changing my workflow and choice of format

Many moons ago I was a fairly active member of APUG and enjoyed shooting mainly MF monochrome. But I did dabble with colour developing and printing and an evening in the darkroom was a happy place.
Then as film started to get harder to get I switched to digital and have a Canon 6D now. But my everyday shots are more and more done on an iphone 13 which is a capable little camera.
I am bored chimping through photos for good ones , lightroom is full and the Digital philosophy does not encourage taking 10 minutes or more for one shot.
I have reloaded the Bronica and considering the sale of my DSLR gear. But the process is my current thought.
Colour dev and print costs a lot in paper and chess and a lot of the latter gets wasted. I enjoy mono but to be honest standing at the enlarger is less inviting now I am closer to 70 than 50 . So my plan is to develop film at a good lab then scan and get it printed elsewhere (a good mono printer is a huge investment) . I have been told that this is common now and selling an enlarger is difficult given the carriage costs and likely price (mine is a basic meopta) .Does this seem a good workflow ?
In addition I got thinking deeper - I enjoy the act of photography , the composition , choice of subject etc. I” also like to produce ‘off the wall’ photos. I know that give that any one can take photos now and competent images are printed by the thousand in China every day so selling ‘artwork’ is difficult I still want to try to do so.
So I am considering selling what I can of my darkroom and buying an LF camera , I may develop mono films myself and scan 4 x 5 or else get prints made from negs. I even consider an 8 x 10 pinhole a good idea - Am I stark raving mad ? or am I entering into a world of infinite pleasure ?

Here's a cautious plan: Keep the darkroom equipment, and try LF + scanning + commercial printing. If you like it, then you can sell or gift the darkroom equipment. If you dislike LF, you can sell it and return to the darkroom.

BTW, I have a chair in front of my enlarger, eliminating back-aches.

Mark Overton

Why not take up drinking good red wine - you'll get more zing for your bling, or bang for your buck!!

Seriously, I reckon we are about the same age or age level (I'm >>70 but still healthy and active, tho' no longer happy to carry a backpack full of FX Nikon gear with me around Southeast Asia), and we may both be suffering from the same malaise, post-Covid isolation boredom.

As I see it, investing in LF at this time is akin to throwing away a bucket of money. You'll spend up big, but if you decide it isn't for you and you want to bail out, your chances of getting more than half what you put into it are, in two words, almost zilch. Think... Ebay. Dunno about you, but not for me.

My "solution" was to invest a reasonable amount of money (<AUD$3000) in a like-new Fujifilm XT2 and four beaut Fujinon lenses. I had avoided DX like the plague for the past decade, opting instead to pour my money into Nikon FX, D700s and now D800s plus a shipload of lenses. I still enjoy using these, but at the ripe old age of (almost) 75, carrying a D800 and a bag of lenses doesn't excite me much, if anything can be said to "excite" me at my age. Ha!!

My partner was sufficiently impressed with the XT2 that we now also own a secondhand XE2, also a superb smaller camera to play with. So I get to carry two in my backpack when I go bush, along with the lenses, and I can still walk after being out in the great outdoors all day. Win-win!!

My slow photography urges are catered for by using one of my four Rolleiflex TLRs, even tho' with the price of 120 film in Australia nowadays, when I've used up the stocks of it I have left in my darkroom fridge, that will pretty much be it for me and MF.

I also have a darkroom, but am quietly running down my stocks of everything, paper and chemicals, which should take me another 1-2 years. After that, well, who knows - a rocking chair, maybe, and a nice wool blanket for our two pussies to lie on in my lap. And old movies on YouTube. Amazing what ends up on that site - last night's opus was 'The Road To Singapore', a 1931 William Powell-Warner Brother love thriller, pre-Code so with some fairly sizzling scenes in it.

Sounds depressing, dunnit?? The red wine helps, but again, given that OA is pretty much a state of giving up things, sooner or later I'll be faced with giving that up too, before it gives me up.

The XT2 has rekindled my interest in casual/candid photography and given me new play-toys to take out and reshoot all the nice things I've been photographing over the past 22 years.

To be a little more positive about this, you have so many options open to you. Pick one or two you think you would enjoy, and go with it. Oh, and let us know how it all goes...

W/ an 8x10 pinhole you could make contact prints, that might be a way to make analog prints and not deal w/ the enlarger.

Traditional B&W darkroom prints are what one usually sees in galleries, but making money on stuff like this is hit and miss, mostly miss. The costs, labor and time to the photographer to mount a show should not be underestimated.

Why not try some scans and send them out to be printed to see if that works for you? At 70, my eyes are still good enough to do good darkroom work (sure beats staring at a computer monitor futzing around in PS to make things printable). Spending 4-5 hours in there is OK, it's not like I do that every day.

Before you sell anything, try putting everything photographic aside and give yourself some head space to think and not think about this. All this kind of stuff is easy for me. I just want the highest quality image, and I want control of the process from A to Z because only I know what the print should look like.

