jlw
Rangefinder camera pedant
Well, not the room, but I did give away all the equipment. It's strange to think, after having never been without some kind of darkroom since I was 13 years old, that I'm no longer a printer. I'm still trying to get used to it, which is why this post; I suppose it's some kind of therapy, so just bear with me, okay?
I have to admit that I didn't just turn off the enlarger, drain the processor, and stop suddenly all at once -- the equipment had been sitting on a shelf in my garage for more than a year. When I put it out there, I told myself that who knew, I might get a new job that would leave me with more spare time and energy and money, I might join a cooperative gallery again, and I'd want to go back to hand-crafting my own black-and-white prints. (Hey, digital is only a fad, like the Internet, right?)
But the fact was that my enthusiasm for darkroom work had been declining gradually ever since Agfa discontinued Portriga-Rapid paper, and somewhat more steeply since more and more of my photography had slid over to the digital side for purely practical reasons. Probably the tipping point was this fall when I walked into the local Best Buy and stumbled across a great deal on a special-ordered-but-rejected HP B9180 pigment inkjet printer: not only could it make b&w prints almost (but not quite) as good as the ones I had made in the darkroom, but it took up so much shelf space that my ex-darkroom was the only place I could park it.
So, for this year my New Year resolution was to face the fact that I'm never going to want or need to make a wet print any time again in the foreseeable future, and get the darkroom gear out of the garage. I placed an ad on the local Craigslist itemizing what I had; asking price one dollar. (I figured this would actually attract more attention than "free.")
Parenthetically, have you ever noticed how difficult it is sometimes to flat give away something? This wasn't junk equipment by any means: it included a nice, fully functional Chromega B66XL dichroic-head enlarger, a 12x18 Nova slot processor, an archival print washer, two EL-Nikkor lenses, and basically everything else a person would need to make museum-quality b&w prints (other than paper and chemicals.) I live in a fairly large city with two universities that have large photography departments that teach traditional darkroom techniques to hundreds of students per term. I figured somebody would want the stuff! My only conditions were ones I considered reasonable: You pick it up, and you take ALL of it. I even noted that the one-dollar price was negotiable!
I got about a half-dozen responses to my Craigslist post and decided the fair thing to do was take them in order of receipt. The first person to respond was very enthusiastic and emailed some questions. I responded promptly with answers, and invited her to email back or call to set up a time when she wanted to come and get it. I never heard back from her... until several days later, when she emailed to say she had decided she didn't have enough room in her house.
With the second person (actually a couple) we got as far as exchanging several phone calls. They said they were serious photo hobbyists and this offer was exactly what they were looking for. They said that as soon as they had arranged their afternoon schedule, they'd call me back and arrange for a time to pick it up. I never heard from them again.
After this I decided to give up on taking the responses in order. For my next contact I picked the guy who said he lived closest to my neighborhood. This turned out to be a good call. I asked him if he could pick it up the same day, and he said all I had to do was name a time. I did, and (somewhat to my amazement by now) he turned up!
He was a young guy, in his 20s. He described himself as a holdout with no interest in digital imaging whatever; he said he had been heavily influenced by his college mentor, who was a traditional darkroom purist, and had taken after him. He said he had been renting space in other people's darkrooms, and was thrilled to have the chance finally to set up one of his own.
He backed his VW Golf up to my garage and we went through the contents of all the boxes. When it was all packed away, he said, "Are you sure you only want a dollar for this?" I told him I didn't even want the dollar; "Just send me an invitation to your first gallery show and I'll be fine." He went away happy; in fact, today I got an email from him saying he had finally finished unpacking everything, that he couldn't believe what a great setup I had given him, and that he really appreciated it.
So, I think you'll agree that my darkroom went to a worthy home, and I hope this young guy does some great work with it. But it's still odd to think that I'll never again experience the magic of watching a print come up in the developer...
