Why did darkroom/wet printing die?

[skeletron]

I'd guess I'm in the minority, but I never liked being in any darkroom I've ever used. Cramped, wet, dark (duh?), and poorly ventilated. I used a local art co-op's darkroom for a while then put together my own bathroom setup. I didn't like either. Maybe I never developed a good work flow, but in addition to the environment, I found wet printing to be dreadfully tedious.

No, I don't believe that I get equal results from digital+printing, but it's better than getting no results due to a lack of use.

 

[Anton Caro]

Well, guys, I am trying to do some film photography... this weekend I used my grandma`s Kodak box 620 to shoot and then today I printed some cyanotypes (I made a mistake to process the film in Neofin blue, obviously the contrast should be normal)... so, I am not using a dark room... rather a Light Room... haha... I started the blue prints with digital negatives, but I was horrified by the time I spent in order to prepare them... and I just decided to try on rollfilm. I have a Zeiss Ikon 10x15 cm with fresh film, but it is a way too heavy for a casual walk in town...All these words... I just wanted to say that nothing is dead... we are here, we use this method. Especially in Eastern Europe... where most people are digitalized to the bone marrow...
About the paper variety - I am happy there are 3-4 types of paper that I like...
All these old processes as cyano, argyro, pop, etc... are perfect for printing... (you can tone them in many colours) ... the problem comes with film... because you can use collodium process in field cameras, but I doubt you can do it in a KB format camera ever...

 

[skeletron]

I wonder if it is possible to make a silver-gelatin print (a silver bromide print) from a file of an image from, say, an M8, so that in the end there is no material difference between a print from a negative from an MP and a print from a file generated by an M8.

Erik.

You can print a contact negative from a digital file and use that for your silver-gelatin print. I've done this successfully with cyanotypes.

I used: Digital Negatives: Using Photoshop to Create Digital Negatives for Silver and Alternative Process Printing which is pretty good but you can find a lot of this information online.

There are limitations since your wet print will be at whatever dpi the printer is.

 

[Dave Wilkinson]

I'd guess I'm in the minority, but I never liked being in any darkroom I've ever used. Cramped, wet, dark (duh?), and poorly ventilated. I used a local art co-op's darkroom for a while then put together my own bathroom setup. I didn't like either. Maybe I never developed a good work flow, but in addition to the environment, I found wet printing to be dreadfully tedious.

No, I don't believe that I get equal results from digital+printing, but it's better than getting no results due to a lack of use.

I mostly agree with that! and I've done more than my share of wet printing, and thrown more than my share of wasted paper in the bin!🙂
Dave.

 

[Erik van Straten]

You can print a contact negative from a digital file and use that for your silver-gelatin print. I've done this successfully with cyanotypes.

I used: Digital Negatives: Using Photoshop to Create Digital Negatives for Silver and Alternative Process Printing which is pretty good but you can find a lot of this information online.

There are limitations since your wet print will be at whatever dpi the printer is.

Thank you very much for this information. I will study the source you've mentioned.

Erik.

 

[Pablito]

I believe it's because people are so quick to forget the past. I am sure wet printing is alive and well in many countries.

It is alive in mostly in highly developed countries, the 3rd world is all digital for quite a while now.

 

[Bob Michaels]

I believe the primary reason so many are changing is that we tend to focus more on the final output and not how we got there. The digital process is has gotten so good and become so easy. It is hard for many to admit that once behind glass, it is not possible to discern between a very good digital print and a very good wet darkroom print. Likewise digital capture.

Certainly the wet darkroom process is not dead. I spent Saturday afternoon in a wet darkroom with 11 other folks.

I see more and more photographers who I deeply respect using digital output. These are almost all old time black and white documentary photographers. Some are scanning film, some are capturing digitally. But the universal reason seems to be that they can get to the same place easier.

 

[Mephiloco]

Inkjet is easier in most respects, in some cases more archival, more cost effective, less space consuming, and less time consuming.

There's a wider variety of inkjet paper and it's more easily found in actual storefronts.

