I may be wrong, but from reading posts on this site over many years, I get the impression that photographers in the USA are far more dependent on gadgets and chemical additives than us folk in Europe. Would you agree?
How so? Could you clarify what gadgets you're thinking of? Myself I like pre-packaged chemistry (Xtol) and I do make a few formulas from scratch with bulk raw chemicals, yet I only follow the formula and don't add anything unnecessary.
I may be wrong, but from reading posts on this site over many years, I get the impression that photographers in the USA are far more dependent on gadgets and chemical additives than us folk in Europe. Would you agree?
Who can tell?
It may be that the respective memberships of posters on APUG/Photrio tend those ways, but it isn't clear that that is representative of how the different worlds differ.
I do know that my dropping into FADU from time to time reveals a world that is a bit more similar to the photographic retailers and groups that I was around in the 1970s and 1980s than Photrio is, but I think that simply tells us more about who posts on the two sites.
I hardly use a battery let alone a gadget. I have a Stopclock timer I bought a couple years ago, it's on an enlarger I use infrequently, that's the newest gadget I own. I used a sheet of that "new fangled" resin coated paper today to make a proof sheet of 12 exposures from a Hasselblad.
I do have a Jobo.
Oh Gadget, I use some $50 used toy Spynet IR goggles and they are da bomb! Guilty as charged!