The Smell of a Well-Equipped Darkroom - alluring, or no?
Mar 2, 2019 07:46:01 #
Mar 2, 2019 07:54:57 #
tommy2 wrote:
The worst and best smells! There is nothing much worse than the feed pen smell in wet weather or a better smell than new mowed hay. My fond memories about these smells is that they both smelled like money!
I agree. From raising cattle in the 80's and 90's, it was the smell of money to stand down at the pen closest to the house. Ahhhh, ambrosia!
Mar 2, 2019 07:57:51 #
WJB
Loc: Salisbury, MD
Fond memories, way in the past-frustrating times. Trying to learn how to dodge and burn like AA...
Bill
Bill
Mar 2, 2019 08:01:45 #
Mar 2, 2019 08:12:16 #
When the kids were young my wife worked 2 evenings a week. I would get the dishes out and we would make pictograms. Kids would collect coins buttons combs etc. they would also do hand prints. Dip your hands in the fix and then on the paper expose the paper and develop. When my wife came home the kids would run to greet her and show what they had made. The house smelt of fix and so did the kids. My wife hates the smell of fix. Fun days
Mar 2, 2019 08:16:33 #
Ahhh YES!!! Developer, stop bath and fixer. Pall Malls. What a treat to be able to smoke sometimes twenty a day. AND to afford them too!
Mar 2, 2019 08:20:16 #
spaceylb wrote:
Ahhh, I love the smell of DEKTOL in the morning...
Mar 2, 2019 08:26:13 #
Back then it seemed more about creativity and art. There were many magazines to pour over each month, techniques and methods. Their extinction is testimony. Now it seems almost antagonistic to art. Rarely does it seem to be about the picture, but rather the pixels.
Mar 2, 2019 09:06:14 #
Just getting into the darkroom and I am loving it. I worked in television back in the film days. I remembering bringing film back to be processed and saying it needs to be pushed one stop. Never fully understood the process. What a loss for me.
Mar 2, 2019 09:11:46 #
Mar 2, 2019 09:12:56 #
wrangler5
Loc: Missouri
rcolmansr60 wrote:
Brings back memories of being in the dark room with my Dad in the early 50's. The developer, the hypo, the red light. Damn I miss those days
I have the same '50s memories, although I think he had an amber safelight. My job was to keep the prints under the surface of the hypo while they fixed. Enameled metal trays up to 8x10.
I got into it myself, ending up with a basement darkroom with two enlargers (to 4x5) on the dry side and a wet side that handled trays to 16x20. Have thousands of rolls of B&W film in sleeves in notebooks on shelves, numbered to stacks of contact sheets on other shelves.
But then I rented my first digital outfit. Went to one of my daughter's horse shows and took the usual 400+ shots. That night I had contact sheets ready to print about 20 minutes after I started "processing" those shots, instead of the 2-3 long nights I would have spent in the darkroom processing the film. I took the rental back, ordered a Nikon D100, and never took another frame of film.
So yes I have the memories, and I'm glad of it. My kids are old enough to have "helped" me a few times in the darkroom, too, so they'll have a dim memory of the smells too. But I don't miss it for a moment.
Mar 2, 2019 09:26:21 #
Just told my wife of the topic were on and the first thing she said was, "It always smelled like vinegar".
Mar 2, 2019 09:26:41 #
Yes, I remember it well. I worked in the darkroom in a couple of print shops, mixing the chemicals, shooting the negatives on a very large camera, developing the negatives and stripping them up to shoot on plates to
be used on printing presses. Did I like the smell, No, do I miss it, No. And I was also a printer.
be used on printing presses. Did I like the smell, No, do I miss it, No. And I was also a printer.
Mar 2, 2019 09:33:04 #
Mar 2, 2019 09:34:39 #
I remember the darkroom well and all the pros and cons. There is one pro everyone seems to have missed. I raised a family in those days. Nobody could enter when I went into my darkroom, and I could be alone with my Marlboro, a drink, ....
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