Rob:  why stop now? do what I did - go to plain old chemical B&W - it's
simple, requires a minimum investment in equiement and materials and will
take me at least one lifetime to come close to understanding (not even going
to use the term "mastery").

I have spent 40 years in a digital world, and I will only do digital
photography when I can no longer find film, paper and chemicals.

Think Macintosh "Like in Apple" None of those issues.

I hate that description for Transparencies, conjures all sort of
"negative" sexual thoughts :-)

Well buy all the Ilfochrome you can if thats what you intend.

If your doing Ilfochrome from 35mm you probably want make enlarged
dupes so you can mask, Your better off using a bigger enlarger as well because
Ilfochrome is painfully slow and a little 35mm enlarger will make
the exposures for larger prints very long.

You can refrigerate any color paper (Its a good idea)

Hmmm, I don't spend 15 minutes a week on maintaining our 4 computers at
home.  Windows can be set to update itself automatically, of course, and
there's usually not more than an update a month anyhow.

I maintain a lab at work (with technicians' help, all closely supervised by
me) with over 50 PCs, and crashes are extremely rare.

Whenever people tell me they find Windows incredibly buggy and crash-prone,
I have to ask the following tough question:  Is your *hardware* unreliable?
Even a perfect OS wouldn't run perfectly on buggy hardware.

I'm afraid Windows is getting the blame for a certain number of motherboard,
memory, and power supply problems.  People always say "Windows crashed"
rather than "my hardware crashed."  In reality, you can't tell... except
that if Windows XP or 2003 bluescreens, it's almost certainly hardware.

Doesn't this just sum it all up.:-)  Thanks for the tidy summery. With your
permission I will use this quote (paraphrased) to state the case for common
sense when ever the urge of modern madness overcomes those mortals swept up
with the urge to partake in the latest 'thing' just for the sake of being
'with it' what ever that means. I wonder how many ever realise that
marketing is not so much to forward our collective state rather to benefit
the originator of said marketing often at our expense.

Transparencies are not designed for printing. If you want prints, take
negative film too.

That's funny:

It seems that for every hour spent making a print, at least twice that
is spent mixing solutions, setting up temperature baths, pouring liquids,
dusting negatives, making test strips, washing trays, tanks, tongs and
reels, washing, drying, making contact sheets, filing, mopping the floor,
wiping down counters ....

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

I'm so glad to hear that it's not just me. I spend all day in front of
a computer for my day job, and so the idea of having a computer and
its foibles in the way of my creative endeavors is frightful. That
being said, I did recently do a whole bunch of digital shooting with a
cheapo digicam. It was for a class where the teacher wanted me to just
shoot tons and tons of photos. So I did that and it was indeed helpful
to see the results immediately and the like. And then I went to make a
print and things turned out to be not so easy. Yes, we have issues
with controls in the darkroom -- voltage fluctuations that affect
print exposure for example -- but I had no idea how many
unidentifiable goblins can affect the tone of a print generated by an
inkjet printer. More power to you!

--Phil

A bit of encouragement from a complete newbie/amateur ::

I have no trouble with computers. I have a big fast machine in the
office, two laptops floating around the house, two scanners, printers,
cable and wireless networks, DSL, a dedicated office/computer room etc -
the whole flippin' shebang!! I love them!!

but..............

I have been repairing antique radios for 33 of my 46 years, but that
doesn't stop me from having a rack full of solid state stereo stuff in
the computer room so that I can convert analog to digital and play it in
my trucks.  A lot of my CDs are OTR (old time radio). They're great to
listen to.

and...............

I have had film cameras since I was a kid, but had never done my own
developing. As recently as this past June, I discovered monorail
cameras. I had never heard of such a thing, and thought that only
chemists and mad scientists could do their own developing. Boy was I
wrong! I also have a digital camera and I love it too. It's kinda' hard
and sorta' expensive to sell antique radios on eBay by making a negative
for each picture that you're going to post, so for each job there's a tool.

Why do "traditional" or "antique" or "old fashoined"?  Strictly for fun,
education, adventure, life experience, horizon widening, curiosity, you
pick one or more, and have at it. There's no reason to bail out of the
other completely. Just do both, and have fun!

cheers

No comments on that ...

The last news I had was they'll keep the high quality paper (polyester base) and drop the cheaper RC
ones.
But until their problems aren't gone, everything, the worst included, can happen.

It's not Ilfochrome, it's printing from a slide that you'll learn and this will still be useful with
other positive material whatever it they are.

P-30
This is the amateur version and is sold in a 2x1-liter pack. One liter is used pretty quickly (13
prints 8x10", 5 prints 12x16"), you shouldn't have to keep them for long.
The kit unopened is said to last 3 years. Diluted in full bottles, 2 months and partially filled
bottles, 1 month.
Once used, chemicals are mixed together and dumped, their formulation is intended to neutralize each
other.
A partial reuse (some used + some new) of the chemicals is possible, this may give a light loss of
quality but nearly doubles the capacity of them. The included leaflet indicates the quantities per
sheet.

