Wet Darkroom not Dead?

I agree, things seem far from dead. maybe almost a mini-revival.

about 7-8 years ago, i was able to pick up a used Omega D2 enlarger fairly cheap. Recently, some 4x5 omega enlargers, colour heaeds, showed up in a local camera store. they didn't last more than a couple of weeks before they disappeared. but there are still there are still plenty of 35mm enlargers, 35mm film tanks, etc, selling cheap around here.

Anything LF is non-existant. Easels, enlarging lenses in the 135 to 180mm range, etc, all are scarce to none. View camera magazine gets snapped off the shelf very quickly too, faster than it used to. so who knows

joe

The articles in the magazines proclaiming film is dead are just typical journalism. They only tell part of the story. What's dead, is investigative journalism ;-)

In truth, I think film is dying or already dead in commercial and advertising work. The reseason for this is the rapid turn around you get from digital - you can go from photo shoot to magazine layout in hours instead of days. It's not about the quality - it's about the turn around time. Time is money after all.

So, the commercial and advertising firms are unloading all their film equipment into the used marketplace. The buyers are people like you and me. People who couldn't afford to buy this equipment new, but who want the quality. This has created a thriving used equipment market. EBay has facilitiated this market making you and me bid against anyone in the world who is interested in it. This of course drives up the price paid. This has been good for sellers and bad for buyers pricewise. OTOH, it has been good for buyers in that they can find stuff nationally or internationally that they can't find locally at any price.

In sum, what you are seeing is the film market swing from professional to amateur, and there are lots of amateurs out there bidding on the used equipment. And even though the number of people using film equipment, particularly LF equipment, is rapidly growing, the volume of film, paper, and chemicals used is in steep decline. Where a professional would go through 50 sheets of film a day in the studio, I'm lucky to average 50 sheets of film a month. Herein lies Kodak's and Ilford's problems.

Not dead at all Jim, picking up and chugging along quite nicely from what i can see.

Determining your LF equipment needs and then sourcing it is a study in patience and persistence. In fact, i would describe as being a most serious hobby.

Took me a year to find a used Saunders 20x24 four blade easel. They had two for sale, i snapped up the both of them.

David Crossley/Crossley Photography....

"For six months now I've been trying to buy a good 20x24 easel on e-bay. They keep going for over $300 bucks with two dozen bids. What's up with that?"

Jim - Maybe the Hunt brothers are at it again, only this time with 20x24 easels rather than silver. : - ) More likely I think it demonstrates that there's still a market for the top quality or more unusual darkroom items. But your message shows why the manufacturers of traditional darkroom equipment are gone or are in deep trouble. The people buying darkroom stuff are mainly doing it on ebay.