I'm a big fan of fibre paper and still have a lot stockpiled, but to be honest, if you put some good hahnenmuhle inkjet paper against some fibre, you'd be lying if you said fibre was significantly better. I personally put them on the same level.


Edit: I think it's worth pointing out that I still process my own film, as I feel there's a bigger discrepancy in quality when it comes to processing film than printing images. Developing my b&w film I won't leave up to someone else, but I'm perfectly fine with giving someone else a corrected jpeg for printing. In short: I don't trust people to develop my negatives. Printing: Sure.

It's also worth noting I used to run the inkjet printers at a local photolab (epsons and hps) and know how to print good prints. Unfortunately, since I worked there I can never pay someone to do it for me knowing how much of a rip off it is.

 

[Chris101]

What timing! I spent all day yesterday helping my friend the photo teacher put together 22 brand new Omega LPL 4550s. And they were replacing 22 Bessler 45s, that were about 35 years old. And I KNOW that somebody is going to use them. Those are NICE enlargers!

Once you have made a large fiber paper print and looked at it in good light, you will be sold. Inkjet prints just won't stand up next to it.

ps, you heads are cracking me up. I've been good for decades, but now I'm getting the urge. Is it still illegal?

 

[Al Kaplan]

My first experience with sensitized products going bye-bye was listening to the older guys moaning about DuPont dropping their favorite high speed film, Superior 4 in cassettes back about 1960. They hung in there with sheet films and papers. About 1968 they introduced Varilour which I believe was the first paper to utilize brighteners in the emulsion for cleaner whites, and they'd already mastered the art of intense blacks. DuPont was the company that first came out with a variable contrast paper, Varigam.

Before 1970 arrived DuPont was out of the sensitized products business. No film, paper, or chemicals.

Ansco hung in there, changing its name to GAF (jee-aye-eff) and introducing the best medium speed film I'd ever used, Versapan. They produced a number of heavier-than-double-weight portrait papers that were very popular. Soon enough GAF was out of the sensitized products and chemical business.

But there was no shortage of film or paper on dealers' shelves. Luminos entered the market with decent B&W paper at half the price of Kodak. "Off-brand" B&W film was available from Supreme and others.

A few years ago Kodak introduced T-Max tabular grain B&W films while Ilford introduced their Delta films, and NEITHER company dropped their conventional films. And Fuji entered the market in a big way! Fuji and Kodak have been going head to head to try and dominate both the amateur and pro markets with ever broader line-ups, offering choices of contrast and color saturation in a multiple of ISO speeds.

Why would they be investing so much in a dead technology? Because film ain't dead.

 

[wgerrard]

Film certainly is not dead. However, using film and printing in a wet darkroom are two different things. If digital scanning and printing was the traditional way, and a wet darkroom with a bunch of chemicals was the new alternative, how many would build darkrooms?

Those of use who use and like film ought to be happy that so many other film users have loaded Photoshop and bought inkjets. People can wear film in their hair for all I care, so long as they keep buying the stuff.

 

[JohnTF]

My first experience with sensitized products going bye-bye was listening to the older guys moaning about DuPont dropping their favorite high speed film, Superior 4 in cassettes back about 1960. They hung in there with sheet films and papers. About 1968 they introduced Varilour which I believe was the first paper to utilize brighteners in the emulsion for cleaner whites, and they'd already mastered the art of intense blacks. DuPont was the company that first came out with a variable contrast paper, Varigam.

Before 1970 arrived DuPont was out of the sensitzed products business. No film, paper, or chemicals.

Ansco hung in there, changing its name to GAF (jee-aye-eff) and introducing the best medium speed film I'd ever used, Versapan. They produced a number of heavier-than-double-weight portrait papers that were very popular. Soon enough GAF was out of the sensitized products and chemical business.

But there was no shortage of film or paper on dealers' shelves. Luminos entered the market with decent B&W paper at half the price of Kodak. "Off-brand" B&W film was available from Supreme and others.

