Developing film at home isn’t all that hard, although you will need to turn a spare room or a closet into a proper darkroom. And that can be a hassle. The Lab-Box offers analog photographers a convenient way to ditch the darkroom completely.
A literal darkroom in a box, it’s a tabletop device that lets you properly develop a roll of film into ready-to-print negatives. No more taking up an entire room of the house to build your photo-processing lab – this thing lets you process film whether you’re in the living room, in a coffee shop, or even on-the-road.
The Lab-Box consists of a tank and a pair of modular components that you attach to it, depending on the film format (they support 35mm and medium format) you’re working on. That’s it. To use, simply make sure the rig is covered, insert an exposed roll to the clip, wind it onto the reel, pour the developing liquid into the tank, and rotate the outer knob to cause agitation. It supports both continuous and intermittent agitation, so you can experiment with both to see which turns out better results for your projects. From there, you simply take your negatives and dry them like usual.
Dimensions are 5 x 4.9 x 3.8 inches (width x height x depth) with one module attached, so it’s small enough to slide inside a bag for taking on the road. And, yes, you can use it to develop outdoors in broad daylight, so this is as convenient as it can ever get.
A Kickstarter campaign is currently running for Lab-Box. You can reserve a unit for pledges starting at €89.