Does the quality of darkroom equipment matter?

Sirius Glass · Mar 27, 2023

For me the better the equipment, the easier it is to use and the results are better as well as the best is arrived at with fewer iterations. So better equipment ends up saving me money in the end.

DREW WILEY · Mar 28, 2023

I used to tell that to contractors. Some of them never learned. They couldn't afford good tools because they weren't making enough money, due to the inefficiency and constant replacement cost of their junk tools. They couldn't compete with the better equipped and better trained outfits. A vicious cycle.

Get the best you can afford and REALISTICALLY need. This is a great time to buy used high quality darkroom gear, including most enlarging lenses.

Sirius Glass · Mar 28, 2023

DREW WILEY said:
I used to tell that to contractors. Some of them never learned. They couldn't afford good tools because they weren't making enough money, due to the inefficiency and constant replacement cost of their junk tools. They couldn't compete with the better equipped and better trained outfits. A vicious cycle.

Get the best you can afford and REALISTICALLY need. This is a great time to buy used high quality darkroom gear, including most enlarging lenses.

A job is always easier with the correct tools. "A poor workman blame his tools." Is a bunch of shit passed on by those to do not what they are talking about. In my case it was my parents.

Jim Jones · Mar 28, 2023

The most important part of the enlarger for fine prints is the lens. We can work around many mechanical and light source deficiencies. I've tried to use some cheap enlarging lens. A few were fairly good. For many of us, starting out with the reputable lenses saves time and money.

Pieter12 · Mar 28, 2023

Jim Jones said:
The most important part of the enlarger for fine prints is the lens. We can work around many mechanical and light source deficiencies. I've tried to use some cheap enlarging lens. A few were fairly good. For many of us, starting out with the reputable lenses saves time and money.

And alignment of the above-mentioned lens with the negative and easel/baseboard.

Pieter12 · Mar 28, 2023

Sirius Glass said:
A job is always easier with the correct tools. "A poor workman blame his tools." Is a bunch of shit passed on by those to do not what they are talking about. In my case it was my parents.

A poor workman with the best tools is still a poor workman. Same goes for photography

Sirius Glass · Mar 28, 2023

Pieter12 said:
And alignment of the above-mentioned lens with the negative and easel/baseboard.

Pieter12 said:
A poor workman with the best tools is still a poor workman. Same goes for photography

Correct as is my statement. Without the proper tools anyone is a poor work man. Starting with the proper tools, there are very few poor workmen. Starting with a sow's ear, no one can make a silk purse, so start with the right tools and shitcan the crap statement.

Pieter12 · Mar 28, 2023

Sirius Glass said:
Correct as is my statement. Without the proper tools anyone is a poor work man. Starting with the proper tools, there are very few poor workmen. Starting with a sow's ear, no one can make a silk purse, so start with the right tools and shitcan the crap statement.

Believe me, there are many poor workmen with proper tools. The tools do not bring skills or experience. A good workman can make do with the most primitive of tools.

Paul Howell · Mar 28, 2023

I have used many enlargers, Vivitair, Bogen, Kodak, Durst, Meopta Opemus 6, Federal, Omega and Bressler, Burk and James. With very old Federals enlargers a good 4 element lens and in alignment of these enlargers are capable of good work. Thinking in terms like diminish returns for very little you get a entry level enlarger that will produce a good print is the enlarger is handled with care, is on a solid work bench so it does not vibrate it is ok. In most cases entry level enlargers will work with 35mm some with 35mm and 6x6 and will print 8X10 to 11X14. Entry level enlargers usually do not have dedicated condensers that can switched from 35mm to 6X6, printing 35mm can be slow. For not much an upgrade to a higher level Durst, Besssler , Omega to name just a few the ease of use increases. Much easer to operate, a crank handle to raise and lower the enlarger head, and be turned to shoot to the wall to make prints larger than 11X14, soild, easy to adjust to keep in aliment. Then move up to a pro level enlarger, another good increase in value, but not as much as the first jump. Moving up to very high quaility enalrgers like the Durst lab models you get a much smaller return. For those who shoot larger than 4X5, not much of an option, only high quality enlargers were made for 5X7 to 8X10. My thinking is get the best you can afford, invest in good lens.

Sirius Glass · Mar 28, 2023

Pieter12 said:
Believe me, there are many poor workmen with proper tools. The tools do not bring skills or experience. A good workman can make do with the most primitive of tools.

The Contrapositive is also true: Ansel Adams would have a hard time making a good print with a shaky vibrating enlarge with one crappy lens.

Hassasin · Mar 28, 2023

Pieter12 said:
Believe me, there are many poor workmen with proper tools. The tools do not bring skills or experience. A good workman can make do with the most primitive of tools.

+1

Sirius Glass · Mar 28, 2023

Pieter12 said:
Believe me, there are many poor workmen with proper tools. The tools do not bring skills or experience. A good workman can make do with the most primitive of tools.

With a whole lot less fun and much more time. Of course if one likes to stand on their feet all day, who cares?

Hassasin · Mar 28, 2023

Sirius Glass said:
The Contrapositive is also true: Ansel Adams would have a hard time making a good print with a shaky vibrating enlarge with one crappy lens.

Well, AA did not face equipment issue to start. At the same time he would do no worse with plain but rigid and aligned enlarger that cost a lot less.

In my young days I used enlarger whee head would not retain its plane position with slightest vertical change on the column. It was fixable but I never bothered.

