[Leica] Re: Re: dry & wet darkroom :-()-:

[Jim Brick <jim_brick@agilent.com>]

For every one "potential" wet darkroom problem, there are at least a
thousand "potential" digital darkroom problems.

I work at a computer all day, designing the computer internals of future
digital cameras. Just in the execution of my work, I spend an inordinate
amount of time futzing with stubborn editors, compilers, remote debuggers,
downloaders, networked printers, cables, disks, running out of memory,
re-booting to start from scratch, not to mention the problems I encounter
and have to solve in my actual work. Getting the camera guts to work.

Therefore,

I work in my darkroom for both R&R (to get away from computers) and to
produce hand crafted photographic prints. I have both RC and fiber print
dryers and a huge dry mount press (a 20x24 in one press.) I guess I'm right
out of the 50's and never grew up...  :-) I'd rather be split printing,
over printing and bleaching back highlights, watching a 20x24 come alive in
the developer tray, holding it in my hand for close inspection right out of
the fixer. The smell of a darkroom, to me, is invigerating. I get my fill
of smelling ozone and hot resistors all day long. Especially since my
average work day is 6:30am to 7pm. Enough is enough. 

Don't get me wrong folks. You digitits are all doing the right thing.
Looking for the cheese. As Hem would say to Haw, "I like it here and I'm
not ready to move on."

There's something for everybody.

Jim


At 01:50 PM 10/17/00 -0400, Johnny Deadman wrote:
>on 17/10/00 1:24 pm, Douglas Herr at telyt560@cswebmail.com wrote:
>
>> The chemical darkroom has become so familiar to many of us that it's easy to
>> forget what can go wrong ... chemical contamination, aged chemicals, fogged
>> paper, bad enlarger alignment, dust storms, a train rolling past outside the
>> building vibrating the *&@% out of everything, sneezing in the wrong
>> direction, losing count when the timer quits...
>
>Not to mention hives from metol sensitivity, suffocation, the place burning
>down because the plumbing interacted with the wiring, selenium poisoning,
>newton rings, and ABOVE ALL the fact that you finally managed to get all the
>burning dodging and bleaching right on one print doesn't guarantee for a
>moment you'll get it right on the next... and even when you meticulously
>annotate all your moves, you still can't replicate the damn thing.
>-- 
>Johnny Deadman
>
>http://www.pinkheadedbug.com