Necessity is the Mother of Invention

So with film photography, I see two and a half ways of getting your film processed and your negatives printed.

#1. You do it yourself
#2. You have someone else do it
#2.5. You do some things yourself and let others do the rest

I have done all three myself and found that I prefer to do certain things myself and let other people do the rest. For black and white photography, I do everything. The equipment is inexpensive and straightforward to use and the chemistry is easy to mix, keep, and cheap to buy.

This is where I cut corners though (hence the name of my blog). My enlarger is an Opemus 6x6 from the 1960s. My darkroom timer is non-existent; I count everything off in my head and I manage to get great results. My chemicals are limited, I only see the need to use developer and fixer. Stop bath costs money that I don't often have so I use water with a couple of drops of fixer mixed in and I change it every few prints. Even my chemical trays are cheap! I use aluminum trays coated with Rustoleum to agitate my prints. My darkroom light? I can get one from Freestyle for $50 or I can get a red lightbulb from Lowe's for $7 and hook it up to a dimmer. You can imagine what I went with. Chemical containers are $10 on Freestyle. 1 gallon jugs of Arizona tea are $4 and come with free tea. The jugs are made of a sturdy plastic that seems to hold up well to D76, Dektol and fixer. For less than $100 I made a darkroom in my storage room that I've used to pump out countless prints.

This is where the magic happens.

Since I don't have any color chemistry nor the equipment to reliably process it, Sam's can develop and print my negs for $5.

Now here's where I mix everything. I shoot slide film. I love it for reasons I don't and won't ever understand. It's just pretty damn cool to shoot with, especially 120 or 220 slides. I use E-6 chemistry from Freestyle and I have found it's not much harder to work with than black and white. The chemistry is $20 per set and it only works for four rolls, meaning it costs $5 to process at home. I don't have medium format scanning equipment, so I send it off for high-res drum scanning.

My formula boils down to one thing: If it works, go with it.