>Archival quality digital prints are easily produced at home for
about a
>dollar +/-. Capital investment is much less than your wet
darkroom.
When you figure that the cost of setting up a halfway decent wet
darkroom for B&W costs about $1000-2000 and this doesn't include
the consumables...
Ok, let's include the consumables.
High-quality 11x14 fiber-based paper will run you around $3.00
per sheet and you can figure another $1.50 (500f paper cost)
for chemistry and $0.50 for water for the washing.
So an archival quality 11x14 print will run you about $5.00. Of
course, it may take a dozen test prints before hand.
What about time? It may take many hours to get from work-print
to fine-art print. To date, on my "Windswept" print, I've got
at least a dozen hours in on it. I can easily produce multiple
reprints now that I've got a page full of dodge and burn notes.
The actual printing process takes me about five minutes.
Processing the print will take around 20 minutes before water
wash. And then the next day you've got to spot the prints.
There are also the pictures which fight you. It's not uncommon
to store the negative for years until you are ready to tackle
the challenges of a particular picture.
Why then do we do wet-darkroom printing? Longevity of the final
print is one reason, but the primary reason remains the
characteristics of a fine-art print. A high-quality fine-art
print will "glow" in ways and have a depth which is nearly
impossible to reproduce in digital. I've seen reasonable
approximations, though.
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