Michael
I truly believe this site APUG is where a hybrid forum should exist, keeping it on track would be hard as you point out . I think I remember for a very short time Sean and John created this section here, but soon it morphed into Dpug.
Aim points in PS is moderately difficult to grasp and important when making my enlarged negatives,,, but really when you think about it it does fall into the placement of zones in a 0-100 density language and I have learned a lot about the process lately by working with LAB and establishing things like minimum shadow detail points, minimum highlight detail points... I think Ansel Adams and Fred Picker would agree with this mixing of technology.
The LVT recorders Michael M and Larry G use can indeed create negative that go in enlarger, I just produced some film off my Lambda, for contact on Ilford Warmtone that is every bit as good end product as an enlarge print from the original negative..... This technology can be used in any darkroom, big , small, laundry room, bedroom, garage, or darkrooms like Robert Halls and Steve Sherman.
2012 is the year where a lot of this interesting work will be introduced, great workers like Kerik, Sandy, Bill, Ike , Ron, Mark, and many many others have seen the possibility's , all members here and I know of at least 30 others pushing the envelope, and in all cases a wet print. The overall effect of them all talking here would be fantastic and good for the 50 k members of APUG.
We have lost a lot of talent since I joined here. Also a lot of bad apples seem to have left as well, but since I only have two threads, film and paper open I do not see the rest of what is going on on this site.
I believe the more the envelope is pushed you will see one or two of the big manufacturers and I am not placing any bets here, but one of them will combine the simplicity of a Rhoe flatbead printer and the old Chromalin method of laying down pigmented colour and produce a device that can produce permanent Colour Prints using a mixture of methods... But we have to talk about the possibilitys and not put blinders on... We need the wet technology and we need the dark side.
If we are all honest here, Colour Carbon Prints by Todd Gangler and John Bentley or Colour Gum Prints by Keith Taylor are admired and talked about freely on this site, but honestly, the their film is scanned , and outputed on digital image setters onto film, then they move to the darkroom to make permanent prints. I see this as a bit of a disconnect.
So why would we not embrace this as darkroom workers?????
Nothing wrong with an all analogue approach and I for one work this way a large % of any year soley in Analogue methodology, probably quite more than the strictest police here.
but there are more ways get workers into the darkroom which means more materials being purchased by our suppliers and this does include alternative working methods.
Bob
In "theory" I don't see why APUG couldn't/shouldn't have a forum for hybrid work. Not sure where you'd draw the proverbial line though. When I think about hybrid work I think the most acceptable form of it within an overall APUG context is the making of enlarged negatives for contact printing in the darkroom (anything from silver gelatin to whatever old alt process you can think of). Using the computer to make enlarged negatives allows virtually any wet process to be used (as I write this I'm thinking about the huge platinum prints Michael Massaia makes). This is all fine, but might be too limited for some people. I would not be in favour of digital capture (cameras, memory cards etc) or digital output on APUG. What I worry about is how mixed up things could get. You have forums on here for alternative process, contact printing etc. But if you add some other Wet Darkroom/Digital forum, wouldn't they logically cross over? And you'd have to allow all the discussions about scanners and scanning, wouldn't you? Then again what do I know about all this. I'm an old fashioned darkroom-only guy.