Digital or traditional darkroom?

[Graham1101]

Hi all I am a student and recently got into 35mm photography. it was the cheaper option for me short term and I wanted to upgrade from my bridge camera pretty badly

Anyway the reason I'm posting this is to pose the question am I better off setting up a digital darkroom I.E a scanner photo editing software and external hard drive or would going with the traditional darkroom be better? I do hope to eventually do both and also get into Digital photography but over what time span I cannot predict :L. I just wanted some advice on which route to go as I am completely new to anything beyond setting in camera settings on my bridge camera!

Thanks in advance

 

[snowbear]

Digital takes up less room, is less noxious, and doesn't have to have the lights out, but if I had the room (and the budget) I'd have both in a heartbeat.

 

[480sparky]

If you're starting from scratch (ie, you have no gear right now, including a camera), a traditional darkroom and 35mm film gear is cheaper. Much of what you need is dirt cheap or, if you bide your time, flat-out free. At least for black & white. Color darkrooms get a lot more complicated and pricier.

Which route to take, however, should be determined by what you 1. expect of your images and 2. expect to do with your images. If all you're going to do is push shutter buttons and make pretty pictures, then either route will suffice. But if you have an ultimate goal for your images, then that goal should drive the medium you choose.

 

[vintagesnaps]

All of the above...

I'm a longtime film photographer, used a shared darkroom at a local university and gradually started accumulating equipment for a wet darkroom (a work in progress). After I got a digital camera (along with a continually growing collection of all sorts of mechanical film cameras) I started doing my own printing. A digital 'darkroom' for me is just the printer and Photoshop on the computer.

Then there are Polaroids, some of those I scan and print larger sized versions digitally. And I started doing some alt processes (more of the same, scan/print). Then all this led to an external hard drive to store it on...

Probably you'll figure out as you go along what you need for whatever it is you're working on. I think a darkroom can be any combination of whatever you want it to be (but I love a traditional wet darkroom and the smell of fixer!).

 

[Derrel]

The "hybrid" approaches are several in nature. There is film developing; scanning; editing/evaluating;printing out; display. You can make a lot of choices. Scanning one's own film can be slow and tedious; the better labs can develop film AND scan it, uncut, on machines that cost as much as a fancy Japanese sports car, and do AMAZING scans, for a price that is worth trading away an entire day to make 36 high-resolution, clean scans. Printing paper for traditional darkroom is NOT cheap; neither is good quality inkjet paper, nor inkjet ink; "lab prints" are the most-economical actually, but they must be ordered, waited for, etc,etc.. YOU CAN DO IT! However you want to do it!

 

[Designer]

Anyway the reason I'm posting this is to pose the question am I better off setting up a digital darkroom I.E a scanner photo editing software and external hard drive or would going with the traditional darkroom be better?

Better might mean cheaper, and it might mean more satisfying, and it might refer to the image quality.

So it will depend on what you mean by "better".

If you enjoy messing about a wet darkroom, then do that just for the therapy value.

If you mean cheaper, then you can start adding up the cost of everything to find out which is cheaper.

If you mean image quality, then you will have to recognize the Great Divide between film aficionados and digital, which has yet to be decided.

 

[Gary A.]

I would go digital. There is a world of difference between what an average photographer could do in a wet darkroom as opposed to what the average photog can do with a medium priced photo processing program.

 

[Microbois]

A darkroom takes a lot of gear to work comfortably, and if you don't set it up permanently in your house/appt, you'll need to set it up every time you'll want to enlarge pictures. That could be a lot of work, let alone the clean up afterwards. Going digital will give you a lot more control over your pictures, and best of all, you'll do that in the comfort of your chair behind your computer.

That being said, if you have a chance to spend some time in a darkroom and try it out, I think it would be a great experience. It will also give you a better perspective of how much you can do with film vs digital.

Only you can make that decision.

 

[limr]

There's also a learning curve to consider. Wet printing - there's contact prints so you can see how the pictures came out and which ones might be worth enlarging. And then you'd go and print them all. If you want to share them on the Internet, then you'd have to scan the print. If you're doing this at the same time as trying to improve the stuff coming out of the camera, it might be confusing to sort out which mistakes are due to the camera work, which to the developing, which to the printing, and how the scanner might change the look of the print... It can get confusing. I have been shooting film for 20+ years and only recently started developing my own. I'm still sorting out the best ways to do that and I haven't even started wet printing yet. If I were just starting out with film, I personally would want to take the variables one at a time.

 

[Microbois]

limr brings another very good point. As a self-taught beginner, the learning curve can be quite steep before you can reach a level of quality you are happy with, or matches the work of photographers you admire. Mixing film, wet darkroom, and digital into your workflow will make it much less obvious as to where you need to correct issues.

But, if you have a chance to find a darkroom that can be rented, or if you can find one in your area, just for the experience of it, you should try it. I remember back in high school, I've spent evenings there, and loved every single minute of it. When I had my first appartment, I dedicated a room to it, and became a photographer for local newspapers. Then, it killed the whole fun of being in a darkroom as I was pressured to crank up lots of pictures under ridiculous deadlines.

Today, knowing how easy and powerful it is to edit pictures quickly with software, there's no way in hell I would return to the dark age of a darkroom (lol)... I sold all my darkroom equipment around 1999 and never looked back. I had about 3000$ worth of gear and was lucky to get 600$ back then...