How sad!

I just read this in New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/19/nyregion/19lab.html

Manny Bhuta
Randolph, NJ USA

In article ,
"Manny Bhuta" wrote:

I just read this in New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/19/nyregion/19lab.html

Manny Bhuta
Randolph, NJ USA



Can't read it without an account.
--
The joy of a forever Unknown Artist is the mystery and potential
of a Blank canvas.

This is a provision for the mind's eye.
I see the lights go on, but realize of course no one's home.

Fil Ament wrote:

Manny Bhuta wrote:

I just read this in New York Times

Can't read it without an account.

Discusses the plight of traditional darkrooms with the growth of
digital. Some quotes from the full article:

=====================================

In a Digital Era, the Darkroom Is Fading as a Photographic Hub

In the tradition of the Rolodex, the vacuum tube and the roll-film
camera, the communal darkroom - a Manhattan institution that has long
sustained a subculture of professional photographers and print-making
artists - is yielding to the digital imperative.

After 17 years, the Latent Image Workshop Inc., with its 23
rent-by-the-hour darkrooms, will close its doors by the end of the
month. Other rental workshops are losing business or scrambling to
upgrade their digital services to survive.

Patricia O'Brien, president of Photographics Unlimited Dial-A-Darkroom
Inc., said business "has really tanked this year." We'd been seeing the
competition from digital for a while," she said, "but at the first of
this year, digital caused a major downturn."

Another competitor, the Creative Darkroom, has already added six digital
workstations to its 17 conventional darkrooms.

[One owner] noted that digital photography was still more expensive than
conventional photography. "But when the digital quality goes up and the
price goes down," he said, "that might be the end of conventional
photography. We have five years left."

=====================================

Note also, that if you don't want to register at these types of
otherwise free sites, you can often get a password from
http://www.bugmenot.com

Here's a strange one. In my area (near Albany NY), B&W darkrooms are in
demand. My county arts council offers B&W film (not digital) courses -
compostion, camera use, developing and printing. We built a 1 man darkroom
in their building - low rents for members of the arts council. I know of 2
or 3 individuals who have built their own because they couldn't find
rentals. If anything, the switch to digital has inspired some to try B&W
wet darkrooms as an alternative to the crappy big box photo labs and digital
printing alternatives. I have yet to see anyone build a color darkroom, but
B&W is popular around me.


"James Robinson" wrote in message
...
Fil Ament wrote:

Manny Bhuta wrote:

I just read this in New York Times

Can't read it without an account.

Discusses the plight of traditional darkrooms with the growth of
digital. Some quotes from the full article:

=====================================

In a Digital Era, the Darkroom Is Fading as a Photographic Hub

In the tradition of the Rolodex, the vacuum tube and the roll-film
camera, the communal darkroom - a Manhattan institution that has long
sustained a subculture of professional photographers and print-making
artists - is yielding to the digital imperative.

After 17 years, the Latent Image Workshop Inc., with its 23
rent-by-the-hour darkrooms, will close its doors by the end of the
month. Other rental workshops are losing business or scrambling to
upgrade their digital services to survive.

Patricia O'Brien, president of Photographics Unlimited Dial-A-Darkroom
Inc., said business "has really tanked this year." We'd been seeing the
competition from digital for a while," she said, "but at the first of
this year, digital caused a major downturn."

Another competitor, the Creative Darkroom, has already added six digital
workstations to its 17 conventional darkrooms.

[One owner] noted that digital photography was still more expensive than
conventional photography. "But when the digital quality goes up and the
price goes down," he said, "that might be the end of conventional
photography. We have five years left."

=====================================

Note also, that if you don't want to register at these types of
otherwise free sites, you can often get a password from
http://www.bugmenot.com

Another example of how economics or fashion dictate decisions, rather than
taste and personal feelings. Just wondering why people keep making oil
paintings, liths, sculptures, ceramics, publish poetry in real books... so
why wouldn't we, silver image workers, survive!? Allthough in many domains
of photography professional people reap the benefits, to me half of the
digital world is kind of a craze (a commercial one).

