srt101fan

I used to have a darkroom set up in my home but stopped developing film and printing photos many, many years ago.

Every once in a while I think it would be nice to shoot a roll of B&W and develop it myself. Also, I found several exposed films that were never developed. It's probably not possible to salvage anything from them but it might be fun to try.

I got rid of most of my darkroom gear some time ago but still have a plastic Patterson tank with adjustable reels and a couple of stainless steel tanks with reels.

How have things changed over the years with regard to films, the use of chemicals, and temperature control requirements? Any significant changes I should be aware of?

I know I can google this stuff. But some of you on UHH do your own B&W developing for scanning and I'm really interested in your views.

Thanks!

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Black-and-White photography is less common than it was, and there are more "niche" film stocks and developers available due to the Internet Long Tail marketing phenomenon, but other than that, it is the same as it ever was. I can still find all the stuff I used in 1968 in junior high school.

One thing that has improved is the use of technology. Instead of a simple Gra-Lab 300 timer, iPhone apps are available to time any process you can name. https://www.digitaltruth.com/apps/mdc/

An online version of the Massive Dev Chart is here: https://www.digitaltruth.com/devchart.php

I quit using film in 2005, but still follow what's available, just to help newbies get started. B&H, Adorama, Freestyle, and many other large Internet dealers carry substantial inventories of film and chemicals, plus all the peripheral items you might need. If exposing and processing film is much the same as it ever was, post-processing with digital technology is a whole new world!

Scanning is just one way to digitize film. Re-photography is another. If you have a high resolution (okay, 16MP or more) digital camera, copying 35mm negatives with a macro lens yields very nice results. If you record raw images of your negatives, they can be processed with professional lab precision by using Negative Lab Pro, a $99 plug-in for Adobe Lightroom Classic. It's worth every penny, IMHO!

All about Negative Lab Pro, and its usage, plus a free trial: https://www.negativelabpro.com

Once digitized, you can use post-processing tools to fine tune the look of an image. If your monitor is properly calibrated and profiled, you can print images that look better than they would have if printed on silver halide papers, and you can use a far greater array of paper surfaces and other substrates.

srt101fan

Thanks much, Bill; interesting and very helpful info!

Ourspolair

And of course, they still sell photographic paper if you want to stay analogue...

srt101fan

Ha, I don't think I'll retro that far!

jwreed50 Loc: Manassas, VA

I got back into developing my own B&W and color film a year or so ago, and I’m glad I did. It adds an extra element of “fun” to your photography. The kit that you used in the past still works great, and the developers, etc., you used in the days of yore are still around. I have developed mostly 120 film, but I’ve done 35mm too. I scan the negatives, and the prints I get are the equal of — and in some cases better than — what I get from any of the digital cameras I use. You can still do whatever post-processing you want in LR or PS, and it is a very satisfying process.

There are some new gadgets around that we didn’t have in the “old” days. One of the most useful ones I have found is the Cinestill TCS-1000 temperature control unit, which makes the C41 color development process much easier than before.

Take a look at www.freestylephoto.biz for whatever chemicals, etc., you might need. I’ve found them to be a great source for whatever supplies I need.

I encourage you to go for it — you’ll be glad you did.

jwreed50 Loc: Manassas, VA

I’ll add one other point: One other new piece of kit that I like a lot is the Abs-Imago Lab-Box daylight developing tank. Very similar to the old Agfa Rondinax daylight tank from many years ago. Only develops one roll at a time, but it works great. You can find it at B&H.

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

I did darkroom work professionally for many years, and I a few years ago I got a Plustek scanner to digitize some of my old film images. I did appreciate using post processing on the scans, and could do things I couldn't do in the darkroom. But in printing the scans, I could never quite equal the print quality of the silver darkroom prints I had made of them. There is just a quality to a silver print that I couldn't get with a digital printer.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Nothing has really changed except perhaps the ability to scan and post process the negatives easily and economically if you don’t want to print. Just buy the developer of your choice, some stop, fixer and Photoflo and some film clips and a thermometer and go to it - Bill has already recommended an easy way to time accurately if you didn’t keep your timer. Most of the film developers you are familiar with (D76, HC110, Microdol, Rodinal, Acufine, etc.) are still available with the addition of TMax and Ilfotec developers as other alternatives for B&W. Good luck and enjoy!

srt101fan

Thanks for the info and encouragement!

srt101fan

I think I understand where you're coming from with your print quality comment. I was never that good a darkroom printer so I might have a chance of getting equal performance from a digital printer....