What that meant was to check focus on easel with every print in multiple spots, shim easel as needed, then expose. It was a crap shoot routine, but it worked. Had that been a commercial volume work … no way. But for single prints it was possible to get a good sharp print. Once I moved to Durst L1200 things got easier.

in the end skill counts a lot more than equipment. Which is not to say equipment does not, but it still needs to be used and checked properly.

Perhaps, this question is more about … does the skill count more, or does the equipment ?

Lens and even light source are the two items that do make a significant difference though.

DREW WILEY · Mar 28, 2023

What Pieter says makes a whole lot of sense if a workman doesn't mind starving to death because it takes him a hundred times longer to do the same job. And no, sloppy types do not buy high end tools. They simply don't. They buy junk instead. I should know, having sold millions of dollars of the best kind every year for several decades. Yeah, every once in awhile you get some rich tool collector who doesn't use the gear at all; but those types are a tiny minority.

It's a little different with cameras; and I've known any number of Leica, Hassie, and Rollei owners who rarely shoot with those. But if you look at the big picture concerning pro camera gear, especially in the medium and large formats, people tend to do their homework first, and buy what they can reasonably afford, sometimes with regret after awhile, and replacing premature choices with higher end options later, but rarely the other way around.

I'm looking at my old battle scarred Pentax 6X7, still working perfectly 45 years later. That was a good choice. I'm looking at my Sinar Norma 4X5, which saw 40 years of studio usage until I bought it; and it should be perfectly usable for yet another owner once I'm to old for it, or have passed away. Wise gear choices.

But back to that AA nonsense : he would have had a lot EASIER time if his own darkroom had been equipped with a serious commercial enlarger. And the fact is, most of his really large prints were subcontracted to a much better equipped pro lab. He was evidently there to supervise the look he wanted; but his own darkroom was relatively primitive even for the era.

Skill and gear/technique are a marriage. I once sold a basic handsaw to a guy in coat n' tails tuxedo who was going to play that darn saw in a full orchestra presentation using a violin bow. Well, it might have looked like an ordinary saw; but the type of steel was entirely different, and it cost a hecka lot more, and was specifically made for musical use. And I knew how to bend and twang a saw blade with my own hands to get the correct reverberating twang, proving it was the right kind of steel - even knew how to make hound dogs howl when I did that. Of course, dogs buy concert tickets; but neither do I ....

redbandit · Apr 5, 2023

Remember,, that the most interesting photos ever made were made with lenses that well.... would be considered "Holga perfection" these days

Don_ih · Apr 6, 2023

redbandit said:
Remember,, that the most interesting photos ever made were made with lenses that well.... would be considered "Holga perfection" these days

Examples?

Hassasin · Apr 6, 2023

Don Heisz said:
Examples?

Common, those old era photos, some taken with box cameras and single element lens? I'm sure you don't need examples.

Don_ih · Apr 6, 2023

Hassasin said:
Common, those old era photos, some taken with box cameras and single element lens? I'm sure you don't need examples.

You said "most interesting photos ever made" - which brings to mind large format landscapes and 35mm documentary photos, all of which were taken using good lenses. Or it brings to mind fashion or artistic photos that, for the most part, used good lenses.

Pieter12 · Apr 6, 2023

Hassasin said:
Common, those old era photos, some taken with box cameras and single element lens? I'm sure you don't need examples.

Not sure those are the most interesting. You will need to post examples.

redbandit · Apr 6, 2023

steichen and his 1902 image of the flat iron building.

aparat · Apr 6, 2023

I want to mention one item that has improved the quality of my enlargements, namely, the dodging stick. I previously used a piece of some nondescript wire (maybe from a coat hanger?) and, sometimes, it would show in the print, despite my attempts to keep it moving. I did some research and found this really thin floral stem wire. I bought 30 and 24 gauge models. They are very, very thin, but rigid enough to hold a small piece of opaque paper at one end. The 30 gauge is so thin that it just oscillates nicely while you're holding it over the area to be dodged, completely disappearing from the print. This is one concrete example where the quality of the equipment had an appreciable effect on the quality of the print.

Nicholas Lindan · Apr 6, 2023

Don Heisz said:
Examples?

Lartigue?

Adam's early work was printed using a contact frame (as was all of Weston's) - there is a movie somewhere of Adams using a contact frame, waving his hands over it for dodges and burns like he was conducting a symphony.

Most great photographer's earliest work was made with pretty down-market gear.

Nicholas Lindan · Apr 6, 2023

aparat said:
The 30 gauge is so thin that it just oscillates nicely while you're holding it over the area to be dodged, completely disappearing

30ga - yikes! I have used thin piano wire, but nothing that thin.

mshchem · Apr 6, 2023

Whatever equipment makes one comfortable and productive.

warden · Apr 6, 2023

Nicholas Lindan said:
30ga - yikes! I have used thin piano wire, but nothing that thin.

I’m using a zip tie with a wad of gaffer tape on the end of it so you can imagine I feel like a caveman.

Does the quality of darkroom equipment matter?

Sirius Glass

DREW WILEY

Sirius Glass

Jim Jones

Pieter12

Pieter12

Sirius Glass

Pieter12

Paul Howell

Sirius Glass

Hassasin

Sirius Glass

Hassasin

DREW WILEY

redbandit

Don_ih

Hassasin

Don_ih

Pieter12

redbandit

aparat

Nicholas Lindan

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Nicholas Lindan

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mshchem

warden

Does the quality of darkroom equipment matter?

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