planner on every commit, in scripts/validate-planner.mjs.
Every item must name at least one written page that asks for it, and every one of those paths must resolve. Every item’s first-required part must be the earliest part among those pages, so an item cannot be filed later than the page that needs it. And every price must carry a currency, a region, a date that is not in the future, a basis, and at least one dated listing with a URL — with the stated band required to contain the listings it was read from, so that a band and its own evidence cannot disagree. A price more than six months old is reported as one nobody has re-checked.
The manifest’s own pricesChecked date must equal the date in the price file, so the site cannot
advertise a checking date the data does not have.
Sources for this page
5 cited · checked 2026-09-05
- 01Firstcall Photographic§ Darkroom chemistry, paper, film, tanks, dishes, safelights and raw chemicalsfirstcall-photographic.co.uk2026-09-05
- 02Parallax Photographic Coop§ Black and white film chemicals; alternative processesparallaxphotographic.coop2026-09-05
- 03Screwfix§ Nitrile gloves, safety spectacles and goggles, eyewash, PVA adhesivescrewfix.com2026-09-05
- 04Wickes§ Hardwood plywood sheetwickes.co.uk2026-09-05
- 05macodirect§ ILFORD chemistry, for the European equivalentsmacodirect.de/en2026-09-05
Formulas, hazard statements, historical dates and process descriptions on this page were checked against the sources above on the date shown. Safety data changes: obtain the current safety data sheet for the product you actually buy before you open it.