Jan


"Manny Bhuta" schreef in bericht
et...
I just read this in New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/19/nyregion/19lab.html

Manny Bhuta
Randolph, NJ USA

No retreat, baby, no surrender! (Bruce Springsteen)

--
Dimitris Tzortzakakis,Iraklion Crete,Greece
Analogue technology rules-digital sucks
http://www.patriko-kreta.com
dimtzort AT otenet DOT gr the return adress is corrupted
Warning:all offending emails will be deleted, and the offender/spammer
will be put on my personal "black list".
Ï "Pieter Litchfield" Ýãñáøå óôï ìÞíõìá
.. .
Here's a strange one. In my area (near Albany NY), B&W darkrooms are in
demand. My county arts council offers B&W film (not digital) courses -
compostion, camera use, developing and printing. We built a 1 man
darkroom
in their building - low rents for members of the arts council. I know of
2
or 3 individuals who have built their own because they couldn't find
rentals. If anything, the switch to digital has inspired some to try B&W
wet darkrooms as an alternative to the crappy big box photo labs and
digital
printing alternatives. I have yet to see anyone build a color darkroom,
but
B&W is popular around me.


"James Robinson" wrote in message
...
Fil Ament wrote:

Manny Bhuta wrote:

I just read this in New York Times

Can't read it without an account.

Discusses the plight of traditional darkrooms with the growth of
digital. Some quotes from the full article:

=====================================

In a Digital Era, the Darkroom Is Fading as a Photographic Hub

In the tradition of the Rolodex, the vacuum tube and the roll-film
camera, the communal darkroom - a Manhattan institution that has long
sustained a subculture of professional photographers and print-making
artists - is yielding to the digital imperative.

After 17 years, the Latent Image Workshop Inc., with its 23
rent-by-the-hour darkrooms, will close its doors by the end of the
month. Other rental workshops are losing business or scrambling to
upgrade their digital services to survive.

Patricia O'Brien, president of Photographics Unlimited Dial-A-Darkroom
Inc., said business "has really tanked this year." We'd been seeing the
competition from digital for a while," she said, "but at the first of
this year, digital caused a major downturn."

Another competitor, the Creative Darkroom, has already added six digital
workstations to its 17 conventional darkrooms.

[One owner] noted that digital photography was still more expensive than
conventional photography. "But when the digital quality goes up and the
price goes down," he said, "that might be the end of conventional
photography. We have five years left."

=====================================

Note also, that if you don't want to register at these types of
otherwise free sites, you can often get a password from
http://www.bugmenot.com

In article , Jan T
wrote:

Just wondering why people keep making oil
paintings, liths, sculptures, ceramics, publish poetry in real books... so
why wouldn't we, silver image workers, survive!?

The big problem is the availability of the necessary infrastructure -
you don't need a lot of technology to sculpt, but it's hard to pick up
a chunk of, say, printing paper in a quarry and carve something out of
it.

Chemical photography will never disappear entirely, but someday we'll
feel a kinship with 8-track tape aficionados.

And a little bit of craftsmanship and a larger slice of excellence go
out of our world, for the sake of convenience (and profit margin).

Why not have both?

I am no friend of businessmen and have no interest in digital.

But any good businessman running such an operation would be a fool
not to devote an ever-increasing portion of the square footage to digital...

Excelsior, you fatheads!
-Chris-

"Scott Schuckert" wrote in message
...
In article , Jan T
wrote:

Just wondering why people keep making oil
paintings, liths, sculptures, ceramics, publish poetry in real books...
so
why wouldn't we, silver image workers, survive!?

The big problem is the availability of the necessary infrastructure -
you don't need a lot of technology to sculpt, but it's hard to pick up
a chunk of, say, printing paper in a quarry and carve something out of
it.

Chemical photography will never disappear entirely, but someday we'll
feel a kinship with 8-track tape aficionados.

I think chemical photography, at least in black-and-white, will stay around
for a long time because there will still be industrial processes using very
similar chemistry (e.g., the making of printing plates).

And given the long shelf life of the materials, a manufacturing run every 10
years, with freezer storage, could keep us supplied.

