Greetings from South-Central Nebraska

Hello everyone,
I'm a 52 year old rookie grandfather that started on my photography venture in the darkroom. Made a tiny darkroom under the basement steps of my house. My first roll of film was a 127 roll of Verichrome shot in a little Brownie. I followed the instructions for development to the letter and was quite disappointed when the negatives came out crappy. My father pointed out that I hadn't removed the paper backing from the film, something that was not mentioned in the instructions. :o

I spent my high school graduation money on a Canon AE-1 (1977) and was later given a couple of Mamiya C33s by a cousin. Her father had been a pro studio photographer in KC and died of a massive heart attack. They tried to talk me into taking over his studio, but I was only 18 and lacked the confidence (or expertise in both photography and business) to take them up on the opportunity.

I worked for a local studio as their negative retoucher and later darkroom tech (color and black & white) as well as outdoor assistant. Later moved and started my own business. Loved the photography but didn't care for the people side of the business and didn't enjoy the pressure of shooting weddings. Just about killed my love of photography which went on hiatus for a couple of decades.

The spark was re-ignited by my first son-in-law who is a darn good photographer. I now shoot digital on a Pentax K-x but love putting great old glass on it (one reason I went with Pentax) and the great old glass re-ignited my nostalgia for film developing days. I just got a Spotmatic F with three SMC Takumars that are in mint condition which will be my 35mm film shooter. I'm working on setting up an old-school b&w darkroom in my basement now and accumulating the equipment. I have a couple of 4x5 enlargers (Beseler with dichro head and Omega D2 with Zone VI cold light head) but no 4x5 camera which I am close to remedying (probably taking up a fellow on his offer of a Busch Pressman Model D with 135mm Wollensak). I also plan to make a pinhole for it.

My previous experience with large format was limited to a 4x5 Crown Graphic mounted to an old enlarger chassis that we used as a copy camera back in the first studio I worked in. I developed and printed those negatives, but can't even remember the film we used.

I'm very intrigued by the Fuji Acros 100 film and will probably experiment with HC-110 and Caffenol development. I've got a bunch of expired 20x24" Ilford Multigrade III that I hope will still make some decent prints (part of a large darkroom equipment buy that I made). On the opposite end of the spectrum, I'm also interested in making 20x24 prints from 110 size negatives, just to see what they would look like. (I've got a Minolta SLR 110).

More than you probably wanted/needed to know about me, but just wanted to say "hi" and tell you that I'm having a blast searching old threads of this forum and harvesting some of the wisdom that has accumulated here!

Darren Addy
Kearney, Nebraska

Welcome aboard. It looks like your addiction has been rekindled. This forum is a great resource.

Welcome to group therapy! :) Your story about weddings sounds like mine...almost quit photography for awhile after doing the wedding thing for a few years. But, then, it did pay for a lot of equipment! Now I shoot pretty much what I want to, my only commercial work being in architectural photography, a sideling business to my real estate appraisal business.