survey digital vs traditional darkroom

[Dominique Labrosse]

Family snapshots are 95% digital. Personal work is always film capture and printed traditionally (B&W) or on a lightjet (colour).

For our purposes at work (I am a designer/photographer for the world's largest industrial auction house - Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers - check us out at rbauction.com) digital poses too many logistical problems in terms of storage and access issues. We store thousands and thousands of trannies captured for us by a slew of photographers over the course of a year. Flipping the pages over a large light table is still the fastest way for us to find an image. If it was all digital, we'd have litterally terrabytes worth of data to wade through every time we were looking for a shot.

My limited amount of commercial work is entirely traditional on Fuji RDP III. I just finished shooting an assignment at work today shooting group portraits of senior managers and company directors. I rented a Fujifilm GX680III (closest thing to a view camera in MF). During our pre-light day, we ran a back-to-back test with a Nikon D70 and decided to stick with the GX680III, even though the final printed frames in the annual report will only be about 5" x 7". The senior designer and myself realize that the D70 would have been more than adequate for this particular job and we took a couple of frames with it as insurance, however, we liked how the film looked better and we felt capturing the image with the GX680III would give us more options should we need to re-purpose the photographs later.

[Duane Polcou]

Kirk:
The type of capture in my commercial work is dictated by client need. I photograph box art and publicity imagery for independent film production. Given a choice, I would should exclusively digitally commercially as image inspection is immediate, image quality up to the most common repro sizes is outstanding, and sharing shots with all parties involved (clients, magazines, models) is simply a matter of burning a new CD. No more duped film.

But for personal work, ie, fun? Well, lets just say the next time I go hiking in the Needles section of Canyonlands I'll have a 4x5 in my backpack.

I don't understand the venomous either/or diatribe. Both digital and film-based capture are amazing. After working digitally for a stretch and reveling in its' benefits, I eagerly await the time when I can be outside again and actually look at photons projected on a ground glass and anxiously await my return home to wet process film and "see what I got". It's a traditional sort of joy. Conversly, after spending a stretch in the dark it IS nice to sit in front of a beautiful LCD screen and 'shop it up.

I suspect that anyone who so vehemently opposes one or the other never fully explored the loathed medium's true potential. To quote some California friends of mine "It's all good"

[Kirk Gittings]

"I don't understand the venomous either/or diatribe. Both digital and film-based capture are amazing."

For twenty years I was perfectly happy with Tri-X/Hc110 and silver prints. Steve Simmons had hounded me for years to use pyro.

I used to think pyro was a myth until I got to see some work by Gordon Hutchings at a workshop we taught together. Then I tried pyro......

George De Wolf had bugged me for years to get into digital darkroom.

I used to be down on digital inkjet printing until I started to see some truely good work appearing by a friend and former assistant of mine (who has exceeded his mentor!) Allan Labb at the Art Institute of Chicago. Then I tried digital darkroom......

Were it not for the persistence of my friends I would be a very happy troll in my darkroom. My repetroir (sp?) has expanded so much because of them that I am forever grateful.

[Tony_5130]

I have nothing but contempt for digital.
I came within an inch of buying (and I can hardly say it without retching) a D70.
I fired the thing off in the shop a couple of times (much to the joy of the 17 year old assistant) and could not rember the last time I felt such an overwhelming lack of fulfilment.
I would rather gnaw my arm of than trade my MPP for a piece plastic tat.

Please don't send hate mail, it's just an opinion.

[Chris Ellinger]

99% darkroom. 1% digicam for family snapshots.

Since I don't make my living with photography, the "bottom line" end result is not the only consideration for my choice of method. I use the method that provides me the most rewarding complete experience. For me, darkroom work feels like "craft", while computer-aided imaging feels like "engineering". I also appreciate the "one-of-a-kind" nature of a print made by my hand and eye, as opposed to one mass produced by clicking <print>. There is also a strong element of personal evolution and history in my many years of darkroom work that I find fulfilling.

If I relied on photography for a living, I would probably be more involved in computer-aided imaging.

[Paul Butler]

100% film exposures, 100% digital for printing. I started using photoshop for printing a few years ago, because I was doing a lot of color and I didn't have the skills or equipment to print in color in the darkroom. Now I print everything digitally (or, in the case of larger prints, I burn files to a CD and send them out). Completely different printer for color than for B/W due to the aforementioned color problem with B/W. Have to be very careful with inks and paper. And we have to admit that we don't really know how long the prints will last, despite the ink and paper used. At least, the negative can be preserved. I look forward to scanning and printing my negatives again in my old age - I'll have a completely different take on each image, I'm sure!

[Eric Woodbury]

100% film. 100% darkroom. 100% black and white.

[Ole Tjugen]

I've seen wonderful prints from just about any process anybody can mention, and I believe some more too. Yet I persist in doing "wet" darkroom work for all but a very tiny fraction of my work. And that is because I enjoy it; I've never lost the feeling of wonder when seeing a print come up in the developer. There's a special pleasure in being able to develop the film, enlarge (or contact print) onto a paper, then process the print and seeing it become exactly what I intended.

I hope it happens someday - but I'm getting closer every day!

[QT Luong]

Darkroom: has been 100% digital for more than 5 years.
Capture: 100% color film in LF, 100% digital in 35mm.

[Philippe Gauthier]

Capture is 100% film, both in color and B&W. I process and print all the B&W work myself, in either miniature, MF or LF using traditional wet processes. Color jobs are only done in 35 mm, usually as slide; there were some instances where I scanned the slides and had them digitally printed in a minilab machine, but that's no more than 5% of my work.

I might consider going the printer way for more color work in the next 2-3 years when I have more spare cash, but I doubt I'll do a lot of important work that way. I still worry about print permanence (not to mention securely archiving the digital files) and going the minilab way on color photo paper offer some guarantees. Capture is likely to remain 100% analogue for a long time.

I will also agree with the others that I like the craft part of B&W photography and the fact that no pictures are exactly identical. I too already spend too much time in front of a computer. There is something zen about the darkroom that I enjoy.

All my work is, of course, personnal. If a were a pro, I'd certainly consider the (expensive) digital capture way because of the faster workflow.