...well, at least not until I retire (still quite a few years away.) After that, who knows? Yes, I'm confident that darkroom supplies and materials will still be available then, even if it's only a cottage industry. And if I do get back into it someday, I'll be able to start completely over with clean trays... new graduates... a Focomat V35...
I have to admit that I didn't just turn off the enlarger, drain the processor, and stop suddenly all at once -- the equipment had been sitting on a shelf in my garage for more than a year. When I put it out there, I told myself that who knew, I might get a new job that would leave me with more spare time and energy and money, I might join a cooperative gallery again, and I'd want to go back to hand-crafting my own black-and-white prints. (Hey, digital is only a fad, like the Internet, right?)
But the fact was that my enthusiasm for darkroom work had been declining gradually ever since Agfa discontinued Portriga-Rapid paper, and somewhat more steeply since more and more of my photography had slid over to the digital side for purely practical reasons. Probably the tipping point was this fall when I walked into the local Best Buy and stumbled across a great deal on a special-ordered-but-rejected HP B9180 pigment inkjet printer: not only could it make b&w prints almost (but not quite) as good as the ones I had made in the darkroom, but it took up so much shelf space that my ex-darkroom was the only place I could park it.
So, for this year my New Year resolution was to face the fact that I'm never going to want or need to make a wet print any time again in the foreseeable future, and get the darkroom gear out of the garage. I placed an ad on the local Craigslist itemizing what I had; asking price one dollar. (I figured this would actually attract more attention than "free.")
Parenthetically, have you ever noticed how difficult it is sometimes to flat give away something? This wasn't junk equipment by any means: it included a nice, fully functional Chromega B66XL dichroic-head enlarger, a 12x18 Nova slot processor, an archival print washer, two EL-Nikkor lenses, and basically everything else a person would need to make museum-quality b&w prints (other than paper and chemicals.) I live in a fairly large city with two universities that have large photography departments that teach traditional darkroom techniques to hundreds of students per term. I figured somebody would want the stuff! My only conditions were ones I considered reasonable: You pick it up, and you take ALL of it. I even noted that the one-dollar price was negotiable!
I got about a half-dozen responses to my Craigslist post and decided the fair thing to do was take them in order of receipt. The first person to respond was very enthusiastic and emailed some questions. I responded promptly with answers, and invited her to email back or call to set up a time when she wanted to come and get it. I never heard back from her... until several days later, when she emailed to say she had decided she didn't have enough room in her house.
With the second person (actually a couple) we got as far as exchanging several phone calls. They said they were serious photo hobbyists and this offer was exactly what they were looking for. They said that as soon as they had arranged their afternoon schedule, they'd call me back and arrange for a time to pick it up. I never heard from them again.
After this I decided to give up on taking the responses in order. For my next contact I picked the guy who said he lived closest to my neighborhood. This turned out to be a good call. I asked him if he could pick it up the same day, and he said all I had to do was name a time. I did, and (somewhat to my amazement by now) he turned up!
He was a young guy, in his 20s. He described himself as a holdout with no interest in digital imaging whatever; he said he had been heavily influenced by his college mentor, who was a traditional darkroom purist, and had taken after him. He said he had been renting space in other people's darkrooms, and was thrilled to have the chance finally to set up one of his own.
He backed his VW Golf up to my garage and we went through the contents of all the boxes. When it was all packed away, he said, "Are you sure you only want a dollar for this?" I told him I didn't even want the dollar; "Just send me an invitation to your first gallery show and I'll be fine." He went away happy; in fact, today I got an email from him saying he had finally finished unpacking everything, that he couldn't believe what a great setup I had given him, and that he really appreciated it.
So, I think you'll agree that my darkroom went to a worthy home, and I hope this young guy does some great work with it. But it's still odd to think that I'll never again experience the magic of watching a print come up in the developer...
...well, at least not until I retire (still quite a few years away.) After that, who knows? Yes, I'm confident that darkroom supplies and materials will still be available then, even if it's only a cottage industry. And if I do get back into it someday, I'll be able to start completely over with clean trays... new graduates... a Focomat V35...
