My son is developing his first roll of Tri-X!

[Donald Qualls]

Last I heard we still respected the Forth Amendment in this country. How is this home inspector getting around this?

Where have you been? Since the Patriot Act, the entire Bill of Rights is strictly pro forma and subject to revocation without warning. Even before that, it was ailing badly...

Seriously, while it's very likely that interior home inspections (especially in homes without resident children) would fall before a determined Constitutional assault (citations for not cleaning the inside of your house?!), exterior hazards like a ladder left out have been punishable under "attractive nuisance" and "public hazard" classifications for decades. "Public Safety" is second only to "child protection" as a reason for the government to take away your rights.

I was about half joking with my smoking comment, BTW -- nothing else you can do to your children, short of physically beating them or sexual molestation, will harm them as much as smoking around them from birth until they move out. Might just as well mix rat poison in their formula -- at least that, if it doesn't kill them outright, won't do them long-term harm. However, I don't actually feel it should be jailable -- putting the children into foster care would be about right, if the foster care systems in most states weren't so prone to the stuff that's worse than smoking...

 

[donbga]

Last I heard we still respected the Forth Amendment in this country. How is this home inspector getting around this?

As I understand it the inspector isn't searching for evidence. The ordinance has been upheld in court.

This all came about prior to the patriot act.

Don

 

[Max Power]

I just intorduced my 8 & 13 year old daughters to the darkroom. I had posted it on another site a few days prior to yours.

It is never to early to get them away from all those digital things like games, TV and the PC. Plus it is a great way to spend time together.

My daughter is 6 and my son is 5 and although they enjoy the 'magic' of seeing prints developed, I figure that they are still a bit young to work with a camera and develop negs.

For those of you who have introduced children to the black arts, at what age did you find that they adequately grasped the basic concepts?

Kent

 

[Donald Qualls]

For those of you who have introduced children to the black arts, at what age did you find that they adequately grasped the basic concepts?

I haven't introduced any children, but I first used an adjustable camera (a borrowed 35 mm rangefinder, probably a Yashica Lynx), developed negatives, and made a print in a one week summer camp photography class, when I was 9 -- the Summer of Love, as it happens. Not sure what conclusion you can draw for today's environment, though; I learned to shoot a .22 rifle the previous year, at 8.

I took photography in high school at 14, and spent a whole semester dividing my "free" time between shooting, developing, and printing. Did it again in college, at twenty.

Then, like an idiot, I didn't pursue it, with the result that I'm picking it back up as a hobby, some 25 years later...

 

[titrisol]

I started taking pics with and Instamatic whenI was aorund 6, then I started using my dad's Zeiss Ikon Contessa around 8 (summer after 2nd grade) and he introduced me to darkroom around that time. I didn;t do much but watrched him do it, and helped him take the pics put of the wash, into the drying lines

For those of you who have introduced children to the black arts, at what age did you find that they adequately grasped the basic concepts?

Kent

 

[titrisol]

At 16 he's not a child anymore... or at least we were treated as men at that age.
If he can drive, he ain;t a child!

Exposure of a child to dangerous chemicals could be grounds for child abuse in some states. Be careful what you ask for.

Don Bryant

 

[johndeere]

I think they do get the concept and of course I am there to monitor it all. I think age is just a limitation with adults for some things (within reason). But then again the girls help run a beef farm and living on a farm might help mature them just a little faster. They are forced to learn quicker and I to be more responsible with dangerous equipment within easy reach of their daily life. I was 11 and self taught when I processed my first roll of film.

If your children are responsible and you as the parent make it clear that this is something you do together at this age then I see no harm. However I don’t want to get this thread off subject since I’m new, I would like to see some scans of your son’s first time SP. And thank you for your comments.

