[Leica] Re: Darkroom depression (long)

[Jim Brick <jimbrick@photoaccess.com>]

At 06:13 AM 5/4/00 -0400, Dan Cardish wrote:
>As far as colour is concerned, the darkroom is certainly dead.   For black
>and white, there is some life still, but only a little.
>
>Dan C.

Each person views a situation from their own unique position. From where I
sit, even though I'm a "digital photo engineer", the darkroom is not even
close to being dead. Hell... it's not even sick.

Let's see a show of hands of folks that print 16x20's and 20x24's in their
"OWN" personal "digital" darkroom. Iris and LightJet printers are
R-E-A-L-L-Y expensive, not to mention the price of a scanner with enough
capture resolution to produce 16x20's and 20x24's like an enlarger can. And
the computer system with a calibrated monitor.

For less than $1000 dollars you can purchase a great enlarger and lens and
easily make stunning prints up to 20x24. You can buy enlarging paper in
rolls for larger prints.

For digital printing of near equal quality (but much smaller results) you
need a $1000 scanner, $500 printer, $1500 computer, $500 Photoshop. Or cut
the prices in half if all you want is 5x7 Happy Snap's. Maybe 8x10.

Keeble and Shuchat's darkroom department doesn't seem to be lacking
customers. They are busy all of the time. And this is in the middle of
Silicon Valley!

Their digital department, which "stocks" all digital cameras up to $20,000
and scanners from $295 to $20,000, the very latest ink splatter printers, a
whole wall full of consumables (a myriad of photo printer paper types), but
the department is half the size of the darkroom department. I see it
growing in the future, but not to the demise of the darkroom department.

From what I see, these are two different industries. The expectations are
different. Just like a digital camera is a totally different beast than a
film camera. Trying to turn a film camera into a digital camera (I'm a
Geek) is lunacy. Trying to turn a digital camera into a film camera is
impossible. Like comparing apples to oranges. The same with the digital
darkroom. There are a different set of goals, a different customer base, it
is just different.

There is still nothing like a silver based darkroom print. Especially a big
print. Isn't this one of the reasons for buying ASPH and APO lenses. If you
don't make big prints, you don't need exquisite glass.

I have a 20x24 Cibachrome print, right here in front of me, that was
photographed with my M6 and 35/1.4 ASPH, Fuji MS 100/1000 at 200.
Truthfully, everyone who looks at it believes that it is from MF or LF. But
as an 8x10 or even 11x14, it shows nothing special.

Anyway... the bottom line is what you, an individual, want out of your
photography. Happy Snaps, slide shows, ink jet prints to show your friends,
premium quality ink jets (Tina) for clients, silver prints from personal
darkroom work, large silver fine art display prints, etc.

Those people who don't have a darkroom, don't have a place for a darkroom,
were klutz's when in a darkroom, will welcome digital printing. This is
great! The digital darkroom is simply an offshoot of the optical darkroom.
They produce a different product. Like the difference between a film camera
and a digital camera. Completely different. There is room for both to flourish.

In order for me to produce "digital" prints of a quality equal to my
optical prints, I would need to invest $250,000 or more. For me to make a
LightJet print right now, from a new negative or transparency, requires a
$225 drum scan which includes an hour of Photoshop time, a 11x14 proof
print, and produces a 300MB file. With this, I can print any size LightJet
print, 8x10 through 48x96. But this is "not" ink jet and it is all off
site. I cannot afford a drum scanner, a dual processor Pentium machine with
a gigabyte of RAM and 100 gigabytes of disk,  a pre-press calibrated
monitor system, and certainly not a LightJet 5000. But anything less than
this, will "not" produce large prints equal to and enlarger and Cibachrome
or a premium B&W fiber based paper. What I produce cannot be produced on an
ink jet printer of any price.

And as I said in an earlier post, I have some clients that prefer the
Cibachrome optical prints over the LightJet prints.

So how is it possible that the darkroom is dead? Or even sick? From where
I, and my colleagues stand, it is business as usual.

Jim

PS... Calypso Imaging (where the local LightJet printer is) has two people
printing Cibachrome prints full time and there is always a backlog. When
they installed their LightJet, they thought their Cibachrome business would
slowly fade. Wrong!!! It never slowed down.