Is it feasible to go digital for most darkroom work? What is entailed to do it well? Good neg. scanner, Zip Drive, fairly good printer (best prints done at a lab...?). All this computer time has left me dreading my treks to the darkroom...Of course, for some stuff I guess a darkroom is unavoidable (portrait prints, for one...). I want to do as much colour and BW work at home...

-- shawn gibson (SeeInsideForever@yahoo.com), February 27, 2000

Answers

Unless you are making one-of-a-kind fine art prints (to sell at outrageously inflated prices), there's no need to do anything in color traditionally today. (I haven't seen B/W output from the new digital-direct-to-photographic-paper printers, so I can't comment on that.)

I suggest that you buy the least equipment that you can and send everything out. A good lab will have better equipment than you could afford and will know how to use it. However, even an Epson 750 (at $250) is more than adequate for personal portfolio work (in color).

-- John Kantor (jkantor@mindspring.com), February 27, 2000.

"Is it feasible to go digital for most darkroom work? "

Sure, I have. And why do you think you need a traditional darkroom for portrait work? When my son had his HS graduation portrait taken digital retouching was available and that was almost 3 years ago. The new Epson Photo printers will do for all but the most demanding work. Zip disks are OK for taking files to a lab but you really want a CD- Rom burner, $2 for 650megs vs $10 for 250megs with Zip.

-- Peter Foiles (lightcatcher54@hotmail.com), February 29, 2000.

Sorry, Shawn, but the difference between digital prints and "real" prints made in a darkroom is like night and day--let's say noon at the equator and midnight at the North Pole. At least at this point in time.

-- Peter Hughes (leo948@yahoo.com), February 29, 2000.

Head in the sand alert!!!

-- Jeff Spirer (jeffs@hyperreal.org), February 29, 2000.

What's a darkroom?

Seriously: for colour work I certainly do not envisage using my own darkroom. But I do envisage using somebody else's:

I still use film and get it developed in a pro lab. For "creative" techniques, I either let them do it (simple burning, hand printing, etc -- they are quote good) or

I get a high quality scan made, manipulate it digitally and get the lab to print it in high quality on photographic paper.

I do not have my own scanner, and I do not use my own printer for critical work (great for letterheads and to show crop or general colour, but not for paid work).

I rarely do black and white but there I see a need for the darkroom.

Your milage may vary.

-- Allan Engelhardt (allane@cybaea.com), March 01, 2000.

in peter's defense(gulp!) we should get things clear,,,,In order to say "ciao" completely to the darkroom you'd need a very, very expensive digital camera or digi-back. And even then to dial in a film speed of say 1600 would create so much noise as to render it useless....so we need to make sure we are talking about scanning and epson printing and essentially screwing our clients with crap that will fade fast...or tango drum scans and lightjet prints .... or such and such with iris...on and on....some digital techniques are simply better than any traditional darkroom print/result but are they available to you at a price you can afford? what is acceptable to you may be out of the question for me in terms of price or quality or availability. The direct write to paper printers that John K speaks of still require processing in wet chems so this isn't strictly a dry digital way of working....

personally if you find a epson print satisfactory ....well, I'll bite my tongue now cause it'd be ugly.

unless you spend up to and beyond 10k for a slow as hell digital back or much more on a mega mega pixel camera that might get you 8x10's in very bright daylight you will still need to shoot film and have it processed and then scanned...to me this is a hybridized process and cannot be called digital....

-- Trib (linhof6@hotmail.com), March 02, 2000.