Digital BW, The Print

Hallo, I work in a big city library (newcastle), and have recently had an
opportunity to delve into its depths, discovering a fully equipped darkroom
with all its fittings (real posh, enormous, but non-digital beseler 4x5
enlarger, big format 17x22" kit throughout, all double-doored, ventilated,
safelighted, temp controlled setup). I knew such a thing existed in the
bowels of the building, but didn't think it was still servicable. I asked my
boss about whats done with it, and since they're on something of a
best-value kick at the moment, I suggested it might be coaxed back into
service. The local studies reference section of us has a big b/w archive
photograph collection that people regularly buy prints from. This involves
us asking the council "city repro" section to make the prints, and city
repro seem to charge an pretty high fee (though I'm pretty sure they use
their standard machine processing, which can't really cost that much, though
I guess they are consistant), and we don't really get much except
administration costs from it.

Does anybody have a suggestion on how I might be able to capitalise on the
darkroom, apart from just selling the bits off. I'm not an expert
print-maker by any means, but I know my way around with the red light on,
and have learnt not to waste materials and supplies, and more to the point,
I know people who are more than qualified to work in such a place, if there
was a few quid in it for them.

Conversely, and more topically, has anybody been in the situation where a
new in-house digital/inkjet solution has replaced and/or improved a wet
processing solution (prints more-or-less limited to A3)? I wonder if buyers
would be as happy with an on-demand (or one- or two-hour) inkjet print (city
repro makes you wait.. they made some "errors" last week and everybodies
prints are another fortnight late) made on a hot-as quad/hex tone printer. I
guess the glossy/tactile photo factor is involved.. sell them framed, so its
not so instantly obvious?




Any ideas, commments, thoughts, greatly appreciated. It breaks my heart to
see that gear going to waste. The room is being filled with obsolete
computers as time goes by. In my delving, I bumped into a stack of 286s and
just 86s, I almost cheered (a stack of a more than a dozen computers that
couldn't even do together what the enlarger next to them could replicate, if
it was photoshop on a modern machine.. if that makes sense er... you know
what I mean..)



sandy @ www.euphy.co.uk