The Wet Darkroom

I shoot film a good 80% of the time, even for the occasional paying gig. I shoot digital only on request, and that's only if I can't (gently) request otherwise.

Otherwise: as much as I revere the wet darkroom, I never had the facilities for a decent (not to be confused with "effing fantastic") darkroom, and when I had the opportunity to buy my first decent 35mm film scanner in 1998 (a second-hand Nikon LS-10), the writing was on the wall, and I gave up wet-printing then and there.

And that felt strange, because while no one at the time took digital cameras all that seriously (well, outside you PJ guys who had those DCS thingies shoved in your hands), no one I knew understood the "hybrid" process of shooting/developing film and going digital for post. I felt rather alone, but at the same time excited: for the first time, I could handle color output totally on my own, scanning my slides with relative ease, and make quality prints on-demand, no waiting, no late-night runs to Mannahatta for prints. In time, black-and-white scan and print quality would be up to snuff, good enough for Prime-time exhibition stuff.

I've stuck to this formula ever since. You'll find a digital camera in my hands from time to time, but total digital workflow hardly does it for me. I shoot film, I develop film (the conventional b/w stuff, anyway), then I scan it, tweak it (gently) via PS, archive it, and eventually print it. Unless and until my fairy godsomethingorother lays a couple of M9s on me, that's how it'll be for the foreseeable future. I'm good with that.


- Barrett
 
Harry Lime said:
I hate to say it but you're right (dons helmet, dodges brick).

With film you're at the mercy of the quality of your scanner and a scanner that can wring every last ounce of information from a negative costs as much as a good car.

I have the Nikon 9000ED and it's quite good, but everyone keeps telling me it's not as good as an Imacon. When I pay for an Imacon scan there is always someone around to point out there they are not as good as a drum scan. Recently I got a drum scan and the crusty old guy behind the counter told me that as good as they are only a traditional enlarger will get the most from a negative.

You simply can't win...
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Ah, but then we get to the cameras: you have yourself a Canon 20D, and people whisper: yeah, that's cool, but you don't know what you're missing till you wrap your hands around a 5D...and so on. It's just as insidious, as far as I'm concerned.

I've been working with a Minolta 5400 (first version) for about the last six years. If I wanted to, I could always re-scan the film on something better if it actually mattered. (It "matters", just not terribly much.)

I say: keep using the 9000, and don't sweat the whisperers.


- Barrett
 
amateriat said:
I've been working with a Minolta 5400 (first version) for about the last six years. If I wanted to, I could always re-scan the film on something better if it actually mattered. (It "matters", just not terribly much.) - Barrett
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I heard from someone at Imacon that the Minolta was one of the undiscovered treasures of the scanning world, delivering very high quality at a reasonable price. Of course, it's discontinued.
 
Bill Pierce said:
I heard from someone at Imacon that the Minolta was one of the undiscovered treasures of the scanning world, delivering very high quality at a reasonable price. Of course, it's discontinued.
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That's the big Dimage Multiscan II; which was the counterpart to the Nikon 9000ED. I've only ever heard glowing reports about it.

There are a few usergroups on the net that help locate replacement fluorescent bulbs and spare parts.
 
Harry Lime said:
At some point you almost have to decide if you are going to become a photographer or a printer. That said there are a handful of shooters that are/were also master printers (McCullin, Eugene Smith, Ansel Adams etc), but they are far and few in between.
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Eloquently stated, and this is what I aspire to become in my own limited and simplified way.

For me digital is a very steep learning curve that does not suit my intelligence and personality. I take ownership that I am a slacker who dislikes complexity, and digital for me is rather intimidating. Much respect to those that are good/great in digital.

I limit my photography to mostly B&W and I utilize a limited selection of films and developers. I try to hone my skills to gain both control and consistentcy so that I attain negitives that can be straight printed.

Right now I only shoot and develope film using a changing bag. Although I have an enlarger and a second bathroom, the rowhouse I rent in NYC gets rattled every time the number 7 train goues by and that is every 3-4 minutes.

Decades ago I was a rather accomplished printer. It will be interesting to see if I still have that edge. Later this year I intend on moving and then begin printing again. For me a wet darkroom is easier, while digital remains intimidating. I am a bit of a throwback: only recently did I learn how to make a call on a cell phone. Whenever someone leaves a message, I ask the girlfriend to check it for me. Like I said, "I am a slacker," but I never knew anyone with a complicated life that was happy. You can call me lazy.

Cal
 
Great stories in here from everyone. Mine is somewhat different, I think, at least for RFFers, although poking around on various Flickr groups has shown me it's slightly more common there.

I am a self-taught amateur, and it wasn't until I stopped taking awful pictures with my dad's OM-10 and bought a Canon dSLR that I finally started learning how to take pictures properly. The moment I felt comfortable with the process, I put the dSLR on a shelf and shot film. That was about 5 years ago, and after only picking up the dSLR two or three times since, I ended up selling it. Now the only digital camera I have is an iPhone.

