Pioneer
Member
Richard;
It will most likely come down to making your own handcrafted films and papers. You would think that there would be some groundswell in reaction with people inquiring about methods and etc, but things are as usual on this front. Minimal interest. That is about 100 people out of the 50,000 APUG membership.
PE
I do believe that you are right PE. This is not going to get better for awhile, if at all. Film is rapidly becoming a boutique industry and even the Ilfords of the world will find it tough to keep going, and they probably have a better chance then most.
I am certainly interested in learning to coat my own emulsions. I have an older Cambo 8x10 as well as a couple 4x5 cameras I have held onto. I have bookmarked the light farm, have read a lot of Denise Ross's work, and have been following emulsion coating in a few forum posts here and on LargeFormatPhotography. But I suspect that I may have to put some money away for a workshop of some type real soon. It would certainly be nice to find something out West, closer to where I live, as travel funds are a bit tight and going East may not be easy to do.
I'll have to do some checking to see what is available.