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What an eye opener; darkroom printing vs scanning.

Nice to see OP in the darkroom!

It takes long time from first printing to confident printing.
I'm on my third year and only now I could say - this frame is easier to print instead of scanning.
 
Ken Nadvornick said:
Well... strictly speaking, it isn't photography. One doesn't normally hold up and point a photographic scanner at an original subject and then tell that subject to stand really, really still.
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Strictly speaking, you seem to be using a "convenient" definition of photography to skew the discussion.

One doesn't hold up a process camera to do portraits either, yet a process camera is a real camera. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_camera

Scanners are real process cameras in this same exact sense, as are enlargers.

Just because we don't discuss the specifics of the operation and use of digital photographic methods at APUG doesn't mean we need to define digital processes as something other than photography.
 
jnanian said:
mark:

why talk about reality when it is so much easer to talk about other things.
if a process camera and a scanner are sort of the same, what's this ?

http://petapixel.com/2015/05/26/ele...ng-photos-with-the-xerox-photocopying-process
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That looks like yet another variation on converting light energy into a visible static image. Funny how we've managed to find so many different ways to achieve a similar outcome after more than 200 years of research and experimentation.
 
Yawn, here we go again.

It's not a real photography unless you are pouring your own plates........
 
You guys are entertainingly predictable in leading with your personal prejudices and axes...

My post had nothing to do with poor definitions. It had everything to do with poor behaviors.



Ken
 
APUGuser19 said:
Scanning ain't photography.
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mrred said:
Total BS. It may be a tool you choose not to use, but certainly is.
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Ken Nadvornick said:
Well... strictly speaking, it isn't photography.
Click to expand...

Ken Nadvornick said:
You guys are entertainingly predictable in leading with your personal prejudices and axes...

My post had nothing to do with poor definitions. It had everything to do with poor behaviors.



Ken
Click to expand...

Please define what you mean by strictly speaking then.
 
APUGuser19 said:
All I meant was the entire photographic process the original way is a respite from the computer.
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IMO the biggest struggle we have here at APUG is the English language.

I agree BTW, working with materials and chemicals that can be felt, viewed, and held in ones hand is a welcome respite in many ways. I think mrred might agree too.
 
This thread has gone exactly as expected (strictly speaking, of course).
Same old same old.
 
paul ron said:
You have a very talented computer!
Click to expand...
You have a very talented camera
You have a very talented lens
You have a very talented film
You have a very talented film developer
You have a very talented tank manufacturer
You have a very talented enlarger
You have a very talented safelight
You have a very talented enlarging paper
You have a very talented enlarging lens
You have a very talented paper developer
You have a very talented stopbath
You have a very talented fixer
You have very talented air
...
 
The problem with these conversations is people devolve into trying to contradict another's opinion instead of just stating their own and leaving it at that. Opinions are not facts.

Personally I find darkroom work to be more enjoyable. I think it is because I moving around doing something. Sitting in front of the computer is getting really old after doing it for two decades. I have two digital projects I have been working on for years now and they are just about at an end. For the life of me I just can't bring myself to do the editing and subsequent Photoshopping. On the other hand I decided recently that I should at least proof all of the images that I never got around to printing since I started photography 20 some years ago. Last time I looked I had over 500 images in a collection I made for the purpose in Lightroom. To that end I picked up a second enlarger (a Focomat) to speed the process up, and have printed probably 100 so far. It has been an easy and enjoyable process. I have spent 40 hours or so in the darkroom in the last couple of weeks but zero time editing the digital stuff.

To get back around to the OPs original idea, usually negs that scan well are too thin to print well. The danger if you proof your images by scanning them is not realizing that until it is too late, which is easy to do. Usually negatives that are very difficult to scan (too thick) will print well so that is the side you want to err on if you are using scans to proof for the darkroom. There is almost no such thing as a neg that is too thick to print.
 
mrred said:
Total BS. It may be a tool you choose not to use, but certainly is.
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+1.

Fair enough, make darkroom prints, all power to your elbow. It's wonderful and worth celebrating.

I respect that APUG isn't the place for in-depth conversations about non-traditional workflow but I don't think that means it needs to be a place where folk bask in the daft notion of being 'purer' than those who use different tools however.

Scanning is hard to get right (I mostly shoot chromes) and is also part of the way I create enlarged negs for hand-printing photogravures (now that really is a hands-on process!). It's an essential part of photography for my hybrid workflow.
 
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APUGuser19 said:
All I meant was the entire photographic process the original way is a respite from the computer. Everything in life now seems to go back to the computer.
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sure, it brings things back to a computer. oh well ...
>fact<
using a digital camera and using a computer saved me when i wasn't able to spend 12 hours a day in the darkroom
when my kids were very small and i was "on call" 24x7. cyanotypes, retina prints, 25 min stand development, photographing from a moving car did the same.
>opinion<
unfortunately a lot of people see the modern world of photography as evil, good-useful, a waste of time ..
its their loss.
>fact<
soo looking forward to the apug-dpug switch being thrown !
 