I'm also of a slightly younger age than some folks on here. Of course, I have memories of taking film photos either on 110 film or 35mm when I was younger, but my real interest in photography didn't occur until after the digital revolution kicked in. Like lots of folks my age and younger, I feel as though I'm part of the pendulum swinging backwards towards film. Digital will never go away, of course, but people are recognizing a value in film that digital wasn't able to kill completely. The "old ways" of doing things can not and should not be lost to the march of progress.

After years of shooting mostly Tri-X, I realized it was time to take the final step and develop and print my own pictures. I signed up for a dark room class at a local adult ed center, and that was it. I fell in love with film photography even more, and now have my own enlarger. I don't have dedicated space for it in my apartment yet, but with a bit of effort, I can convert my bathroom into one. It's truly a joy, and I hope I never have to stop doing it.

I scan and post my negatives online, but the ones I think are really good I'll print. Since I take mostly pictures of my friends, street stuff, and the things happening around me, I usually give away my prints to the people I know who are my subjects. The reaction they have from getting a real wet print can't be matched by a simple ink jet print, and for me, that is where the true value is. It's a totally analogue, "real" process, and I think people genuinely appreciate it more.

Wet printing and film in general may have been a pain in the ass to newspaper people, sports photographers, documentary reporters, etc. in the past, and I feel as if they were the people who embraced digital the strongest, followed by somewhat lazy amateurs who were not interested in the work required to take decent pictures. Digital has its place there. I don't like to make generational distinctions, usually, but for someone like me and perhaps younger photographers shooting film, the dark room and analogue photography in general does not represent a hindrance to our work that needs to be overcome, but rather another tool in the toolbox to express a view of the world in a new way using old methods.
 
Bill Pierce said:
I heard from someone at Imacon that the Minolta was one of the undiscovered treasures of the scanning world, delivering very high quality at a reasonable price. Of course, it's discontinued.
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That's a pleasant eye-opener. Whether they were referring to the Multi Pro, as Harry says (he actually cites the earlier Multi II), or the 5400, it's nice to hear. I've long called the 5400 the "poor man's Imacon" (for 35mm, anyway), and my opinion hasn't changed.


- Barrett
 
I have spent about thirty years constantly striving to be a better darkroom printer, hopefully in another thirty or forty years I will get to the level I strive for. why change horses in midstream when I am having so much fun exploring the process I love. Don't want to spend money on a digital camera ... want to buy film and paper. In the thirty years I have been doing this with each move I have tried to build a better darkroom and having picked up some nice equipment over the years especially now that all my friends have gotten rid of there dark rooms, I am now compleating my bigest and best darkroom ever... can't give that up (a pro lab in ohio gave me a freestanding Durst 5X7 colorhead enlarger telling me "these things are not worth anything anymore, no one would pay money for something like this" when secretly I find myself as someone that would have payed money for something like that.
I enjoy the process, enjoy the smell, enjoy the safelights and since I have the luxury of doing this for my own growth and pleasure I will continue down this path just as i hope you are going the direction that suits you
 
I took down my darkroom a few months ago after a year or more of inactivity. I haven't shot any film in a year or more. Even the film I shot last year has not been developed. I bought an Epson V700 in order to scan my various negative formats and I still found myself shooting everything with digital cameras and printing inkjets.

Is there a sense of regret here? You bet. I've printed in the wet darkroom for almost 40 years and looking through a Leica viewfinder has been magic for me. It's hard to give up that part of my life but digital shooting and output fits into my lifestyle more comfortably these days.

Do I think an inkjet B&W print is equal to a silver-based B&W print? No. I still believe the silver-based print has a certain look that ink does not provide. But inkjet prints are more than adequate for my purposes.
 
Great discussion, y'all! Hearing everybody's thought processes and justifications is interesting.
I'm relatively new to (serious) photography, having purchased a D40 about 2 years ago, to replace a 5-year-old Fuji P&S.
To make a long story short, my interest developed all the way to taking a B&W darkroom class at the local art school - now I keep taking the class just so I can access the darkroom.
I'm no analog snob, I still use my D40 a lot, but nothing ever gets printed, just emailed to friends and family or uploaded to facebook or whatever. There's no denying the ease of digital for casual photography.
Wet printing, though, is a skill, a craft. I have no professional ambitions, obviously - it's just a fun and challenging learning experience. And when you stop learning, ya start dying!
 
Unlike many of the responses, i'm not an old timer. I've had my darkroom for maybe a year, and i'm of an age where having a film camera that isn't a holga is considered a bit quaint.

I sat here for a good ten minutes trying to think of a good reason to have a darkroom. I could say that all my cameras and darkroom equipment and film and chemisty (i don't shoot a terrible lot) have cost me less than a 5D mkii or an M9 or a D3x or a Pentax 645D, but i don't think that's it.

