Customer Reviews

The Basic Darkroom Book (Plume)

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As it says on the book's cover, for beginners through experts. Basic indeed! The author covers virtually every subject in photofinishing from basic black & white printing through color processing & printing with various films, papers and chemistry to delving into the digital darkroom! The author explains each subject in entertaining and conversational style to build the foundation for a more detailed and thorough explanation of the science & art of custom darkroom procedures and techniques. Photographs, illustrations and tables compliment the text. Loaded with information making it a valuable reference book even for those of us who have been doing custom black & white and color darkroom work for 20 years! If you have only one book on this subject, this is the book to own. The Basic Darkroom Book third edition is a must have.

This is one of the best photography books around, in my opinion. Very very detailed coverage of most all aspects of B&W and color photography. The author does not assum that you have your very own private dark room and makes sigguestions as to how you can use things you probably allready have around your house instead of expensive photography equipement. For instance, the author sigguests that you might use a fish tank and heater to control the temperature of color chemicals! And I tell you what, that is a lot less expensive compared to buying a rotary processor from Jobo.

The author gives detailed explinations of how processos work, and some hostory behind them. He also lets you just jump ahead to the quick and simple overview. This lets you learn about what your doing, if you new to the area, or get a quick review if you're not sure your quite remember how to do something.

Truly a great book, or even textbook for college classes.

This book by Tom Grimm is by far the most comprehensive and practical handbook on darkroom information and procedures that I have yet read. I have been involved in photography since the early 1950's and this is one of the best books on this aspect of photography that I own. I believe it surpasses that excellent book "Enlarging" by Jacobson and Mannheim that I also own and still use (1975 edition). I just do not understand the previous criticism made that the book requires "a degree" to understand it! The only criticism I would make is that products listed by the author are not always available to UK photographers, as it has, naturally, an American bias, however, even with that small defecit, the book is well worth the price!

I am writing this review in order to warn new-comers to the field of photography against buying it. Although the title specifies, "for beginners through experts," this book almost requires a degree to comprehend it. Techniques discussed are not for beginners! The book insists you need to spend vast amounts of money and time to develop prints; this is untrue. In fact, a beginner would need to read 6 chapters of the book, which are extremely confusing, before being able to develop a black-and-white print. The process could quite easily be explained in less than a page.

In short, I do not recommend anyone buy this terrible book.

I used this book while for developing photos on my own, 5+ years since leaving high school (the last time I developed my own photos). It is very helpful for setting up and properly using your own darkroom. Great suggestions and easy to navigate, so you don't have to read through parts that don't apply to you. I only develop B&W, so I skipped right over the sections on Color film. Easy to understand and a very helpful handbook to have around.

Finally, after thirty year' hiatus from the darkrook, now I get the technical facts of how to do film processing correctly. Too bad this book is out of print. I am so glad that someone who was in the know suggested it.

This book, is so hard to read, i don't know how any one could possibly turn a book that i, a darkroom hobbist my self could have wirtten in perhaps two hundered pages into a 464 page snooz fest. he includes all this unessiccary stuff aout how the film works and summerizeds stuff hes going to explain before he explains it... WHO CARES!!?? if i wanted to know how film works id buy a book on film! If you want to set up a drak room, eihter take a class, or buy a diffent book, thats not so hard to read, its basicly a text book. is it a bad book? nay, but don't expect to use it as a instruction manual, it has about fifty pages of nonsense between the actaul process of making a god damn darkroom!