A few years ago Kodak introduced T-Max tabular grain B&W films while Ilford introduced their Delta films, and NEITHER company dropped their conventional films. And Fuji entered the market in a big way! Fuji and Kodak have been going head to head to try and dominate both the amateur and pro markets with ever broader line-ups, offering choices of contrast and color saturation in a multiple of ISO speeds.

Why would they be investing so much in a dead technology? Because film ain't dead.

About the time I started in photography, the word was out that B&W was dead. Then people decided that B&W was not just for folks who did not have the money for color.

My understanding, at least in the case of Dupont, was that they sold the patent and process for variable contrast paper to Kodak, and continued with Xray film and other products.



Hope someone is writing a book about all this. ;-)

Regards, John

 

[slm]

I'm a week away from finishing my darkroom rebuild, does this mean I have to tear it down?

 

[Al Kaplan]

I think that DuPont licensed the VC technology to others besides Kidak because GAF marketed a paper called Vee Cee (sp?) for a brief time and Ilford introduced Multigrade. I believe that Agfa marketed something for awhile also. The last incarnation of DuPont's filters, Varilour, incorporated a bit of neutral density so once you established your exosure for highlight detail you could use the ame time through all but the #4 filter. The #4 requires exactly twice the time, two punches on the Time-O-Lite button.

Ilford introduced a #00 ultra low contrast filter, but it wasn't part of the standard set. You had to buy it seperately. It works best with Ilford paper but seems to work with others too.

Over the years I've picked up sets of Kodak, Varilour, Varigam, and Multigrade filters but I make most of my prints through the #2 Varilour, sometimes with brief exposures through a high or low contast filter. It's pretty much instinctive at this point.

We all know that I'd make much better prints with an all digital 😱 work flow but I'm not about to start from square one again at this point. I'll just have to live with my lousy wet prints. Also it bugs me that quality ink jet paper costs more than high quality gelatin silver paper.

 

[glchua]

Dead? I'm living in the land of the dead then.

I used to do inkjet prints until some supposedly archival prints die on me.

Now I spend once or twice a month in a darkroom doing prints that I know will last longer than me.

Digital is nice and fast and fuss-free, but it is fast food.

I like the therapeutic workflow of traditional darkroom work much better. The sound of the water flow, the pitch dark room, the smell and the endless physical activity.

Our local supplier of papers and chemicals is still doing brisk business, and I hope for a long time to come.

I don't think digital is for everyone. Traditional printing may not be the preferred workflow of pros, but for amateurs like me, it is a much more fulfilling activity than Photoshop work.

 

[Morca007]

As much as I enjoy making prints when I have access to a darkroom, in my normal life I haven't the time, space, or money to make silver prints.

More generally than that, I think it has quite a bit to do with the changes in how we share our images. If I were making photos thirty years ago, still living in this small town, I might have three other photographers to share with, and no guarantee I would get along with them. Now I can easily share my work online with as many people as care to look, and not a one of them cares if it's been printed on fiber paper.

I've got a bunch of prints from the past year, when I had access to the school darkroom, and not a thing to do with them.

 

[Chris101]

... Traditional printing may not be the preferred workflow of pros, but for amateurs like me, it is a much more fulfilling activity than Photoshop work.

If you are going to sell prints (as opposed to images in electronic form) then silver prints will fetch more than ink/dye/pigment prints. If you are printing just to show them around to friends and family, then inkjet prints are good enough.

 

[Turtle]

because people have lowers standards now and want instant gratification 😀 Back in my day when...

No, really, its because colour makes more sense in digital now and B&W is getting better in digital too, as is the scan/print workflow. Still, I have yet to see an inkjet that matches the depth of a fine wet print and so will continue to wet print (started using a master printer to get exhibition prints done because, quite simply, he is better than I am 75% of the time)

 

[Lilserenity]

Oh damn, I better chuck all my darkroom stuff away if it's dead, maybe hold a memorial 🙂

It's not dead, there again, it wasn't even the average thing to find in most people's houses back in the day either, it took someone pretty keen back then too.

 

[paulhart]

If it's dead, I bought a corpse yesterday - a huge Leitz Focomat IIc, for £250.