I could say it's because film handles dynamic range better than digital, but it's not by much and i'm not sure it even matters since my prints don't have magically astounding dynamic range. So that's probably not it.

I could say it's because my black and white prints will likely last for hundreds of years, and that no one has any idea how long SD cards will last - but that discounts things like fire, and the idea that maybe someone will care enough to keep my files around.

I could say it's because i love being in the darkroom, but that would just be lying. I don't hate it, but it's not like i daydream about how i'm going to interpret negatives.

I could say it's more noble, or more true to the art, but that's just ridiculous.

I could say it's because it forces me to print things. This is the only one i can think of that actually makes some sense to me. I really don't like that everyone i know seems content to look at their pictures on the 2 inch screen on the back of the camera. But it's not like it's impossible to print digital files.

I could say that it's because things made by hand are generally considered more valuable than things made by machine - but it's a little precious of an argument for me. It can also be invalidated by the pedantic among us - i didn't actually make my film, or paper, or developer, or fixer. I also didn't mine the ore that was smelted into my camera.

For every reason i think of, i can pretty much immediately think of an argument against it. Ultimately, i'm left with no real reason to have a darkroom, everything i want to do, i could just as easily do with the cheap scanners i have or by getting myself a mid-level DSLR.

But after all that, i'm still going to go wash the prints i just finished.
 
I love creating prints in my darkroom!

I love creating prints in my darkroom!

My father, a life-long Leica shooter, taught me how to develope black and white film and make prints in his darkroom in Northern California when I was approximately 12 years old. I am now 56 years old and his inspiration continues to this day. In my darkroom are his self-made two wood-based safelights with flat, rectangular Kodak amber glass elements which produce an outstanding light spread while I am making prints and which he hand-constructed in 1950, three years before I was born. Today, they still mesmerize me when they gently spread the amber lighting throughout my 8x6 foot darkroom, accompanied by my wonderful Bose CD player that produces incredibly rich sounds from my classical music CDs. With the combination of these two elements, I am extremely comfortable while making prints for many hours. It is a heavenly experience. Today's chemicals do not bother me at all, and today's darkroom papers are much greater than the graded papers my father had to use in the 1950s.
 
I originally learned basic photography and darkroom fundamentals in high-school, some 25 years ago. A couple of years back, when darkroom equipment started to get ridiculously cheap, I decided to get back into B&W.

I like the fact that the principles and functions of my photography are precisely the same as they were 25 years ago when I learned them. Heck most of the tools are the same! My enlarger predates me, as do a couple of my cameras. When I shoot a roll, or soup it, or print, I take great comfort in the fact that I will have no need to replace any of my equipment in the next couple of years due to obsolescence, or bit-rot, or anything else of that nature.

Like many of you, I sit most of my day behind a computer screen, or tied to a BlackBerry. The last thing I want to do is manipulate digital images on a screen and crank them out on a printer. The darkroom is my escape from my day-to-day job where I rely on computers and technology. In B&W, the technology is very basic, the fundamentals are what you play with to manipulate the medium.

Finally, I get a rush in the shooting process. Shoot a roll, making every shot count, and then getting home and souping it to find out if what I imagined is actually on the film gives me a real kick. It is like magic.
 
I'm acquiring darkroom equipment in fits and starts as people give it to me. As of now I've got enough to start printing BW and even Cibachrome(!) in 35mm and 120 (no 4x5 unfortunately).

My biggest obstacle is lack of space, and uncertainty in where I am going to be living next month, or next year. I'm a university student, and switch apartments/houses pretty much every year, and I don't forsee myself being in a stable housing situation for a decent amount of time after graduation either.
 
Hmmmmm.

I'm primarily a writer but I do try, where possible, to take my own pictures and I also, occasionally, take pictures for other people.

When someone else is paying me I do it all digitally. When I'm taking pictures for my 'work' use, I generally use film - 35mm or 6x7 - which I scan so that I can deliver digital images to my publisher. When I'm taking pictures that I want to take - in black and white at least - I print them for myself in my wet darkroom.

Why? I enjoy the process, just like a hobby or 'artisan' potter enjoys throwing a pot on the potter's wheel, or a silk screen printer does his/her thing. There are easier ways, but they aren't as satisfying...
 
I could add that what really got me hooked on photography was watching the magic of a print coming up in the dev tray and a sttrange fasination with looking at negatives
 
I currently develop my own BW film in the downstairs bathroom. I do this both for my love of my old film cameras as well as the financial advantage (plus no one in town even develops true BW film anymore). I have an old enlarger that was recently given to me, but so far I haven't had the time to set it up and go and buy all the missing pieces (ie. everything but the enlarger).

I think I worry that I won't have the time to truly enjoy it and to really get good at printing. I know I'd enjoy it as I've used my Uncle's darkroom many times, unfortunately he lives too far away for regular use.
 
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