I messed around in the dark room some. Problem for me was I really prefer color and a black'n'white darkroom was something I didn't have room for anyway. Right about the time the world switched over from film to digital I almost bought a Horseman 8x10... until I realized that in order to use it I'd have to build an addition onto my house just to deal with the film. I stopped shooting completely in about 2004. None of the labs I worked with kept developing film - it went from $6 a roll for slide processing to $18 at the only lab in town that would still deal with it - and the digital cameras were nowhere near the quality of what you could get out of slides (unless you spent over $10k). I started again in 2007, when the Eos 5D came out. It was the first full-frame sensor you could get for less than $5 grand. And I shoot the hell out of it. I was looking to upgrade to a 5D Mk II a couple years ago and upgrading my lenses as well (I've got one L, but I could use a couple more). I asked to see whatever the "equivalent L zoom of a 28-105 was". The guy behind the counter said "You realize that the resolution of this camera is beyond what even the L zooms can image? If you want to get the most out of this body, you'll need to switch to primes." Nowadays I do my dodging and burning in Lightroom. You get better results, more repeatable, non-destructive. I've still got a 6x7 body. No lenses, though - I sold 'em. But I have every slide and print I ever shot, and I have a Minolta Dimage Multi II, with the 6x7 sled and the continuous-feed 50-slide hopper. My wife scanned every.single.slide her father took from 1974 to 1987 with that thing. It took months, but it did it. And that's why, one of these days when I have time, I'm a gonna go back and get all the shit I did on film up on digital. Some of it's pretty good.
