Rambling after a darkroom session.....

[richard_oleson]

i just spent the evening in the Darkroom du Jour with my daughter....

used up a pack of 25 5x7 sheets, she ended up with 11 keeper prints

and 5 for me. loads of problems, all related to not having a proper

darkroom and therefore not doing this sort of thing often enough:

film diveloper was too old, causing 4 rolls of very thin negatives;

my newest (about a year old) developer concentrate had gone

spectacularly bad: even diluted 9:1 it was as black as coffee, you

couldn't see a print under a quarter inch of it. luckily, i had

neglected to throw out an older bottle, which was still in quite

usable shape. then the paper i had in my safe had gone bad, on top

of all that, but i'd had my daughter buy a new pack today so we were

okay. considering it all, we got a pretty good yield... by the end

of the evening they were coming off the enlarger as nicely as if

things had gone right.

 

and it reminded me that, as neat and handy as digital images and

color prints from WalMart are, they aren't even in the same order of

magnitude in terms of the satisfaction you get when you make a print

in the darkroom. to some extent, i suppose it's BECAUSE it's so much

more difficult that gives a handmade print such an overpoweringly

greater sense of value than something that came out of your computer

or a minit lab.......

 

and it also reminded me that, if all i wanted was a gorgeous

photograph, i can subscribe to National Geographic and cut out all i

want for about 10 bucks a year. what i want is to make them myself,

and that's something that modern technology doesn't want to let me

do.......

[david_m]

Well I had to give up my wet darkroom many years ago due to family constraints but I still regard the prints I produce via my negatives, scanner, picture editing software and photo printer as 'handprinted'. In fact, I spend more time on a print now than I did in the wet darkroom. Most of the time I used to spend in the darkroom was setting up and taking down time (in my bathroom) and washing and drying negatives and prints - not actual creative efforts at all. Most of my time now is spent on retouching. I spend more of my time doing creative things and less on non-creative tasks. That's my take on it anyway.

[richard_oleson]

Yeah, I do that too, and I like the results.... but it's sure not the same feeling of accomplishment.

[bruce_appel]

I do both digital and wet darkroom work and I really think of them as being different mediums. Both have their places, vitues, limitations. For b&w printing, I have never gotten the quality with digital printing that I can easily get with the wet darkroom. I am sure that is a learnig curve probably.

The other thing for me, is that I spend so much time in front of a computer at work, that I find it hard to make myself sit in front of one to scan, photoshop, and then print. The darkroom is a nice little sanctuary from all that.

[loreneidahl]

I have both a traditional and digital darkroom. The traditional( wet) is where I can create my custom super cars the digtal is where I create the assembly line cars.

 

Primarily this is because I shoot so many digital compared to film. However shooting film is far more rewarding for me.