Printing age

[cliveh]

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

 

[MattKing]

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]

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

 

[Rick A]

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]

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]

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]

42 ....

 

[greg zinselmeier]

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

 

[GRHazelton]

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]

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]

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]

7, with my dad. That would be 1960.

 

[JNP]

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]

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]

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

 

[radiant]

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]

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]

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

 

[miha]

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]

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]

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

 

[mooseontheloose]

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]

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]

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]

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).