Up till now I had difficulty finding a darkroom in my local area (Reading and Berks.) and I do not have space in my house to set up an enlarger, so the scanner is simply to proof the negatives, see what they look like. However now I have now found a club with a darkroom in Newbury, a half-hour drive away, and the chairman will be running a B&W darkroom course (including printing). So come September I'll go down and start printing my favourite negs (now that I know which ones they are thanks to my cheap scanner :-) )

Well that is good news, you will I am sure enjoy the printing immensely and begin to learn the real joys and frustrations of film. Most enthusiasts in the past did not have the facilities to set up a proper darkroom either but compromised by making temporary ones say under the stairs or in my case in the attic. Running up and down a step ladder with jugs of hot and cold water to get the temperature right and no mains light or heating all went to make a printing session a real event. Dust control was a nightmare and the biggest disappointment was always seeing the prints next day, when they had dried, in normal daylight for the first time when they never looked quite so good. Experiment with hand tinting too, great fun. I am going all nostalgic now but I would not go back to it despite that.

In the early days it was a case of waiting for after sunset to setup the darkroom in the kitchen for a few hours printing. Earlier in the day I would Load the film into the tank under a thick duvet and have it processed ready for the evening.

Towards the end I had semi permanent dark room is a space not much bigger than a broom cupboard.

The nice thing about the summer months is the water comes out of the tap at 20°C (68°F) no messing around with dish heaters.

I was very lucky in my film days, the camera clubs I belonged to had their own, permanent darkrooms and my house had a four room cellar - so one room - 12 ft by 10 ft with an 8 ft high ceiling, with plumbed in running hot and cold water and a radiator became my luxury darkroom. Built in Safelights; two enlarger benches - one for colour and one for B&W - Lightproof screening and doors, drying cabinet over the radiator, stud panel on one wall for projecting 6 ft plus enlargements, Built in storage for all the tanks, trays and chemicals, old fridge for storing film and plates. PLUS the all important BREWING area. Sadly all of this was trashed and stolen in my burglary (Along with my Nikon collection - F2As, EL, F Photomic and over a dozen prime lenses from 16 mm to my pride and joy of the time - Nikkor 600mm f/5.6 EDIF and two Rolleiflex TLR's) in the mid eighties which knocked the stuffing out of me and drove me to taking snaps for the next fifteen years. For me, film was great fun, and I'm sure it still would be if I decided to paddle in the soups again, but digital is an equal pleasure, but more up to date medium. I still have my negative and slide collection from those days but am too busy to set about scanning it.
Alex, I hope you have fun when you finally get round to some real printing and one thing I would agree with is that enlarging negatives does make you very discerning about your keepers.

:eek: :eek: :eek:
Good grief Andy. Were you doing billboards, or Andy Warhol grain like golf ball's style.

Don

You're a bit stingy on the film Alex, I never used to go away with less than 50 rolls of Fuji Velvia and or Sensia 36exp slide film. When I eventually received my slides back from the processors, (up to 3 weeks in the Summer) I used to spend literally hours going through them on the light box, if I was lucky I would end up selecting perhaps one or two very good to excellent slides per film and a few useable spares just in case. These I would meticulously clean and scan into my computer using a Nikon Coolscan, if the scans were good then I would save them to my hard drive for working on later in Photoshop, having first given each slide a unique name and reference number. I might make several attempts at scanning a particular slide just to get the best possible image from it, sometimes they just wouldn't scan successfully and I would abandon them for possible use in slide talks. After all this the slides would be filed in a 24 slide hanging file in my filing cabinet and lastly my database would be updated with the latest additions. I mentioned earlier I spent hours, I should have said it could take several days to do it all properly, bear in mind I still haven't done any work on them in Photoshop yet.

By comparison I find working with RAW digital files a doodle, plug my CF card into my card reader, upload the images to the computer, 10 minutes max. Open my image viewer software on the computer, have all my latest RAW files right there in front of me as thumbnails, click on one that I like the look of to see it full screen. If I like the image I call up photoshop via the viewer program and do what needs to be done to it there and then, if satisfied I give it a unique name and reference number and save it to my hard drive. I LIKE IT!

nirofo.

Never did Billboards Don, but did do some giant formula Ford and Go-Cart photo's for a local garage, together with some Head and Shoulders Hair Style shots for a couple of local Hairdressers, both in colour and B&W. Home made print tanks were sections of 6 inch drain pipes, cut to size and capped placed on some steadily turning rollers,geared down and turned by an electric motor. Very Heath Robinson - but worked. Problem was that sometimes exposures of paper ( used enlarger horizontally and projected onto wall) could be 40 minutes plus - That was in the days when I did things just to see if I could :)

That brings back memories as for years (until digital) I did my darkroom work in a 6ft x 2ft 10in downstairs toilet that still had to be used for a toilet (where there is a will there is a way), and I produced many exhibition winning prints from this tiny space. :)

Saying that it was photoshop and a high quality film scanner (Nikon Coolscan V now gathering dust) that got me out of it long before my first digital scanner.

I'm sure you will enjoy having the use of a good darkroom.