Dark/Light room

I was reading Tom’s post: Fiber Print “A Boys Life”. In it he said:

I have still never seen a print come out of my Epson 3800 Pro that comes even close to one of my Fiber Prints.

I would probably agree with him in that regard. I have an Epson 3800 printer and really like the prints that I get from it, to be sure; however, in all fairness, I’ve not tried many different papers. Some are quite impressive I understand. I remember printing fiber prints. They were, in a word, glorious. There was nothing that could compare with my favorite fiber paper, whose name escapes me. The paper was a creme colored paper and the prints were unparalleled! The down side to the fiber print was the washing time and trying to get the thing to dry flat. Fiber paper loves to curl. I didn’t have a sophisticated darkroom, to be sure, so didn’t have paper driers or print washers. I simply came back and changed the water every so often and hope that I got it right. In retrospect, I wish that I had saved some of those prints. I wonder how good of job I did at washing them.

Being in the middle, or perhaps at the beginning of a renaissance, I split my time between the dark room, and the Lightroom. I’m enjoying the heck out of shooting film. This morning I went to Earl’s favorite shooting grounds, Bull Hole, in Coolomee, NC. I took both digital and film cameras, but decided, one again to shoot exclusively film. Again, it was a different experience. I shot perhaps 30 – 40 shots, but the difference was I was not in a hurry to get back home to see what I had shot. As a matter of fact, after I felt satisfied with what I had shot, I tarried a bit and just enjoyed the roar of the water cascading over the dam. This is something that I’d not done in a while. The film is still in the bag and I’ll probably develop a roll today when I get back to Charleston, SC, and a roll tomorrow evening after work. Then, I’ll be all caught up.

I do need to order some film sleeves and some Rodinol developer, which I remember was my favorite developer of all time! It makes nice, contrasty negatives, and the stuff lasts forever, it seems!

Anyway, it’s been fun splitting time between the two worlds, analog and digital. My darkroom technique is getting better, but there is still lots of room for improvement!

Related posts:

1. Color Management
2. Print size: Is bigger better?
3. Entry-level professional printers
4. Printing: Good enough, or great?
5. Printing: P.I.T.A. or another skill to learn?