Hi everyone - I am THRILLED to have found APUG; I can tell there is a great deal of experience, expertise, respect, and decorum in these forums from all I've seen so far. So here is my very long winded hello - maybe some of you will enjoy a few throwback memories as a result.
My first camera was a white Polaroid Swinger camera that I got as a kid in the mid-60's with S&H green stamps for those of you old enough to remember those. A few years later my parents bought me a plastic developing kit as a Christmas present to develop film and make enlargements with a small plastic toy enlarger that used a common flashlight bulb for illumination. I was instantly hooked for life after I cracked open my first Kodak 126 B&W cartridge and watched my first 4x5" prints come to life (hey, don't laugh, at 12YO my 126 Instamatic with those square flash cubes was a big upgrade!)
I started in a real home darkroom 45 years ago and am now in my late 50's approaching retirement. Having grown up in the picturesque and quaint suburban NJ villages that were just a 40-minute train ride into mid-town Manhattan, I made countless trips into NYC for gear, supplies, galleries, and education. Anyone remember the Nikon School?
I spent half of my youth in the darkroom (the other half chasing girls - a few ended up in my darkroom). A camera became an adjunct body part, and after doing every school yearbook and freelance gig I could find, I majored in art photography and film in college. After college I was hired to do photography at one of the big three TV networks in NYC. I left all that glittered and landed a job as a corporate staff photographer and multimedia specialist at one of the world's largest technology companies that had a full-scale internal operation - the pay was phenomenal, but didn't last as operations like that were gradually farmed out, after which I went back for graduate study as a software engineer to pay the bills.
My love for the medium never ceased. I ended up doing R&D in the then emerging field of multimedia and electronic publishing in the early 80's and led the development of mass scale electronic books and multimedia years before the world-wide web existed and hold published IP that contributed to advancements in that field. I now manage the technology that supports hundreds of millions of pages of content and thousands of content creators.
I've since maintained my involvement with photography as a life-long avocation. I maintain a well-equipped converted garage studio on the side and have had a brick and mortar gallery for years until my day job didn't permit the time to maintain it. I take on occasional commercial digital gigs as an avocation these days (massive 30+ foot gigapxel indoor building murals you can put your face up to and see detail), but my love for analog as an art form never ebbed. I still have my film cameras, including my coveted Nikon F2as along with two complete Mamiya RB67 systems. I'm not as hard core as 4x5 and larger folks here (bless you all); I'm happy to stick with 6x7 on the analog side.
I recently decided to reconstitute my darkroom this year and break-out my boxed equipment. I find it incredible there is still opportunity to grab some great gear for pennies or dimes on the dollar compared to what good gear used to cost - even back in the 80's and 90's, but when I decided to reconstruct a lab I began to fear the paucity and rarity of good gear, so I do feel very fortunate to have recently found a Fujimoto CP32 desktop processor in new condition for a relative song.
I could never afford such gear all those years, which is why I've always maintained all my equipment like new. The CP32, combined with a pristine LPL 670MXL enlarger, high-end APO enlarger lenses, a Gralab 900 digital timer, and wonderful 16x20 vacuum easel, form the base of the new darkroom I’m planning to build. Maybe an ATL 500 or ATL 1000 might complete the setup eventually for when I move away from the commercial lab a mile away that turns around my C41 and E6 for $5 with 24 hour turn-around. I still have everything else from my old darkroom and can do one-off C41 batches if need be.
I could only dream of having a high-end desktop color processor all those years. I recall how I fell in love with my Spiratone stabilizer unit back in the 70's - I thought I had died and gone to heaven the first time I used it. I did well with very basic darkroom setups all my life, even through college as a photography and film major. I spent many years using drums and motorized drum base rollers for color that I still own, but still love B&W tray processing as well.
I can only guess that in the coming years analog gear will get even more rare and more expensive as a growing niche discover and rediscover analog. I don't expect it to ever become mass market again, and happy that doesn't occur if there are enough of us to keep the supply of paper and chemistry flowing, and maybe encourage a few analog gear makers to offer some new tech (at least we can proof with scanners these days). As a computer software engineer with decades of experience I can't believe there hasn't been much advancement in developing more assistive tech to analyze exposure and color balance based on chemistry, paper, and other variables that can be predictive with sensors and data (yah, I am thinking AI assist for analog LOL), but alas, its a small market segment now.
At this stage of my life I can easily afford to do analog darkroom right. The cost is relatively cheap compared to what one good digital camera costs these days. I plan to keep it all and use it actively through my retirement years until my last breath of sweet-smelling chemistry
Now it is time to go mosey on down to local art museum to go see the new Ansel Adams exhibit that came to town recently...
