rover's world

I have started to process my own B&W film after previously doing it briefly when I was in high school. What a simple, and for me, fun process. I have been enjoying photography more and more and developing a "Darkroom" process which can work for me is an important goal. Step one is the use of manual film cameras, I shoot now mostly with Leica rangefinders and Minolta SRTs. I feel using a manual camera gets me involved in the exposure and makes me more a part of the "capture." Taking the film home and souping it in Diafine or D76 is step two and an extension of control I have over my hobby.


Part four, yes I have skipped three, I think is image editing. I made a big jump this week, I purchased Adobe CS2. I just completed a Digital Black & White Photography class at the local community college and took advantage of Pam's enrollment as a graduate student to buy an educational version of the software. I now have more capability than I think I will ever know how to use, but hey, that is a good thing. I have a long learning curve ahead of me, but I will climb that curve as an Adjustment Layer so that if I screw up I will always be able to delete it and start over without ruining my image.




So what was part three? Getting my images into Photoshop. Right now I have an Epson flatbed scanner which does a very good job making good quality scans for storage as digital files. My next move, down the road a little bit, will be a dedicated film scanner. I scanned all these images in class on a Nikon 4000 which does a good job, but I would like to see what the other scanners are like, I don't know that I liked the Nikon process that much.

The last step will be printing. For smaller prints I think I will look to get a photo printer, but I don't know if it will meet my expectations. I honestly don't think I will every build a darkroom and make my own prints, so what other choices do I have. One that looks very promising is the use of an online printer. I will be looking over the services of White House Custom Colour (http://www.whcc.com/) as a printer for the images I deem as "good." I think I am very comfortable right now storing and viewing my photographs on the computer, or as a digital slide show. Having the availability of a quality lab who can provide me with prints of my best shots I think will do the trick.