[Wheatfield]

Honestly, I have so much to learn. Compared those who grew up with film and darkroom work, I'm in my infancy with film. I'd likely have to enroll in a film photography course at a local college to even get access to a darkroom and the rest of the equipment to make a print. Seeing how I send my film out to a lab for processing, scanning and correction, I'm hands off once I rewind the film. I've been pretty disciplined about taking notes on each frame, how it was metered, lighting, lens, exposure settings and plan on having a conversation with the person who does the scanning for feedback. The darkroom and traditional methods really interest me - especially seeing that image appear as a print, but it'a not in the time budget right now.

Look carefully at the scans you get back from the lab. If the deep shadows appear to be blocked up, you will need to raise your ISO. If the highlights appear to be washed out, you will need to ask them to give less development (presuming we are discussing B&W), which may necessitate lowering your ISO. I do think, with digital and it's rather easy ability to lose out in highlights, that it might be more critical to control them more than the shadow areas. It seems easier to dig detail out of shadows than to tone down burnt out bright areas.

There is nothing quite like watching an image appear before you under a safelight. It is far more satisfying than having an inkjet spit out a greasy little print.

I didn't become a photographer because I liked photography. I became a photographer to feed my passion, which was working in the darkroom.

I decided very early on that roll film wasn't where I needed to be, since I couldn't fully control every step of every image. I used roll film where I could control everything else to the point that I didn't need the process control. Roll film became my studio film very quickly, since I could control the lighting to match the film.

Sheet film became my outdoor film for landscapes (though I did shoot a wedding portrait session on 4x5 for a very special friend one time), because I couldn't control the outdoor lighting. I could shoot at the best time of day to make the light as attractive as possible, but the real controls had to be done during exposure and film processing.

Even though photography, per se, wasn't my thing, I did manage to win several awards for my images, I did a few gallery shows, and sold enough prints and portfolios worldwide to support my hobby very nicely.

Your journey should be pleasurable, but to be honest, I don't see much point in shooting film, developing it, getting scans done, and then making inkjet prints. I've given up the darkroom now. The 50 or more pounds of gear that I humped around when shooting sheet film is too much for me. Shooting a 35mp digital camera seems to make better quality images than shooting film and digitizing it.

My latest project is digitizing some of my old 35mm slides and negatives using the DSLR (I use a Pentax K1) and a bellows and slide copier. The digital-film copies in no way match the quality I was able to get either from the darkroom with film or with a pure digital process. I do think one is better off sticking to one process or the other, and not trying to make the film peg go into the digital hole.

[jtkratzer]

Look carefully at the scans you get back from the lab. If the deep shadows appear to be blocked up, you will need to raise your ISO. If the highlights appear to be washed out, you will need to ask them to give less development (presuming we are discussing B&W), which may necessitate lowering your ISO. I do think, with digital and it's rather easy ability to lose out in highlights, that it might be more critical to control them more than the shadow areas. It seems easier to dig detail out of shadows than to tone down burnt out bright areas.

There is nothing quite like watching an image appear before you under a safelight. It is far more satisfying than having an inkjet spit out a greasy little print.

I didn't become a photographer because I liked photography. I became a photographer to feed my passion, which was working in the darkroom.

I decided very early on that roll film wasn't where I needed to be, since I couldn't fully control every step of every image. I used roll film where I could control everything else to the point that I didn't need the process control. Roll film became my studio film very quickly, since I could control the lighting to match the film.

Sheet film became my outdoor film for landscapes (though I did shoot a wedding portrait session on 4x5 for a very special friend one time), because I couldn't control the outdoor lighting. I could shoot at the best time of day to make the light as attractive as possible, but the real controls had to be done during exposure and film processing.

Even though photography, per se, wasn't my thing, I did manage to win several awards for my images, I did a few gallery shows, and sold enough prints and portfolios worldwide to support my hobby very nicely.

Your journey should be pleasurable, but to be honest, I don't see much point in shooting film, developing it, getting scans done, and then making inkjet prints. I've given up the darkroom now. The 50 or more pounds of gear that I humped around when shooting sheet film is too much for me. Shooting a 35mp digital camera seems to make better quality images than shooting film and digitizing it.

My latest project is digitizing some of my old 35mm slides and negatives using the DSLR (I use a Pentax K1) and a bellows and slide copier. The digital-film copies in no way match the quality I was able to get either from the darkroom with film or with a pure digital process. I do think one is better off sticking to one process or the other, and not trying to make the film peg go into the digital hole.