Regards,
Mike
My first camera was a white Polaroid Swinger camera that I got as a kid in the mid-60's with S&H green stamps for those of you old enough to remember those. A few years later my parents bought me a plastic developing kit as a Christmas present to develop film and make enlargements with a small plastic toy enlarger that used a common flashlight bulb for illumination. I was instantly hooked for life after I cracked open my first Kodak 126 B&W cartridge and watched my first 4x5" prints come to life (hey, don't laugh, at 12YO my 126 Instamatic with those square flash cubes was a big upgrade!)
I started in a real home darkroom 45 years ago and am now in my late 50's approaching retirement. Having grown up in the picturesque and quaint suburban NJ villages that were just a 40-minute train ride into mid-town Manhattan, I made countless trips into NYC for gear, supplies, galleries, and education. Anyone remember the Nikon School?
I spent half of my youth in the darkroom (the other half chasing girls - a few ended up in my darkroom). A camera became an adjunct body part, and after doing every school yearbook and freelance gig I could find, I majored in art photography and film in college. After college I was hired to do photography at one of the big three TV networks in NYC. I left all that glittered and landed a job as a corporate staff photographer and multimedia specialist at one of the world's largest technology companies that had a full-scale internal operation - the pay was phenomenal, but didn't last as operations like that were gradually farmed out, after which I went back for graduate study as a software engineer to pay the bills.
My love for the medium never ceased. I ended up doing R&D in the then emerging field of multimedia and electronic publishing in the early 80's and led the development of mass scale electronic books and multimedia years before the world-wide web existed and hold published IP that contributed to advancements in that field. I now manage the technology that supports hundreds of millions of pages of content and thousands of content creators.
I've since maintained my involvement with photography as a life-long avocation. I maintain a well-equipped converted garage studio on the side and have had a brick and mortar gallery for years until my day job didn't permit the time to maintain it. I take on occasional commercial digital gigs as an avocation these days (massive 30+ foot gigapxel indoor building murals you can put your face up to and see detail), but my love for analog as an art form never ebbed. I still have my film cameras, including my coveted Nikon F2as along with two complete Mamiya RB67 systems. I'm not as hard core as 4x5 and larger folks here (bless you all); I'm happy to stick with 6x7 on the analog side.
I recently decided to reconstitute my darkroom this year and break-out my boxed equipment. I find it incredible there is still opportunity to grab some great gear for pennies or dimes on the dollar compared to what good gear used to cost - even back in the 80's and 90's, but when I decided to reconstruct a lab I began to fear the paucity and rarity of good gear, so I do feel very fortunate to have recently found a Fujimoto CP32 desktop processor in new condition for a relative song.
I could never afford such gear all those years, which is why I've always maintained all my equipment like new. The CP32, combined with a pristine LPL 670MXL enlarger, high-end APO enlarger lenses, a Gralab 900 digital timer, and wonderful 16x20 vacuum easel, form the base of the new darkroom I’m planning to build. Maybe an ATL 500 or ATL 1000 might complete the setup eventually for when I move away from the commercial lab a mile away that turns around my C41 and E6 for $5 with 24 hour turn-around. I still have everything else from my old darkroom and can do one-off C41 batches if need be.
I could only dream of having a high-end desktop color processor all those years. I recall how I fell in love with my Spiratone stabilizer unit back in the 70's - I thought I had died and gone to heaven the first time I used it. I did well with very basic darkroom setups all my life, even through college as a photography and film major. I spent many years using drums and motorized drum base rollers for color that I still own, but still love B&W tray processing as well.
I can only guess that in the coming years analog gear will get even more rare and more expensive as a growing niche discover and rediscover analog. I don't expect it to ever become mass market again, and happy that doesn't occur if there are enough of us to keep the supply of paper and chemistry flowing, and maybe encourage a few analog gear makers to offer some new tech (at least we can proof with scanners these days). As a computer software engineer with decades of experience I can't believe there hasn't been much advancement in developing more assistive tech to analyze exposure and color balance based on chemistry, paper, and other variables that can be predictive with sensors and data (yah, I am thinking AI assist for analog LOL), but alas, its a small market segment now.
At this stage of my life I can easily afford to do analog darkroom right. The cost is relatively cheap compared to what one good digital camera costs these days. I plan to keep it all and use it actively through my retirement years until my last breath of sweet-smelling chemistry
Now it is time to go mosey on down to local art museum to go see the new Ansel Adams exhibit that came to town recently...
Regards,
Mike
Last edited:
