I'm no old timer, but when I was in high school, indeed, the darkroom was in the same part of the building as the print shop and was just around the corner from the auto shop. The photo and printing teacher was a wedding photog in his spare time. We had a horizontal process camera built into a room adjacent to the darkroom and had one of those Arkay contact printers with adjustable bulbs. I can't say that Mr. F. and I got along all that well, but I did learn to tie a string to the stand of the main light in a basic portrait setup to measure the distance to the subject's nose. He also told us about the guy who shot for the Cleveland _Plain Dealer_, who would usually cover football games with a Speed Graphic as late as the 1980s and would take one shot per game.
I had an uncle who was a real old timer who shot news and freelance advertising work, mostly with his Nikon F2's, when I knew him, but shot Rolleis and probably a Speed Graphic before then. He and his sons ran a camera shop where I bought my first cameras, and they had a collection of great old equipment on display.
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