The purpose of shooting more on film was the "permanence" and physicality of the negatives. Fewer pictures, but ones that are more certain to last compared to the roughly thousands and thousands of digital images dumped onto ahard drive. Scanning is simply a way to get something to share with family that is geographically separated. I plan on getting prints and have a local framing and art gallery shop that does printing between 16x20 up to 40x60 on Epson's premium luster, premium glossy, double weight matte, enhanced canvas and ultra smooth fine art papers. They can print from digital files or negative/slide film. They've done printing and framing work in the past that I was happy with, but I haven't used his shop to work with film. I'd like to get into a course and see/learn the darkroom side of film photography, but oddly enough, a local community college has such a course with a prerequisite of a digital course. Let a message for the director of the department to see if the course with the "digital darkroom" experience is waiverable.

[Wheatfield]

The purpose of shooting more on film was the "permanence" and physicality of the negatives. Fewer pictures, but ones that are more certain to last compared to the roughly thousands and thousands of digital images dumped onto ahard drive. Scanning is simply a way to get something to share with family that is geographically separated. I plan on getting prints and have a local framing and art gallery shop that does printing between 16x20 up to 40x60 on Epson's premium luster, premium glossy, double weight matte, enhanced canvas and ultra smooth fine art papers. They can print from digital files or negative/slide film. They've done printing and framing work in the past that I was happy with, but I haven't used his shop to work with film. I'd like to get into a course and see/learn the darkroom side of film photography, but oddly enough, a local community college has such a course with a prerequisite of a digital course. Let a message for the director of the department to see if the course with the "digital darkroom" experience is waiverable.

One hopes the prerequisite can be waived. If a person is doing pure silver image photography, there should be absolutely no reason to need digital anything. We certainly didn't have anything digital in 1970 when I first took up darkroom work.
If your lab is printing on anything Epson, they are, of course, working from a digital file, whether you give it to them or if they create it themselves from your negative.

I understand the desire to leave some sort of image legacy behind, and I am fully aware that for most people, digital makes this impossible. Kodak (may they rest in peace) had an advertising slogan at one time that said, more or less, if you didn't have a print, you didn't have something that would last. I expect this was early in the days of digital. It was true then, and it is just as true now.

[jtkratzer]

One hopes the prerequisite can be waived. If a person is doing pure silver image photography, there should be absolutely no reason to need digital anything. We certainly didn't have anything digital in 1970 when I first took up darkroom work.
If your lab is printing on anything Epson, they are, of course, working from a digital file, whether you give it to them or if they create it themselves from your negative.

I understand the desire to leave some sort of image legacy behind, and I am fully aware that for most people, digital makes this impossible. Kodak (may they rest in peace) had an advertising slogan at one time that said, more or less, if you didn't have a print, you didn't have something that would last. I expect this was early in the days of digital. It was true then, and it is just as true now.

Well, it's changed slightly. I don't know if my folks really took that many pictures as my sisters and I were growing up, but there certainly aren't loads of photos of my youth around. My point is, film pictures don't last if they're not kept in the first place. I want my children to be able to see these images from their childhood. Prints tossed in the trash or crashed hard drives end up with the same results. All of my great grandparents passed before I was old enough to remember them. And since I don't know of any photos of them, I have no idea what any of them even looked like. Kind of shame since we have photographs in existence today that date prior to the 1850s and photography really became accessible to the average Joe many decades ago.

There's something about the "craftsmanship" of making a good photograph that goes with knowing how use basic construction tools to build something or repair a vehicle - the preservation of something - and in the case of photography, the artistic preservation of a moment in time, a memory. I would never even be confused for someone who could sketch or paint, but I'm working towards being able to capture those moments in a way that's pleasing.

[Wheatfield]

Well, it's changed slightly. I don't know if my folks really took that many pictures as my sisters and I were growing up, but there certainly aren't loads of photos of my youth around. My point is, film pictures don't last if they're not kept in the first place. I want my children to be able to see these images from their childhood. Prints tossed in the trash or crashed hard drives end up with the same results. All of my great grandparents passed before I was old enough to remember them. And since I don't know of any photos of them, I have no idea what any of them even looked like. Kind of shame since we have photographs in existence today that date prior to the 1850s and photography really became accessible to the average Joe many decades ago.

There's something about the "craftsmanship" of making a good photograph that goes with knowing how use basic construction tools to build something or repair a vehicle - the preservation of something - and in the case of photography, the artistic preservation of a moment in time, a memory. I would never even be confused for someone who could sketch or paint, but I'm working towards being able to capture those moments in a way that's pleasing.

The point is, you can toss a bunch of prints into a shoebox under the bed and they will last for centuries if properly processed silver halide, many decades if they are colour photographs, and probably decades if they are common inkjet (though the jury is still out on that one). The same cannot be said of digital. I have CDs from 15 years ago that stopped being readable ten years ago, hard drives will stop working if not run for a while, etc.
Real photographs can survive benevolent neglect, digital media needs active and relatively frequent maintenance.

Obviously tossed images are gone forever, but that is not the fault of the photograph.