Old enough to remember darkrooms

[Rick58]

Another old fogey here; welcome to the party! My first SLR was an Olympus, but then I got a Pentax K1000 when I was about 21; still have it and I still put a roll of film through every now and then. I also still have a Nikon SLR.
FoxPhoto got a LOT of my money back in the day!! Oh my...the days of getting four envelopes of photos back and sorting through them to find the few that were real keepers! LOVE the digital age!!

I enjoyed my time in the darkroom, but never got into processing ALL of my film myself. At that time, I was also seriously into soccer--played keeper for about 15 years, won a state championship once, runner-up team once. Soccer took up ALL of my time and I didn't have time to spend hours in the darkroom.

Move over gentlemen. I still have hopes of getting back into film one day. Maybe after retirement when I have lots of time to play.

Good. When you retire, I'll start playing with film more again and I'll send it to you for processing. ;-)
I briefly considered equipping myself with a darkroom again, but I ended up dismissing the idea. I don't really miss the chemicals, or the time and space it took--and honestly, with my vision issues, I'm not sure I could see what I'm doing in a darkroom anymore!

I really have mixed feelings. Sometimes I think it's more the "romance" of the darkroom memories then the practical side.
The two biggest things holding me back are the lack of materials and expense. Back in the day, there were probably 10 locations I could buy from that where no more then 1/2 hour from my house. Now it's all mail order. The second is expense. A lot of paper and film would go out in the trash. now I just replace my keyboard from wearing out the delete key.

 

[smalltowngirl13]

Hello and welcome to the forum!

 

[CanonBall_Expression]

There aren't many things a person can do with a darkroom that can't be duplicated on a computer very easily. There may be some but I have my doubts. A decent image editing program is like having the most expensive darkroom setup going at the height of the days of the darkroom. I don't see a lot of reason to want to go back myself. I did it all the hard way way back when. I don't want to do it again. It might be good for people totally new to photography to go through the steps required in a darkroom and some of the special effects they used but if you go too deep into that you'll be better off spending time learning Photoshop or whatever.

 

[unpopular]

What exactly would a "Canon Ball Expression" be exactly?

Sounds kind of scary.

 

[Rick58]

There aren't many things a person can do with a darkroom that can't be duplicated on a computer very easily. There may be some but I have my doubts. A decent image editing program is like having the most expensive darkroom setup going at the height of the days of the darkroom. I don't see a lot of reason to want to go back myself. I did it all the hard way way back when. I don't want to do it again. It might be good for people totally new to photography to go through the steps required in a darkroom and some of the special effects they used but if you go too deep into that you'll be better off spending time learning Photoshop or whatever.

Darkroom work was never a chore for me. If you didn't truely enjoy it, I can see why you would feel that way. But this debate will always be ongoing I guess.