Reddit reviews The Darkroom Cookbook, Third Edition (Alternative Process Photography)

To a point he's not wrong. Doing slide film can be a bit of a pain as that tends to be more temperature sensitive, however home C-41 kits can be surprisingly flexible.


The other boon lately is the large price drop and market saturation of sous vide machines. That's been a game changer for home processing and really opens the possibilities to get lab quality results (well, lab quality development, still depends on your scanning and editing).


Best price on an all-in-one C-41 kit would be the FPP C-41 Kit and they also have one for E6 slide as well. With proper storage and processing, the C-41 kit can be stretched to around 25 to 40 rolls. I've done over 50, but at the risk of image quality. Mostly I just wanted to see how far I could push one.


The E6 kit isn't as stout. If it says only 10 rolls, it's only 10 rolls. You could squeeze a couple more but they would be in pretty bad shape image-wise or just simply not show up at all.


For scanning, it kind of depends on what formats you shoot. The 35mm stand-alone scanners are pretty good for the price; I use the Plustek 8100 myself. The Epson flatbeds are best for larger formats (medium format and up), but still will lag behind if you plan on using the file to make prints. Smaller prints and online sharing is fine, but large museum quality works may suffer. Others print their work in the darkroom on paper and then digitize.


The newest thing has been "scanning" with a full framed DSLR/Mirrorless camera. If you plan to go that route, I would invest in a good macro lens, a copy stand, a higher end LED light panel, and the photoshop plug-in Negative Lab Pro. I think version 1.3 should be coming out soon with the creator always looking for ways to improve on his program.


Otherwise, black and white is still black and white. Some developers may be off the market but The Darkroom Cookbook has the recipes listed if you like doing the DIY route. I use a mix of B&H, Artcraft Chemicals, and Photographers Formulary for my raw ingredients.


Current personal darkroom project for me is to perfect black and white slide process (basically cross processing regular black and white film to make slides). Starting out in 35mm since I can get that cheap. Once I get the process down I'll move to large formats for more visual power.

Darkroom cookbook and developing cookbook maybe? Also Ansel Adams's "The negative" might be helpful

> I don't know how to "push" or "pull" and never did it. I did some dodging and burning though. How do you control the chunkiness/fineness of the grain, or give more sharpness or shadow detail?

push/pull is when you change the development time of the film to compensate for under or over exposure. so if you are shooting 400 film at 1600, you are "pushing" it by 2 stops (1 stop to 800 and another to 1600) and therefore you follow the chart i linked to determine how much longer to develop the film. "pulling" is the opposite, as you are reducing the development time, as you are shooting 400 film at, say 100, and therefore overexposing it.)

one effect of pushing film is to get larger grain. here's an example of a pretty extreme push i did, which was developed by a lab using D76: http://www.flickr.com/photos/54424795@N02/9689921202/

i find the grain to be too large for my taste, so i have started to develop my own film again, and have chosen a developer known for producing smaller grain (in my case i chose XTOL.) i don't have any results to post yet, i work pretty slowly, often taking a month to shoot a roll of film.

there are a lot of choices of developer out there, and each has its own pros/cons (grain size, sharpness and shadow detail fall into this category.) D76, XTOL, and Rodinal are all popular choices with known properties, but there are many choices, and a book like the darkroom cookbook http://www.amazon.com/Darkroom-Cookbook-Steve-Anchell/dp/0240810554/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380639720&sr=1-1&keywords=the+darkroom+cookbook can teach you a lot.

>Also, could you expand on your last point a little bit?

if i want the shot in BW, i use the BW camera, if i want color and i don't have the color camera with me, then that's too bad, but it's pretty rare that that happens, and i don't stress out if i miss a shot. i happen to think that it's important to know if the shot will be BW or color when framing it and looking at the light, as they both have radically different results and affect how you compose.

i carry multiple cameras to handle different films. it's a great excuse to own lots of film cameras. i dedicate one to low light situations, it has pushed film in it, another is my daylight daily shooter with 400 tri-x in it, and then if i want color, i bring another camera. i even use one camera almost exclusively for color slide film. i suppose it helps that i usually have a good idea what i am after when i am shooting. street photos are BW, so if i'm looking for color, it's because i had an idea and wanted to shoot something specific, usually it's just the 2 leicas on me (both BW, one pushed, one not) so it's not heavy or bulky. in winter i don't even really need a bag, as the one with pushed film is tiny and has a collapsing lens. it fits in a coat pocket.