Expert: Don Wood - 8/13/2003

Question
With all of the new technology, are there other ways to develop film without having a dark room?

I wanted to do photography of intimate portraits of women for their husbands as gifts.  It would obviously need to be kept private.  I am a stay at home mom with an interest in this sort of photography.  Like the "glamour shots".  I wanted to have fun and make a little money on the side but, I don't want to go through the trouble of attaining a dark room.  Can I still get quality prints from a computerized type camera? (digital)

Answer
Thanks for the question.
The type of photography that you want to do would easily be done on the computer through a digital cmera. You would want to have a camera that would have a resolution of at least 3 megapixels. Be prepared to spend some money to get the equipment you'd need. Then when you take the pix remember to charge for everything you use, inc. camera, memory, printer, ink, paper, your time and expertise, etc. Price is not just the cost of the paper, and ink but the other stuff that you use to obtain the images.
You would have to have a large card to capture the pix. You would want to use the highest resolution pix so as to avoid the print showing the pixels of a lower resolution picture. Of course, you would want the best printer for printing the pictures, preferably one which has the best dpi, dots per inch. You will print using the highest resolution you can have.
You would need software such as Paint Shop Pro 8 which would give you all the tools you'd need to manipulate the pix, removing redeye, resizing, cropping, etc. The camera you get will have a means of transferring the image from the camera to the computer. Some of the more sophisticated printers have the capability of printing the images directly from the card instead of going through the computer. A problem with these is that while you could choose the poses to print, you would not be able to crop, resize, etc.
My digital camera is a Nikon Coolpix 990, Paint Shop Pro 8, Epson 870 printer. The image I get from the camera is 24 in. by ? so I need to be able to resize the image. I have a 64 meg card to store the image. I can get 40+ pictures from the one card at the resolution I want. I can get lower rez pictures which when put on a website are ok to use but when printed at larger sizes than 4x5 show pixilation, which degrade the image.
You are right in thinking that the one-hour labs would not be able to help you. Besides, the printer is out in the open so passersby would be able to see the pix as they came through the processor.
Best of luck to you. If I can help further, please ask, I will answer as swiftly as I can.
Don