Shooting large format is a very slow process compared to shooting with a digital camera, the large ground glass back invites careful composition and metering. Questions, what do you like to shoot, when do you like to shoot, and how deep are your pockets? As you have a Meopta which will print 6X6, you may want to think about returning to MF. Maybe 6X6 system, body 3 lens. If you sold off your MF gear you can start with a Yashica D with the 4 element taking lens, and if it refloats your boat upgrade to a Mamyia 220. BTW I have a Meopta that I have set up next to my Omega D3, it is my go to enlarger for 35mm and 6X6 up to 8X10 or very close to a 11X14.

Digiconvert, I can't imagine getting into LF and not having a darkroom. I work predominantly in MF (Rolleiflex & Plaubel) but also have a 4x5. 35mm for me is my perfect substitute for the iPhone. I'm as much tied to printing (analog) as i am to the act of getting the image on film. To invest in a LF camera, lenses, holders & expensive film.....& then scanning & having someone else make occasional prints seems oddly incomplete.

I wasn't sure where this thread belongs, but I'm confident it isn't about enlarging. So it has been moved to the Miscellaneous Hybrid Discussions sub-forum.

digiconvert said:

...(a good mono printer is a huge investment)...

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An Epson printer in ABW mode or running a Piezography inkset can be a very good mono printer.

Well Artist-photographer we have different stances on the value of hybrid workflow. I work entirely analog. I also think if one chooses a digital output...... the quality of digital sensors and particularly med format cameras like the Fuji GFX......produce high quality files from which quality prints can be made. Reading the OP's point of view, not yours ("dabbling in odourous darkrooms")......I can't see the value of LF for his purpose.

You only live once and you dont need anyone's permission on what to spend your money on.
Make a 8x10 pinhole camera (just a box with a wee hole at one end and a sheet of film at the other). Buy some xray film, or if you happy to pay some extra get some Foma or Ilford film. Some trays and chemistry and your set to go. Buy some Alternative photography chemicals or get a kit, some art paper a contact printer (just make one) a UV light or the sun. Make some prints, put them in a frame and go sell them at the local markets, couldn't be easier.
Digital photography is a mindless boring activity for lazy people who cant do anything for themselves.

My personal opinion is that unless you're looking for the slow methodical pace of the LF exposure, you've got nearly everything you need to produce some very impressive prints-- The Bronica is a great little camera, and medium format scanned with a DSLR can produce very sharp, high resolution images. Add a good printer (for less than the price of a good LF field camera), and you can produce some very nice prints-- and any prints you want to sell can be printed commercially.

Will it be as satisfying as a print produced on an enlarger? Only you can answer that.

If you don't like enlarging, you are certainly not going to like making LF photographs -- because it's the exact same thing as enlarging, just in reverse!

Well, there is one difference. The enlarger is fixed in one place. You don't have to lug it around, like you do a LF camera and gear -- but it is good exercise!

digiconvert said:

Many moons ago I was a fairly active member of APUG

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I have not yet read the thread, but quick looked at your media contributions. I like the B/W prints you posted. I will now return to the thread...

digiconvert said:

I enjoy mono but to be honest standing at the enlarger is less inviting now I am closer to 70 than 50 .

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I believe (for me) that a large part of the art resides in the printing. This is so also for digital. A succesful digital print is not trivial, despite what we may think. A darkroom printing session defines for me what photography is all about. I am now 66, and am printing more than ever. For me, the print is all. This is what motivates me.

Brendan Quirk said:

I believe (for me) that a large part of the art resides in the printing.

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This is so interesting. Could you explain why is that the case for you?

I am the exact opposite. I am not interested in printing at all and I believe photography and printing are two different arts. After a period spent, like OP, dabbling with digital cameras, I have gotten tired of huge complicated electronic portable computers with a lens attached, have sold everything and have returned to film in earnest. However, I have nothing against the digital end-product of digital photography, so my analog cameras and film development still lead me to a digital end product: I exclusively scan my negatives, and I massively enjoy doing this.

I love the process and the results of film photography, but I am interested in producing digital images with my film cameras, not prints. I do not have the space, the interest or the time to set up a darkroom. I also believe my images, intended as compositions, are in the negative already, and if they're not, tinkering to fit the signal present on the negative into a more technically limited (though arguably creatively interesting) representation such as a wet print would not make an unsuccessful composition suddenly successful. Yes, I do not think burning and dodging and applying those odd yellowish chemical tints to a photo of a bell pepper or or a watermelon will ever 'make' a photo.

But that's just me. I love using my TLRs, developing using a daylight tank and a dark bag, and sharing my scans with my family far away. If I wanted to print my work I would pay a professional printer (who is almost never a photographer at least where I live) to do so.

albireo said:

This is so interesting. Could you explain why is that the case for you?

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This will require some thought to explain myself, and lay out an explanation. I will get back to you... (in this thread). I just love prints, and like to hang them on the walls - I guess that is a start!