I am confused. Why do we still bother with darkroom work when there is digital photo manipulation and such excellent output device as iris printers etc. I love images of the "great ones" like Robert Adams, Paul Caponigro, Joseph Soudeck, Kertez and many others as well as those of lesser known practitioners, but I wonder where digital is leading us. I can understand some of the strenghts of digital, like ease of manipulation and toning, etc., but is it worth to pursue regular darkroom workg and invest in darkroom equipment? Are we pushed to buy equipment and forget the end product, that we sat out to produce? My (Our?) preocupation now seems more to revolve around the pen than around the message, if I ever had one! Help, please?!

-- w. schweigert (sgert@golden.net), August 06, 1999

Answers

If this question is a general one, as in "why does anybody do this?", the answer is a general one: "they are somewhat different mediums that share some kind of a camera with a lens." Different kinds of painting, drawing,etc. produce different effects. If the answer is specific, as in "should I get into computer manupulation of images, or 'go wet'?", the question can only be answered by your own *personal experience* and artistic/business goals. I do some of both. There is certainly a place for different ways of producing images! I just don't see any other way to answer this without knowing what you want without just going into some sort of rant :) Work with them, enjoy them!

-- Paul Harris (pharris@neosoft.com), August 06, 1999.

I don't do digital because of expense. When I manage to find my $500 enlarger & lens for LF I won't need to replace it to insure quality and compatability. And neg scanning isn't cheap in anything but 35mm. Straight to digital without film? Wow expensive: ~APS quality for ~$1000, up up & away from there.

Archival properties of traditional silver prints also matter. Digital output is just beginning to address this issue.

-- John O'Connell (oconnell@siam.org), August 06, 1999.

Let me draw a parallel. I've worked in electronics for many years. Digital technology has steamrollered everything in its path for the last decade. At work, my measurement tools ('scopes, meters) became all digital, and they were far more accurate and far more productive than what had come before (analog test gear). Digital let me get where I was going far faster. In spite of that, I still like using the old analog gear, probably because more skill is required to get good results. It worked and provided feedback in a way more closely tied to the way I think (maybe I'm old). There were also more speciallized tools available for unusual situations that would not be economically feasable to produce in the digital world of today.

Now, in photography I still prefer silver because no output device I've seen can compete with the best hand made prints. [they may exist, but not in any reasonable price range] I enjoy the wet darkroom process, in fact I revel in the fact that it has nothing to do with sitting at a computer screen! Other than writing, I don't find sitting at the computer to encourage creativity or observation of the world around me.

Don't get me wrong, I build CCD cameras for a living, and am no stranger to computers. The image quality from a large area CCD can be quite astounding, but we're talking $5000 and up just for the chip! Then you need a camera system to support it. We're a long ways away from a photographers CCD camera (I build astronomy equipment) that offers quality similar to 35mm, much less 4x5, at a reasonable price, not to mention output devices. As for archival quality, I actually suspect that fused toner on good quality paper will hold up for a very long time.

So part of the equation is that this photographer enjoys traditional processing. The other part is that digital methods may be far more efficient when time is money. IMHO, of course!

-- Conrad Hoffman (choffman@rpa.net), August 06, 1999.

I work for a newspaper that is completely digital now....I've had the pleasure(?) to work with $15k kodak and canon hybrids that yield pulp grade results up to about a 5"x7" image area. For $15k I can buy a 8x10(neg size) enlarger and 52" paper processor.....now if you sell a digi-cam that can give me 8x10 view camera resolution that doesn't need a tractor-trailer to transport it and comes with a free iris printer for 15k I'd be glad to buy one! to answer your question ....because they are better. When digital catches up(affordably) I'll have no problem removing my darkroom. That won't be soon.

-- trib (linhof6@hotmail.com), August 09, 1999.

Why do people still paint or draw? Why do people still ride horses? Why do people still fly gliders? Why do people still drive old cars? Why do people still eat home cooked meals? Why do people still chew their food, when they could take it intravenously? Why do people still walk, when they can run? Why do people still ride bikes? Why do people grow grass in their yards? Why do people talk on the phone - when they could be talking through email or forums? Why do people sit around and think of questions about why people do things?

-- Andy Hughes (andy@darkroomsource.com), August 09, 1999.

Thank you, Andy. I had to add a response to this thread. I am not really against digital, as I am already scanning images and e-mailing them to people, but one of the things I love most about photography is the darkroom. I love the strange lighting, the sound of the water running, the smell of the chemicals, and watching the image appear in the developer. I was suprised at how much of a hands-on process printing can be, especially when dodging and burning. Working on a computer is not the same. I hope I always have access to a darkroom.

People are conditioned these days to expect that everything has to be high tech and/or digital. I was talking to a guy at the bus stop the other day, and he mentioned that he "developed pictures" once, using an enlarger and open trays. "That's pretty old-fashioned isn't it?" he asked me. It may not be the fastest and most efficient way to make a print, but it's still the best, I think. I have a Fuji minlab at work, and I can make over 3000 prints a day on it, but it's more satisfying to me to spend 4 hours making one print at home.

I don't think it makes a person a Luddite to prefer one process over another. There can be a lot of technology available in even a basic darkroom. Hopefully we'll see more hybrid technology, such as a digital enlarger that could print from files onto photographic paper, like what they're putting into the new minilabs. That would enable those of us who aren't afraid of the dark to have our trays, and shake them, too.

-- Peter Korsborn (korsborn@gte.net), August 10, 1999.

For color, digital is the best way to go. It is cost-effective and traditional color darkroom process are relatively limited in the manipulations you can perform. Digital color has the same limitations as analog colr, but if you know what you are doing digital will give you better results at the same price.

For black-and-white, the opposite is true. Digital black-and-white has the same limitations as it does for color. You cannot dodge and burn as effectively on a computer as you can in a darkroom, and good paper costs more than fiber-based enlarging paper. Plus, you need the same expensive computer setup as for color. You can set up an excellent black-and-white darkroom for the far less money that it takes to buy all the digital equipment you would need.

Which leads me to wonder why I sold my darkroom equipment and went digital. Oh yeah, I'm looking at the long term and have other uses for the computer (including color output).

-- Darron Spohn (dspohn@clicknet.com), August 12, 1999.

I recently bought myself a Leica M6, which I now use instead of my autofocus, automatic camera most of the time. Why? Not just because the lenses are better-quality, but because the all-manual action makes me feel closer in touch with the act of photography. I am also a writer and a poet, but I always write my work by hand before typing it into the computer. Why? because it makes me feel closer to the act of writing.

As an artist, or as a living human being, to be on close touch with my medium of expression, or life itself, is what makes me feel an artist. I have yet to develop my own black and white pictures, which I will when I one day have a house where I have the room for a darkroom outfit, because I can then, in creating prints, work directly with my medium of expression as were I a painter painting, a writer writing with his pen and paper, a photographer setting his camera manually and using his thumb to pull the film forward. The end result isn't most important for the artist, as in life, it is the feeling of creation as you get to the end result, and digital can create a distance.

-- Hekon Sxreide (diangelo7@yahoo.com), August 21, 1999.

I think this can be summed up by one statment. Sometimes the process of creation is more important than the product.

-- j. smith (lyption@aol.com), October 04, 1999.