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I hope you don't mind that I bolded the part I saw as very important. +1

I'll add that if you work on getting good prints no matter how badly you botched the exposure, you'll become a better printer. Some negs will never print great, but you'll learn ways to get something decent. Yeah, ask me how I know. :/
 
No the problem is that people don't know when to leave it alone and respond to the bait thereby fueling the fire.
 
I had a similar eye opening experience when I moved abroad for a year and had no space for a darkroom. Not wanting to spend more time in front of a pc than my job dictated I started shooting and projecting slides. Not only were huge pictures were great but I became much more careful with setting things up before the picture was taken as I had no opportunity for cropping or dodging / burning.
 

They are?

I'm glad I don't read those forums then. So far every digital photographer (who is actually fairly serious about it as a form of artistic expression, not snapshooters) who find out I do film and darkroom work find it pretty cool and tell me either that they miss it, would like to do it or like to have time for it, or in one case that they think it's really cool but they could never do it and don't have the patience for it. I haven't run into these "have nothing at all to do with modern photography" folks.

Which is fine with me. Now at age 52 I've come to believe that "modern" is a highly over-rated term.
 


You've been drinking the fixer again?

Hahahaha

Boy this thread turned into a flame war mighty fast.

Chillax people! Opinions are like assholes,everybody has one n they all stink!
 
Roger Cole said:
They are?
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yup

Which is fine with me.
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me too !

===

OP

its ALWAYS better to have negatives that are a little t0o dense,
and if you ever go up in format and want to contact print your negatives
it is a lot of fun .. even if you can't see what's on the film until it is printed because it is so dense !
there's always more information in the negative / in the film that photo paper can't translate.
thin can be trouble ... short exposure times, special papers, intensifying techniques .. its a lot of work ..
and while it is fun to be able to say you were able to extract "stuff" from a thin negative, it's kind of a sigh of
relief when its over and you can print something with a bit more on it.

don't let the little things get you down, and keep enjoying the big picture !
 
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I love working from analog to digital, especially being that I work primarily with alternative processes and vintage/toy cameras, 120, 620, 127, 110, pinhole, ... I really do enjoy developing my own negatives but I hardly have room for my cleaning bag and chemicals, lol, I sure don't have the resources for a full darkroom setup. My next things are Color Cross-Processing and lumens! Whoop, whoop! I'm glad ya'll are here! and you are right, the darkroom can be rewarding, though tedious!
 

Sadly Roger, that assertion arose from multiple past personal experiences.

I do a fair amount of scanning for direct online presentation.* During one particularly challenging effort I decided I could use some input from others more skilled than myself. So I went to one of the very well-known digital photography sites to ask for some hybrid advice.*

I laid out the basics of what I was trying to do, mentioning in the process that the source of the scan was to be an 8x10 black-and-white negative.

Oh. My. God. I was set upon like hyenas. Why are you even using such an antiquated approach? LF made sense a hundred years ago, but not now. Nobody uses film anymore. My DSLR can beat the pants off any negative, including yours. Don't you know that you're killing yourself using those toxic chemicals? And killing your family with you? And poisoning the environment? Where's your social responsibility? Haven't you heard about Bhopal? (I'm not kidding!)

It went on and on. Even after I quietly left and just figured out what I needed to know by experimentation. Ironically, in retrospect in a number of ways it was virtually identical to some of the ravings I hear right here on APUG, especially regarding the use and disposal of mostly benign b&w photochemistry.

And this doesn't even count the time I went to a different well-known digital photography equipment site with a question regarding compatibility of a certain Nikon DSLR body with the original pre-AI, AI, and AIS manual focus Nikkor lenses, of which I own about a dozen. I was entertaining the possibility of purchasing a used digital body from KEH to leverage that lens collection.*

Except... I made the mistake of observing that I would still prefer using my Nikon F2 bodies over any DSLR options. And worse, that I intended to tape over the LCD screen because I didn't want to see the photos that way. I think I may have also mentioned self-limiting to only 36 exposures per outing, or something like that.

Oh. My. God. You would have thought by the wailing that I'd ripped some of their arms out by the sockets. Probably should have. My personal favorite was being informed that I was totally clueless when it came to modern computer technology, and what it could do to improve our lives. (I apologized for my vast ignorance.)

However, in each of these cases I intentionally did not challenge these people's technology preferences and choices. Nor did I try to preach and convert them over to film-based photo technology. Because to do so within an online discussion forum specifically dedicated to hybrid and/or pure digital photo technologies would have been more than just poor sportsmanship...

That would be rude.

Ken

* But I don't discuss that here on APUG because, well... That would be rude.
 
LOL. You wrote: "Except... I made the mistake of observing that I would still prefer using my Nikon F2 bodies over any DSLR options. And worse, that I intended to tape over the LCD screen because I didn't want to see the photos that way. I think I may have also mentioned self-limiting to only 36 exposures per outing, or something like that." and that sounds pretty much "in your face" to me. Imagine what would happen here on APUG if someone behaved that way.
 
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