Click the All Sections button at the bottom of the page to go to a list of all sections of UHH. YES, there is a section on film photography.

Scanning 4x5 film is probably the best way to use it in 2024. You can order professional drum scans, or do it yourself on an Epson D850 flatbed scanner.

OR, you can backlight your film with a video LED light panel diffused through thick milk Plexiglass or Perspex, and photograph it with a macro lens. If you photograph negatives, you can convert them to positives manually (a royal pain in the ass!), or you can use the Negative Lab Pro plug-in for Lightroom Classic, which is absolutely excellent.

The one thing to consider is knowledge and equipment. For a digital post production workflow, you really need a fast computer, good graphic arts monitor, a calibration kit for the monitor (usually a colorimeter and software or spectrophotometer and software from Datacolor or Calibrite), and a software suite such as the Adobe Photography Plan. If you print your own, you'll want a PHOTO grade printer from Canon or Epson.

As for a changing bag and other darkroom gear, both B&H (https://www.bhphotovideo.com) and Adorama (https://www.Adorama.com) have darkroom specialists who can recommend the best of current offerings.

If you are curious about "camera scanning," Here's my take on it, and a few samples of what it can do with just 35mm film. To scan 4x5, I'd want a full frame digital camera with 60+ MP resolution, and a really good macro lens, although a Lumix G9 II would do quite well in high resolution mode. The samples below were made with a 16MP camera.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but a 4x5 negative or transparency can capture much more information than the best full frame cameras. What's the point of bothering with the work and expense of shooting 4x5 if you're going to take a picture of a negative/transparency with a camera? A scanner gives you the option to transfer more information to a digital file, depending on how many dpi you use. The downside is that the more information you capture with a scanner, the larger the files become, even to the point of becoming an inconvenience. I've worked with 4x5 in a wet darkroom, and I stated earlier that large prints made the old fashioned way are superior to what I ever got by scanning. Opinions may differ, of course.

If your plans are for silver-based prints, get the enlarger. If you want to post your photos online you need some way to digitize them.

With 4x5 negatives a 16x20 print (4x magnification) is going to show the negatives’ quality about as much as a 4x6 print (also 4x magnification) shows off the quality of a 35 mm negative. You can go so much larger, or crop more extensively. But making 8x10s from a 35 mm neg at home is more practical than making 32x40 prints in a converted bathroom.

With digital prints you need an increasingly expensive printer to make the larger prints. With silver-based prints (particularly B&W) you just need larger trays. The printers need to be used regularly so the ink doesn’t dry up and clog the printheads. In 5 to 7 years it is obsolete. The large trays can be used as drysinks on gardening tables. They last forever and are usable in other areas.

You can always get into both systems. In art photography you could use digital media to advertise, but actually sell the larger silver-based images.

Whichever way you go there will be too many opportunities to spend more money 😩

Correct me if I'm wrong, but a 4x5 negative or transparency can capture much more information than the best full frame cameras. What's the point of bothering with the work and expense of shooting 4x5 if you're going to take a picture of a negative/transparency with a camera? A scanner gives you the option to transfer more information to a digital file, depending on how many dpi you use. The downside is that the more information you capture with a scanner, the larger the files become, even to the point of becoming an inconvenience. I've worked with 4x5 in a wet darkroom, and I stated earlier that large prints made the old fashioned way are superior to what I ever got by scanning. Opinions may differ, of course.