metroshane said:
I'll probably take some slack for this, but economically speaking, darkrooms aren't profitable for the professional working photographer. This quote was from one of the top photogs in the commercial industry.
Yes, they have thier place, especially in art...but if you figure your cost per hour, the dark room just doesn't add up.
If you are talking color film I would agree, but there is no doubt left on my business sheets that doing my own BW raises my profit percentages.
I can develop and 8 rolls of BW 120 at home in an hour for under $20 (this includes all chem, elec, and water, and still leaves a little extra for waste).
Time to get across town, place the order at the lab, go home, come back and go home again is at least 1.5 hours. The lab charges me $5 a roll for dev only BW 120, so 8 rolls is $40.
The way I see it I earn $20 extra in profits and have an extra 1/2 hour on the developing of 8 rolls of film.
Contact prints cost $7.50 each at the lab in my town. I can do them at home for less than $1 each. It takes me about 40 min to do 8 contact sheets. So now the lab is costing me 1.5 hours and $100. Using my own darkroom I have spent 1.6 hours and $28.
If the customer wants snapshot size proof prints, I do have the lab print them. They do them for 80 cents, and I would need to charge a lot more to make it worth my while. Part of my marketing strategy is to emphasize my hand prints. Even though I charge much more than the labs do for an 8x10, my customers always order hand prints. Even to the untrained eye the difference between a lab machine produced RA print and my hand done silver gelatin print is huge. I have brides who thought they wanted the whole wedding shot in color switch to all BW when they see my handprints.
Although I do actually enjoy photographing strangers' weddings and portraits, I have little interest in doing it as charity. I do it to make money to support my own photography, and I've never had any doubt that doing my own work increases my profits.
I worked at a "pro" lab for 3.5 years. Take a look into the back of your local pro lab. Who is working there? Around here it's mostly college kids who are "into" photography. Maybe they are the next Ansel Adams, but most of the time I am positive that I know more, and will take better care of my film. I have had one major developing mistake with a customer's film in my home darkroom, and even then I was able to save the film. I have lost almost a dozen rolls of film over the last 5 years to careless handling at the lab. And I couldn't even count the rolls that have been returned to me with scratches. It just doesn't happen in my own darkroom.
Each photographer perceives the work/art in a different way. For many people tripping the shutter is 100% of the creative process. Then they ignore the rest of the work that happens with their film and prints and they call it theirs. I feel that the creative process is only 50% done when the shutter clicks. I like to see my work through to the end. The satisfaction alone is worth a few bucks less profit. Hell, I'm not doing this to make money, I'm doing it because I love it. I take paying gigs so that I can offset some of my own costs.
I'll probably get some flak for this, but when "top" pros say that doing their own BW darkroom work is too inconvenient, to me I hear "I am lazy, and convenience is more important than quality."