I had labored and wrung my hands in despair when I thought of the time, effort and money that it would take to make one of the rooms in the basement into a wet darkroom. Between the enlargers and the ventilation system, the lights and the trays, it was going to be some steep money for just being something that I wouldn't really be delving into -- film developing and printing. However, I then enrolled into the photography program at the local community college and it's almost exclusively film. So, it might be nice to develop film before needing it in class so that one could go straight to the contact sheets and deciding on what prints were going to be made.
That was the theory, anyway. Still, I was having trouble figuring out what all I would need. Then, it hit me. I had what I needed, equipment-wise, to develop film. I had the canisters, the reels and time. All I really needed were the chemicals. So, $22.50 later, I had what I needed. So, developing film was no longer a problem. Enter the digital chemical darkroom.
That still didn't solve the print issue, but, from the perspective of being able to go to the darkroom at school, it didn't need to. I did want to be able to digitize my negatives, though. Granted, as part of the final grade, we get all of our film scanned and put on a CD, but I wasn't happy with having to wait until mid March for things I shot in late January. So, I thought I should probably have a scanner. They're not cheap, either, really, for a good film scanner. So, I had to do some serious looking. I settled on a couple and thought, "I'll just go to CompUSA to check it out," since they had the best price on the model at which I was looking.
The CompUSA store near us is/was going out of business. So, when I arrived, there are about 2,000 people and about 1/20th of the store inventory left. In fact, as I round the corner to the printer/scanner aisle, I see *2* scanners. Both of them are open box, one HP, one Canon. OK...no problem. The HP looks like it's been the display model for about a year, judging from the amount of fingerprints on the glass. It doesn't come with software or a power cable. Nice. Well, that's that, then. The Canon, while missing driver software, has all the necessary parts for scanning film, so it gets to come home with Phil. Factor in that it's $2 shy of being 50% off, and it's more than a steal.
Now, what's all this nonsense about chemical digital? Well, I'm developing the film as I would in a wet darkroom, and then scanning them into the digital realm. What this has introduced is myriad complications going from the wet darkroom and producing beautiful (most of the time) silver-gelatin prints using a happy dichroic head and an enlarger and chemicals to, well, none of that. I have started working more and more with black and white photography, but as a necessity for my class and because I just love the simplicity and power that a black and white image can convey. That said, the world of the pro-sumer digital world doesn't cotton to black and white photography, so much.
I have been doing a great deal of scanning, recently, both negative and print, for my class. There are some personal scans going on, to, but mostly, it's for class. That said, I've had some interesting experiences with scanning software, specifically, CanoScan, as included with the CanoScan 8600F. The CanoScan toolbox, itself, seems to be functional enough, though it doesn't have enough control on its own. The plugin for PhotoShop offers a much greater breadth of functions, specifically geared towards film. I love it...when it works...which is about on in 15 times. Instead, at least for prints, I am using VueScan which is a pricier alternative to what would be a fantastic packaged program if it worked. For what it's worth, VueScan does a better job bringing out the details in prints. CanoScan does a much better job with negative scanning. VueScan, however, works.
Moving on to the second part of the darkroom, the print. I had always been frustrated with all of my printers' abilities to produce black and white prints. Color had never been a problem, especially with the Epson RS220, but black and white had always been a munged greyscale mess. Well, maybe mess is harsh. Suffice to say, I wasn't happy with the results, though they were passable. I have found a solution. Please take a trek to www.inksupply.com. I don't plug companies terribly often. This company has a set of carbon-based black/grey inks for your (probably) printer that will produce warm/neutral black and white photographs with, if I may, stellar results. I recommend them highly. I do not recommend putting your photo paper in wrong-side up...THAT was a mess. The best part? The ink cartridges are less expensive than your standard refill cartridges. This probably displeases Epson, but since they control their own destiny, there, all I can say is, "do better...cheaper." As it stands, Downloading the ICC from Ilford's' side for their Gallerie Smooth Perl, adding the 6-ink black/grey inkset and a little love produced amazing results. It makes me not as nervous about not having a wet side for my black and white prints. Don't get me wrong -- it doesn't replace the quality of a wet print, as far as I can tell, but it comes a boatload closer than printing black and white with the color inkset from Epson.
All in all, the transition has been fun. It's made me realize a few things: I have too many photographs and need to weed; I love seeing a black and white print come from the printer and not have an unwanted blue tinge; Scanning film can be frustrating, but rewarding as well; scanning anything at 9600dpi takes a LOT of room...not necessary in most cases; there are many free options out there for providing steps towards perfection in your workflow and output, you just need to look for them. That's not it, but I don't feel like thinking anymore. That, and the scanner just finished the 1200dpi 16-bit greyscale scan of print #4. Time to get back to work!
