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Sayin' "ciao" to the darkroom...?


shawn_stupidpost

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Is it feasible to go digital for most darkroom work? What is entailed to do it well? Good neg. scanner, Zip Drive, fairly good printer (best prints done at a lab...?). All this computer time has left me dreading my treks to the darkroom...Of course, for some stuff I guess a darkroom is unavoidable (portrait prints, for one...). I want to do as much colour and BW work at home...
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Unless you are making one-of-a-kind fine art prints (to sell at

outrageously inflated prices), there's no need to do anything in color

traditionally today. (I haven't seen B/W output from the new

digital-direct-to-photographic-paper printers, so I can't comment on

that.)

 

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I suggest that you buy the least equipment that you can and send

everything out. A good lab will have better equipment than you could

afford and will know how to use it. However, even an Epson 750 (at

$250) is more than adequate for personal portfolio work (in color).

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"Is it feasible to go digital for most darkroom work? "

 

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Sure, I have. And why do you think you need a traditional darkroom

for portrait work? When my son had his HS graduation portrait taken

digital retouching was available and that was almost 3 years ago. The

new Epson Photo printers will do for all but the most demanding work.

Zip disks are OK for taking files to a lab but you really want a CD-

Rom burner, $2 for 650megs vs $10 for 250megs with Zip.

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What's a darkroom?

 

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Seriously: for colour work I certainly do not envisage using my own

darkroom. But I do envisage using somebody else's:

 

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I still use film and get it developed in a pro lab. For "creative"

techniques, I either let them do it (simple burning, hand printing,

etc -- they are quote good) or

 

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I get a high quality scan made, manipulate it digitally and get the

lab to print it in high quality on photographic paper.

 

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I do not have my own scanner, and I do not use my own printer for

critical work (great for letterheads and to show crop or general

colour, but not for paid work).

 

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I rarely do black and white but there I see a need for the darkroom.

 

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Your milage may vary.

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in peter's defense(gulp!) we should get things clear,,,,In order to

say "ciao" completely to the darkroom you'd need a very, very

expensive digital camera or digi-back. And even then to dial in a

film speed of say 1600 would create so much noise as to render it

useless....so we need to make sure we are talking about scanning and

epson printing and essentially screwing our clients with crap that

will fade fast...or tango drum scans and lightjet prints .... or such

and such with iris...on and on....some digital techniques are simply

better than any traditional darkroom print/result but are they

available to you at a price you can afford? what is acceptable to you

may be out of the question for me in terms of price or quality or

availability. The direct write to paper printers that John K speaks

of still require processing in wet chems so this isn't strictly a dry

digital way of working....

 

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personally if you find a epson print satisfactory ....well, I'll bite

my tongue now cause it'd be ugly.

 

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unless you spend up to and beyond 10k for a slow as hell digital back

or much more on a mega mega pixel camera that might get you 8x10's in

very bright daylight you will still need to shoot film and have it

processed and then scanned...to me this is a hybridized process and

cannot be called digital....

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