P-3
More intended for professional use and is sold in larger quantities but you can mix just what you
need.
They are all liquids except a component of the developer which is a powder in a very small quantity
to difficult to split.
I tried to dissolve it alone in water but it doesn't. I don't know what this powder may be (the MSDS
wasn't that clear for me) but if someone knows in what I can dissolve it to split easily the
quantities, I would be grateful ...
P-3 gives a slightly higher contrast than the P-30.
If you do a lot of printing, this is the way to go as it is *much* less expensive than the P-30.
NEVER MIX THE USED CHEMICALS TOGETHER BEFORE DUMPING: I did it once and the mix produces so much
sulfur dioxyde to be nearly asphyxiated ... You should neutralize the chemicals separately, dilute
them with lots of water before dumping them.
Read the notice carefully.

P-3X
Intended for replenishment, I've no experience with it.

I usually print color only when I have enough slides to use completely the chemicals.

Yes.

Pretty easy in my opinion. Simpler than negative as, if your print is to yellow, just remove yellow
or add blue (magenta+cyan).
With negative material, if your print is to yellow, you have to *add* yellow ...

Despite all we often read, silver masks are *not* that compulsory with slides printing.
Before this extreme you can do traditional dodging/burning during the exposure like in B/W.
Coupled with a medium-contrast paper (CLM-1K), 80-90% of my slides are printed very successfully
this way.

Silver masks are more required with high-contrast paper (CPS-1K). This is the preferred paper for
the "Masters", together with the silver mask(s) they can acheive a very high local contrast while
keeping a normal global contrast.
Don't start with this at the beginning, practise Ilfochrome some months before trying more complex
techniques.

By the way, silver masks are possible with 35mm (it is used also in B/W), mainly contrast reduction
unsharp masks which are the easiest to do.
Registering is the most difficult task. There are not so many registering tools for 35mm, I manage
to register them by eye but this is not obvious at all.
Do a Google search with keywords like "unsharp masking".
I started a page on the topic on my website but it's still under construction and in ... french.
Anyway, there are some pictures of the tools I use:
http://www.bonavolta.ch/hobby/fr/photo/mask.htm

Other links:
http://www.bonavolta.ch/hobby/fr/photo/masking101.htm
http://www.maskingkits.com

Why not, it's pretty easy to acheive a good quality. Becoming a master requires much more time.
Well, nothing different from B/W, anyway ...

Some more comments:

Ilfochrome is a pretty slow surface as it incorporates all the dyes in the emulsion and the process
will remove the "excess" of them.
As a starting point try an exposure 3 stops longer than a B/W Ilford Multigrade paper (without
filters).

Despite what many believe, positive papers are very low contrast because the original, the slide, is
very contrasty.
This has many advantages:
- exposure variations are *much* less sensitive. With negative papers (B/W or color) an exposure
difference of 1/10th of a stop is already visible. With positive paper, half stop is not a lot at
all, you'll pretty often have to change the exposure by a full stop or more.
Working in stops is a good habit, especially when dodging/burning.
- same comment with filtration, especially at the beginning, change it by 10CC, not less

Doing a contact print of the slides is not silly, especially if your print from different films
types. This print is already a good start to help you to adjust exposure/filtration without wasting
to much time and material.
Kodak sells a Filter Viewing Kit that helps also for the filtration.
Often with the same film type and same light conditions, filtering is similar to identical.

Ilfochrome, like all other materials, is also sensitive to reciprocity failure. For color material,
this means color shifts too, so, we play more with the diaphragm to keep exposures in a reasonable
range.

The ultra-glossy surface of the polyester base papers is *very* fragile, cotton gloves are advised
when manipulating them.
In the dark you can see (well, hear ...) which side is the emulsion by passing your finger nail on
it, if it does make some noise (a kind of "sssss"), then it's the back.

Processors:
- rotary models (Jobo, etc ...) are easy, use the minimal quantity of chemicals, are versatile when
you change paper size, can also develop films, but are pretty slow.
- slot models (Nova, etc ...) are faster but limited to a size of paper, going to a larger size
requires a new processor.
- table-top processors (Fujimoto, Ilford, Durst Printo, ...) are really nice: a friend borrowed me
an Ilford ICP42/IWD42, you get the print in 15' dry-to-dry without any manual intervention ... I
managed to do 10 prints 12x16" (30x40cm) in a single evening.
Some do replenishment
Price is pretty high (but you may find someone doing the opposite travel than you, i.e. going
digital) and they require a fairly large amount of space.

Of course, an enlarger with a dichro?c color head is strongly advised.

I certainly have missed some points you'll discover by your own :-)

Best regards,
Claudio Bonavolta
http://www.bonavolta.ch