Color photography will die out much sooner. There will be plenty of people
who look back on our attempts to get *three* layers of film to synchronize
perfectly, onto *three* layers of paper, with amusement.

There's a reason why most serious darkroom craftsmanship is done in
black-and-white.

Scott Schuckert wrote:

In article , Jan T
wrote:


Just wondering why people keep making oil
paintings, liths, sculptures, ceramics, publish poetry in real books... so
why wouldn't we, silver image workers, survive!?


The big problem is the availability of the necessary infrastructure -
you don't need a lot of technology to sculpt, but it's hard to pick up
a chunk of, say, printing paper in a quarry and carve something out of
it.

Chemical photography will never disappear entirely, but someday we'll
feel a kinship with 8-track tape aficionados.

And a little bit of craftsmanship and a larger slice of excellence go
out of our world, for the sake of convenience (and profit margin).

Well, the analogy with 8-track might be more apt than intended --
they're completely dependent on magnetic tape still existing, in some
form, if they want to be able to (for instance) replace the tape in an
existing cartridge shell. Doing so isn't difficult if you have a good
one, open, to look at for threading; the only major trick is that the
original tape was dry lubricated so that the constant rubbing action as
tape wound on the outside of the spool and fed from the inside,
tightening as it is drawn inward, doesn't get erased in 4-5 playings,
and that can be simulated pretty easily by spraying the coated side of
the tape with a silicone coating before winding the spool. But when
magnetic tape with suitable coating for music recording ceases
manufacture (in widths wider than the, IIRC, 3/8" size used in 8-track,
so it can be cut down), those guys go from users to collectors.

We have the same problem with film -- a very few of us might pick up
collodion processes, both the wet plate and the collodion dry plates
that were replaced by gelatin dry plates almost before the process
started to be well known, or relearn how to sub glass to take an even
gelatin coating (though for single users, wet plates are far simpler
than trying to get a good, even coating of sensitized gelatin on glass,
because you can coat the collodion in the light and don't have to ripen
etc. before you coat) -- but practically every camera still in use will
be strictly a collector's item when there ceases to be a supply of some
kind of film that can be cut to fit.

I have a few 828 Bantam cameras -- and I can still get film for them,
for so long as Kodak continues to produce unperforated 35 mm in Portra
160 NC emulsion, which they do for the commercial portrait market, only;
I can use a couple of them without backing paper (because they have
frame stops) and accept the image overlaying the edge printing and
sprocket holes on regular 35 mm, but when 35 mm film is gone, they'll
have to be dusted and I'll sell them to a collector. My Minolta 16
cameras can use any 16 mm or double-8 movie film, as well as
unperforated microfilm and strips slit from 35 mm or 120, or even from
very large aerial film, but when there's no more film to slit, they'll
be curiosities.

OTOH, my 1926 Ica Idea was originally made to hold glass plates, and
will work as well in 2026 with collodion dry plates as it did in 1926
with gelatin dry plates. So, it seems the first shall be last --
Daguerreotypy might well outlast more modern silver halide; plain silver
and basic halogens aren't likely to go anywhere, and the process has
never been anything but hand worked; it can probably be greatly
simplified by sensitizing a silver coating on glass instead of working
with silver coated copper plates, and use of a fresh coating (which,
with modern methods, can be applied to ultra-clean glass in a matter of
minutes) would also eliminate the need to burnish the plates the same
day they're to be exposed; plus, the handmade character and exquisite
quality of a Daguerreotype will make them much better candidates for the
high prices that would be necessary to support environmentally- and
worker-safe methods of developing with mercury vapor. I can even
envision a reflective method of enlarging from Daguerreotype, though it
would require a very strong UV light source to use with a process like
Kallitype or salted paper...

--
I may be a scwewy wabbit, but I'm not going to Alcatwaz!
-- E. J. Fudd, 1954

Donald Qualls, aka The Silent Observer
Lathe Building Pages http://silent1.home.netcom.com/HomebuiltLathe.htm
Speedway 7x12 Lathe Pages http://silent1.home.netcom.com/my7x12.htm

Opinions expressed are my own -- take them for what they're worth
and don't expect them to be perfect.