Ah, the Omega D2. Every time I walk into my darkroom and see my own well-worn enlarger my mind flashes back to my college days, where the university had about 30 D2s working hard every day. Many long hours spent putting together my first black and white...

There are quite a few new photographic papers available this year, despite many changes in the business. As with film and chemistry, the paper business was affected by the "Ilford Factor."

From late August 2004, when Ilford went into receivership, to early February 2005, when a management buy-out succeeded, the future of Ilford was in some doubt.

"With the alternative processes, you can see someone's hand at work. It's a very personal way of creating a photograph."

Most of us are finding more of everything thanks to digital imaging technology, but for some photographers, the essentials are getting scarce. Jill Enfield, for example, for whom it's not a question of cameras--she uses...

Stymied by all the buzz about megapixels, dpis, ppis, and what-have-you? Should you use a digital camera? Or shoot film? And which is really better? Well, yes, it's a veritable jungle of competing facts, pseudo-facts, and ideologies out there. Then there is the obsolescence factor. As someone who bought a Nikon F Photomic in 1968, a Linhof 4x5 in '70 and proceeded to...

All Photos © 2004, Jack Jeffers, All Rights Reserved

After spending more than 30 years documenting the Appalachians and publishing two books about the region, I retired to Lander, Wyoming, in 1996, to fulfill a childhood dream of living and working as a western artist. Higher mountains would mean greater challenges, I thought.

The western...

Agfacolor Vista 800
Bearing a strong family resemblance, this film appears almost identical to Vista 400 in 4x6 prints. In my 8x12 enlargements, contrast appears a bit higher, an advantage in the flat light of an overcast day.

I went into this determined not to portray fine art photographer Chris Faust as some sort of oddity because, lo and behold, he still goes into the darkroom. And as a photography teacher, he encourages others to do it, too.

But when I said, "I'm not going to approach this story as if you were an oddity in the age of digital," he stopped me with...