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

My 2 cents are that I think it's great to get kids interested in creative processes at a young age. It teaches them to express themselves, responsibility of a process, how every step is important in most methodologies, not just photography. It has also taught my step son a bit more patience than he was capable of before.
He is ten years old and comes with me on my geekspeditions when I'm out there in nature somewhere goofing around with much too heavy equipment. Sometimes he brings one of my cameras, usually on a tripod (he really likes to use the shutter timer, but likes the cable release too), and then we develop film together. Next step is to get him to make prints, I think that will seal his fate of being interested in photography.
It is very exciting to see how impressed he is by the whole process, the sheer level of fascination when the negs come out of the developing tank. For now we throw them on the scanner so he can see some finished pictures, but within weeks we'll be firing up the enlarger together as well. It'll be exciting!
I think it's a good thing to educate young people about traditional photography, so that it doesn't become a lost art.

- Thom

 

[gbroadbridge]

Georgia.

Don

That's somewhere in communist China, right?

Graham

 

[gbroadbridge]

My daughter is 6 and my son is 5 and although they enjoy the 'magic' of seeing prints developed, I figure that they are still a bit young to work with a camera and develop negs.

For those of you who have introduced children to the black arts, at what age did you find that they adequately grasped the basic concepts?

Kent

Well, my parents didn't introduce me to photography, the childrens encycolpedia they had purchased for me did that - I dragged my parents along. I was around 9 years old at the time I talked my dad into buying a 35mm camera with an electronic flash. This was around 1973.

Developing my first roll of film was interesting. I used the Boy Scout manual which gave a Photography badge . Mum went out and grabbed the chem's.

According to the Scout manual you could develop the film under a red safelight. As we had no money to go out and buy a safelight, we figured that the heater (which glowed red and then orange) would do. So we set up the heater over the bath and prepared the chems. From memory it was Kodak powder developer, water as a stop bath, and Kodak powder fixer.

The method provided in the Scout manual for developing film was not a tank, it was to extract the film from the cassette (under the safelight), attach a clothes peg to each end and then dip the film through the solution in a seesaw motion.

It actually worked in a fashion, although the film was mostly opaque, I remember seeing in some portions some imagined faces.

30 years on, and I'm still playing with film.


Regards
Graham.

 

[SuzanneR]

My kids are 3 and 5, and a bit young for the darkroom. That said, my three year old helped me squeegee some prints after everything was washed, and the chemicals dumped. No squeegee mishaps, but I really didn't let him 'have at it' like he wanted to!

The five year old's birthday is next month, and I was thinking about getting him a Holga. Any thoughts?

 

[Donald Qualls]

The five year old's birthday is next month, and I was thinking about getting him a Holga. Any thoughts?

How about letting the kid learn with something that will show the difference between (for instance) correct focus and out of focus, steady hold and camera movement, instead of starting him on something that makes all images look like mistakes? The first camera I used regularly was an Instamatic -- fixed focus and it handled exposure itself with fixed 1/100 (or 1/40 with flash cube mounted) and a selenium cell driven aperture mask -- but I could and did see the difference in the prints between shots where I let the camera move and those where I held it nice and steady.

Five is probably still a little young for focus, though -- perhaps a Woca, which (with its glass lens) gives better image quality than a Holga, but is otherwise identical and only a couple dollars more expensive? Or consider one of a host of inexpensive 35 mm simple cameras that can stand in for disposables, but still be "his" camera; you can often get these in thrift stores for a dollar or two, with glass lens, fixed focus and exposure; load them with Plus-X or ISO 100 color film and send him out into the world (with proper supervision, at least for dangerous activities like crossing streets).

If you don't mind spending a bundle on film, you might even consider a Polaroid integral film camera. Most have auto exposure, many are fixed focus or sonar and have built-in flash; the 600 and Spectra family produce pretty decent images, and he'll get the immediate feedback of seeing the picture develop in a couple minutes after taking the shot. Fresh battery in each film pack means one less thing to worry about in terms of getting good images. You will have to ingrain into him not to chew on the prints, though that's probably a good idea with any camera...