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

In 2003, I ordered an Epson 9600 44" wide printer for our portrait lab (then Herff Jones Photography, now defunct/merged with Lifetouch in 2011). It used eight pigment inks. Black-and-White prints from that printer were phenomenal. We used a fully color-managed workflow, OEM inks, and Epson's best Lustre portrait paper, Hahnemühle rag paper, and Epson canvas.

I was blown away. I had done darkroom work for 40 years, and ran parts of the lab when we were still all optical/analog. But scanning film and printing digitally definitely has its advantages, not the least of which is close to zero variability from day to day, week to week, even year to year. We found we could make a print today and again in a month from the same file, and not see any particular differences.

With our analog/optical printing systems, color had to be monitored and controlled by a team of experts on a daily basis. There was printer control, processor control, chemical replenishment control, printer lamp house tuning any time a bulb burned out... We had to worry about photo paper aging in the store room, since it changes color and speed over time, and we bought the stuff by the truckload of 40" by 5600' master rolls and slit it and sheeted it down to the sizes we used.

When we were scanning film, we had nine scanners to keep in matched control with each other, and an ICC color management reference. The lamps on the scanners faded, and when one blew, recalibrating the scanner was a two day affair.

Color prints made with the same $5000 Epson printer, inks, and paper were better than from any other device in the lab, including some machines that cost well over $100,000 each. High end inkjet (sometimes called giclee printing) is used by top art museums who sell prints to order from visiting artists' works. Top celebrity photographers use them. Top portrait photographers use them. Ink jet prints have, potentially, five times the longevity of color chromogenic silver halide-based papers. Black-and-White inkjet prints made with pigment inks have 200-400 year estimated lives, depending on the paper and storage conditions.

I made silver halide black-and-white prints by hand for many years. I greatly prefer the control I have with digital tools. Whether starting with a raw file from a digital camera, or a raw file of a macro photograph of one of my old negatives, I can squeeze the most out of an image, see it on my monitor, and know that the print will look nearly identical.

What is particularly exciting for me is the broad range of tools for controlling tonal values. We never had the granularity of control with wet darkroom processes that we have with digital post-processing software.

The chief advantages of high end inkjet are wide gamut photo reproduction, broad array of available papers and other substrates, high d-Max, relatively low cost of LARGE prints (but small inkjet prints are expensive), process stability, and, of course, the use of a digital front end (ICC color management, post-processing in advanced software, digital retouching, masking, layering, pagination, and on and on).

The same is true of video "film" production. Few cinematographers use real film in 2020. The older professors who still teach it at film schools will be gone in a few more years, so it will be very rare a decade from now. Video "film" editing is non-linear, the controls are endless, and the time from script to screen is heavily compressed.

The same is true of audio production. What I used to do with a 4-track reel-to-reel deck, splicing tape, and a razor blade, can be done with a few mouse clicks, or finger drags and taps on an iPad or iPhone. Audio post processing is trivial, because special effects plug-ins that model hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of equipment can be had for $40 to $400 or so. Musicians record some songs in hotel rooms now.

MIT's Nicholas Negroponte said it well about a decade or more ago: "Bits beat atoms." Digital tools have the versatility, immediacy, and flexibility that we simply didn't have with film, paper, chemicals, or analog audio and video tapes.

srt101fan

Thanks, TriX. It's encouraging to hear that the old developers are still around! Nice that some things don't change....

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

And maybe it’s just nostalgia from an old man, but I still like the “magic” of seeing the print come up in the developer, and I still especially like the look of a silver print, so I’m not tearing down my darkroom anytime soon. I’m not printing color anymore since the demise of Cibachrome (which was a beautiful and very long lived media), but I can still develop color film and scan. Not much harder than B&W except for being careful with temperature control.

GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City

Very interesting,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWiYwYhGyzM
I'm used to the old-fashioned stainless reels and tank.