[zabzonk]

i remember making my own camera in the mid 1970s. the lens was one of those crappy macro things you could screw onto a proper slr lens, and the film was actually photographic printing paper. the body was cardboard and tape, and the shutter a bit of cloth.

after you had taken a pic, you had to rush into the darkroom, develop the paper and then reverse print it (cannot remember how, or even if i did).

all a bit weird, but it kept me amused back then. i haven't been involved in photography for nearly 40 years.

[MarkusWandel]

Much has been lost (of course far more has been gained - such as my kids using worthless hand-me-down Android tablets as cameras quite creatively) since photography went digital. And combining both photography paper-as-film and eyeglass lens optics and ... what do you mean, darkroom?

https://www.timhunkin.com/a198_goodbye-cibachrome.htm

Sadly, this marvellous paper - direct positive colour and easy to develop - is no more.

Direct link to the video since (for me, right now) the embed in the above doesn't work. https://youtu.be/5AOlPuTQt-M?si=q7RibENicPH0Be9m

[zabzonk]

i don't think i've ever known anything as magical as developing my first wet-photography print.

[dekhn]

I have done darkroom work some 35 years ago and I can only say how relieved I am that we've moved into a world of digital sensors.

[MarkusWandel]

No argument! But it was fun to have experienced it; in my case starting photography as a hobby and going digital were just over a decade apart. Favourite part was being able to extract the coiled film from the tank in full light and peer at the negatives for the first time and then making a contact print sheet. Making enlarged prints was relative drudgery.

[MarkusWandel]

It was magical, wasn't it? A couple of film photo adventures on my old cobwebsite...

https://wandel.ca/homepage/yashicamat.html

https://wandel.ca/homepage/wetcamera.html

TLDR: The first one is about using a 20-year-past-expiry film in a format I didn't otherwise use; the second is about developing a drenched E6 slide film in b&w chemistry and trying to get prints.

[JonathonW]

First project in my high school photography class (before we even touched anything having to do with a film camera) was to make and use a pinhole camera— body made of cardboard and tape, “lens” a piece of foil with a hole in it, and “film” a 4x5 bit of photo paper.

It’s a great way both to explain the whole premise behind photography (your fancy camera and lens is just an elaborate way to project an image onto a bit of light-sensitive stuff that you otherwise keep in the dark) and to give students some early hands-on experience developing prints without all the intervening steps involved in making a print from film.