Alex,
I think you are being a bit sketchy on the total film processing part and the time involved for B&W film.
Developer, Stop and Fixer all require dilution. Temperature stabilisation is not a big issue, but you must be working in a seriously hot environment if you have to put them in the fridge for that
, as the normal temperature is 20 deg C.
Development time depending on film and developer choice can be anything between 5 and 20 minutes.
Stop: 30 secs
Fix: around 3 mins
Wash: 10 to 15 mins under a tap, but if you do that by tank refilling and inversions you would probably need 5 mins.
Drying time: Probably a couple of hours in a warm cupboard.
Wash and dry dev tanks and mixing vessels not long but it is something that has to be done.
By contrast digital images are downloaded to a computer in quick order. Anyone with a computer can do it, while not everyone nowadays would be prepared to go though the process to get to a negative.
I do not know how to put quotes in from other posts, but taking this one
[ Overall one medium doesn't hinder another, and it is my hope that as digital image capture becomes all the more sophisticated it will help delineate the niche that film has and thus bring more people back to this wonderful alternative way of taking pictures. ]
Now we have a negative we have the choice of home printing for which we need all the kit ( enlarger etc ) or scan it as you do, then process the image on a computer.
At this stage it would be quite reasonable for anyone without darkroom facilities to ask the question " How much better is the scan from negative than a digital camera RAW file ?"
Do not get me wrong here I loved B&W printing, and regarded film development as a necessary chore, similarly all the washing up after a session. Nothing can beat watching an image appear on a sheet of paper in a dev tray. Jim and I had a chat about how cool it would be if there was a program that could simulate that with a digital image on a computer. Maybe there is one.
Once you start down the scanner route then you are digitising the image, and so the scanner as the digitising medium will have a huge impact on your results. Scanners cover a huge price range from simple flat bed type through to really pricey dedicated film scanners. That says that there is a wide range in the quality of the obtainable scan. I did have a play with Dave's Epson V300 and found that a straight photograph of the neg or slide done on a light table with my D2X was far superior to the best that the Epson could achieve. That exercise then begs the question in the 'lets use film context' how much would one have to pay for a scanner that would output say a 35mm frame to at least equal quality obtainable from a 12mp digital slr camera. Link to my thread here
http://www.worldphotographyforum.com...ead.php?t=4972
Of course film does have its own look, and in the world of film, that look changes as format changes, so the larger the neg the smoother the tones. Distinctive look can also be applied to lenses which is why I prefer my old fixed focal Ais jobs to the modern zooms that Stevie uses, even though she gains by having autofocus.
If I had the cash to splash, and the inclination, then I might try film again but it would probably be 6x9 or 5x4 as those large negs really are fantastic. Then again I guess the other side of the coin might strike, as the cash involved in setting that lot up would put one in the realms of medium format digital.
Don