I’m old school and just now getting into digital black and white and I still have my darkroom equipment and film cameras, including an old 8 x 10 view camera. Back in the day, I would never buy a print that the photographer did not print himself. Today, I would never buy a print that was not printed by the photographer. Sending to a lab is cheating and devalues the end product. How can you take credit for something you did not do 100%, especially now? I think fine art photo galleries should make it clear who actually produced the print.
Cheers

The result is a set of strips with exposures that are 10 seconds apart. The darkest strip will be 60 seconds. Each adjecent strip will be 10 seconds less. Examination under regular light will then give you the best exposure for the density of the negative. If is one is too light and the next is too dark add 5 seconds to the light one or subtract 5 seconds from the dark one to interpolate the time needed and then set your exposure timer on the enlarger. 9 times out 10 this worked perfectly.

I also liked to keep from contaminating my chemicals as much as possible so I did the following when developing.

Developer, quick rinse in water, stop bath, quick rinse in water, fixer, water rinse, dryer. Doing it this way makes the stop bath and fixer last a lot longer before you have to make another batch.

And this next tip is REALLY IMPORTANT . . . be sure to have fun!

- Oscar

p.s. If you are an Ansel Adams fan and live in the San Diego area, there is an excellent Ansel Adams exhibit at the Museum of Photographic Arts at Balboa Park going on right now.

http://www.mopa.org/exhibitions/current.htm

I’ve been looking at Ansel’s series of book and I’m going to start buying them over the next few months.

You are right. The art of creating prints in a darkroom seems to be quickly fading away. I had my own darkroom for about 20 years and then sold everything when I started shooting with digital cameras and doing my printing on a fine-art-printing system. I remember the trays, chemicals, special timers, enlarger, dryer, etc. What I found especially useful were custom made “burn” and “dodging” tools I made from coat hangers and cardboard I spray painted black and then attached to the coat hanger pieces with tape. You can also use black card stock you can find in any Walgreens, Rite-Aid, etc. in the school supplies.

I had several shapes for dodging: square, diamond, rectangle, circle, elipse, star, half moon, quarter moon. I Also had similar shapes cut as “holes” in cardboard for “burning in” an area.

Nice thing about cardboard or cardstock. If I needed a special shape I would just make it on the spot. I always had a few spare 1 foot coat hanger pieces in a tray just waiting for their cardboard attachment and a box of cardboard pieces, plus a roll of tape.

Are you working exclusively in black-in-white or color, or both? Color requires extreme temperature control. Black and white is a lot more forgiving and you can watch the print develop under a safety light. Color can be developed in a fully lit room but you can’t see the paper while you are processing the print. You can “force” a portion of a black and white print to develop faster by running your fingers over the area while it is in the developer. This used to give me “smelly fingers”. But worked great.

Ansel Adams used to spend hours working on a single print. A true darkroom artist.

Oscar

Also, I would happy to hear/read/watch you ‘talk for days about this stuff’… bring it on!

Topslakr

Thanks