Printing age

cliveh · Mar 17, 2022

How old were you when you made your first black & white print. I think I was about 15.

MattKing · Mar 17, 2022

Eleven. A contact print on Velox, from a 2.5" x 4.5" negative exposed in my 1930s vintage Kodak Six-16, pictured here:
https://www.photrio.com/forum/media/portal-of-a-different-sort.14286/

Andrew O'Neill · Mar 17, 2022

14. Grade 9 at class. We got to make pinholes with poster tubes for cameras.

Rick A · Mar 17, 2022

I was 10, my sister bought me a Sears Roebuck beginner darkroom kit for my birthday. She had given me a Kodak 127 the previous Christmas.

gordrob · Mar 17, 2022

Christmas when Ii was 13 I got an Ansco Contact Printer Kit and an Ansco Cadet II Camera Kit that started me down this rabbit hole. A year later I built my own enlarger but that is a whole other story.

Brendan Quirk · Mar 17, 2022

13 - just before freshman year of high school. Verichrome Pan 126 from Instamatics (remember breaking open the plastic cassettes?) or 828 from a Kodak Bantam. Prinz enlarger and lens.

Don_ih · Mar 17, 2022

42 ....

greg zinselmeier · Mar 17, 2022

Today! Every new day is a “first”!!! But for real. . . . I was 20 yes. Old? I think

GRHazelton · Mar 17, 2022

IIRC I was 13 or 14. My Father had a rather crude enlarger with a decent lens, Wollansak, I think. As a Chemical Engineer he could buy the chemicals needed, and he had a balance scale which was accurate enough. We mixed up Beutler's film developer; I don't remember which paper developer we used. Graded Luminos was inexpensive then; Plus X was our film of choice. With Beutler it gave excellent perceived sharpness, and a reasonable increase in speed, again IIRC. So long ago, and some details are probably a little fuzzy....

Bill Burk · Mar 17, 2022

I think 14. Dad got a Spotmatic II and we got close up filters and made a copy stand from a sheet of plywood following the Kodak plans. He got me a subscription to a science club that included a darkroom unit. Dad wanted to take photos of his student’s projects so I got a bit of professional work right off the bat.

Vaughn · Mar 17, 2022

1977 in the employee rec. darkroom on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon...23 yrs old.

Here is that first print, after my parents displayed it for a few decades. A self-portrait, too! Ten second timer on the Rolleiflex. Verichrome Pan (developed by the shop down in Flagstaff) printed on glossy Kodak RC. Amazingly enough, I recently found another copy that has been stored with other prints that is still in perfect condition.

DonW · Mar 17, 2022

7, with my dad. That would be 1960.

JNP · Mar 17, 2022

Andrew O'Neill said:
14. Grade 9 at class. We got to make pinholes with poster tubes for cameras.

Me too, 2nd semester, I had to take "foundation art" first semester.

DWThomas · Mar 18, 2022

I'm vaguely remembering it was in Cub Scouts, and not very far in, that we developed some rolls of Verichrome (not Pan!) and made contact prints. So I was maybe 9? (It's all a blur! )

M-88 · Mar 18, 2022

33, last fall. I must be a late bloomer.

radiant · Mar 18, 2022

Maybe 12 back in 80-90s.

I got my chemistry from local camera shop and some vague instructions. I developed film at home all alone and made some contact print myself with flashlight.

I really do not understand how I accomplished that with such guidance.

Jay Schrotenboer · Mar 18, 2022

M-88 said:
33, last fall. I must be a late bloomer.

For me it was also last fall, but at the age of 40, and after having most of the equipment for over 10 years. I guess that makes me a late and slow bloomer.

grain elevator · Mar 18, 2022

At 28 or 29. I too had had the enlarger for a few years already but somehow not followed through.

miha · Mar 18, 2022

I guess I was 15 or 16. I had no enlarger at the time, so I way using my slide projector to expose the paper.

snusmumriken · Mar 18, 2022

12 or 13. A school friend's dad was an industrial chemist, and he had fitted up his son's (large) bedroom with blackout and darkroom kit. I developed the film in our kitchen sink (loaded the film into the tank at night under the bedclothes!) and took my negatives along to my friend's house. I then discovered there was an abandoned darkroom cupboard in our school, which I took over and restored to some semblance of working order. It was contaminated with fixer, though, so nothing survived.

Tel · Mar 18, 2022

10; my brother and I had a little contact printer (Ansco I think) and I was shooting 127 in my Brownie Starmite.

mooseontheloose · Mar 18, 2022

31. There were no options for me growing up in a tiny town and it wasn’t until I returned to Canada in 2005 where I was able to take darkroom classes at Ryerson while doing my second masters at York U. in Toronto.

gone · Mar 18, 2022

I might be the oldest one for this. I was around 60, before that they'd been printed in the """jet manner. I've never taken classes, figured it out on my own w/ a LOT of help here. Now that I have it kinda figured out, it's fun. But I've been drawing and painting since I was maybe 8? That's totally different than darkroom work, the painting and photography are easy compared to drawing.

RalphLambrecht · Mar 18, 2022

cliveh said:
How old were you when you made your first black & white print. I think I was about 15.

I was abou 8 in my father's darkroom, which was the family's bathroom.

George Collier · Mar 18, 2022

I was 9, in Japan (Air Force), what a wonderful place to be in 1958, if only I'd known it then.
Took beginner classes at the base special services lab, with my official Cub Scout camera (620 Verichrome Pan).

Printing age

cliveh

MattKing

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Andrew O'Neill

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Rick A

gordrob

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Don_ih

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GRHazelton

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DonW

JNP

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M-88

radiant

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grain elevator

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gone

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George Collier

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