survey digital vs traditional darkroom

[tim atherton]

Simplistic indeed

[Paddy Quinn]

"I despise digital photography, the way it looks, the dickheads around here who think they're great photographers now that they've got a dslr, the film companies dropping products, etc. etc. It's just so convenient , cheap, & quick for the color snapshot stuff."

I feel that way about people who can't take a good colour photograph, only endless repeats and imitations of the same boring old B&W stuff

[Bruce Wehman]

My commercial work has been 100% digital since 1996 and the introduction of the DCS 460. I talked the company that I worked for into shelling out $50,000.00 for it and a couple of dye-sub printers and haven’t looked back. Personal work, however, is 100% traditional.

[sanking]

I do 100% film capture, in formats from 6X6 to 12X20, but over the past two or three years I have started to scan and make digital negatives for alternative printing (carbon, kallitype and palladium) from all of these formats. I find it easier to print this way even in ULF formats because I can do all of the tonal corrections in Photoshop and then print a same size digital negative that gives similar image quality to the in-camera original, at least with alternative processes such as carbon and palladium. My feeling is that original in-camera negatives may still have a slight advantage over digital negatives, at least those made on inkjet printers, but the edge is very slight.

What someone else wrote earlier does ring a chord. He said, "I sit in front of a computer all day long at work; I'll be darned if I'll do it during my miserable few hours of creative time each week." Well, all day in front of a computer was my life also in a former position, and at that time I would not have dreamed of spending photography time in front of the computer. But now that I don't have to work with the computer as much at the office I find the computer photography work interesting and fun. But I still spend about 85% of my time making prints with wet processing, not in front of the computer.

Anyway, the short answr is about 15% digital, 85% traditional print making, and that percentage is not likely to change for quite a while because I am very pleased with my current work methods.

[Kirk Gittings]

Sandy,

I knew you had moved in the direction of digitally enlarged negatives and I hope to see some of it first hand one of these days. I do alot of traveling. Are you showing anywhere in the next couple of months?

[Graeme Hird]

100% film capture (mostly 5x4), 100% digital printing (Lightjet)

[sanking]

Kirk,

I plan to be at APIS this summer and will have a lot of my recent work, much of it from digital negatives. Have quite a bit of kallitype and palladium work already done to take there, and hope also to have some carbon prints. I say hope because I just resumed carbon printing after a forced absence of about a year and it takes a while to get bake in the groove with this process, but the use of Mark Nelson's PDN system has been a gift in giving me a tool to obtain the the exact qualities needed in the negative for the process, and to match those qualities to my tissue, so things are going well right now.

[Randy_5067]

From a second year photo-journalism student, film is the only way to go. We were having a discussion last week, and a digi-type was arguing that the latest and greatest new digi-slr was as good as film. Then he added "With Photoshop...." I have been shooting LF for about 5 years, and as others have said they are doing, same here, with tin-type attempts, and the wet-collodian process. Glass plate, aluminum sheet, polished tin, etc.etc. homemade papers. Can't beat a good old dark room for escaping.

[gene LaFord]

100% Traditional all the way - film to sensitized paper - and proud of it!!

[Henry Ambrose]

Since 1992 the bulk (in sheer numbers of photos) of my commercial product work has been practically 100% digital capture. Over the past 6-7 years film capture and scanning has been increasing - not replacing the digital work, rather adding on. Its just better for some things.

For 4X5 architecture I'm all hybrid - film capture and scanning to get digital files and prints. Architecture is my main commercial interest now but on a numbers basis I'm still way more digital than film. (10 :1 -- digital product photos : film builiding photos)

And I do sell some wet darkroom prints. For personal work I'm about 90% wet darkroom, I _really_ like it.

What Bob Carnie said about missing out if you don't do both digital and wet is very true in my opinion.