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Old 11th August 2021, 10:17 AM
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MartyNL MartyNL is offline
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Default Admin in the darkroom and printed documentation

I'm in the middle of a late darkroom spring clean and it seems I've gathered a 50litre box of paperwork over the years. One of the reasons is that I still often prefer using hard copies above digital when digesting data. Another is, you never know when something may come in handy!

So my question is, what's worth keeping do you think and what's long overdue for recycling?

I've got everything from receipts, invoices, technical info. on chems, films and papers to advertising flyers, brochures and catalogues etc.

What do you folks keep physical copies of and why?
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Old 11th August 2021, 11:06 AM
Mike O'Pray Mike O'Pray is offline
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I have still kept a lot of handwritten documentation from the previous owner of the equipment but frankly as it was written for him, most of it makes little sense to me and was essentially his dev times etc for materials I do not use

So what's the point? None really except that I find it difficult to destroy what amounts to work and effort by another or work I have done(see below) .

In terms of documentation I use, I have a small notebook with dev times for various films and Xtol. I also have Ralph's Lambrecht's chart for exposure changes needed when using Y and M to change contrast and his own Y and M dual filtration for Ilford MGIV and Agfa MCP which I carefully made into a table using WORD and big enough to be read in the darkroom.

However I have since moved to Ilford filters so again these are not used but they remain on my walls.

Frankly the only chart I use at all regularly is the quarter stop exposure changes for test strips as these are useful compared to the same time intervals such as 3 secs etc

So I use a notebook and the quarter stop chart and that's it. The rest of the documentation is simply there, doing no harm but not contributing

Mike
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Old 11th August 2021, 11:10 AM
alexmuir alexmuir is online now
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That’s a lot of paper! I do the same. Copies of data sheets can be useful when you use an older version of a film. Equipment catalogues can be useful if you are interested in buying something that is no longer produced, or to find out if there was a particular accessory produced. I keep paperwork if I can, but sometimes it’s worth filtering out the material you no longer need.
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Old 11th August 2021, 02:38 PM
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Handwritten documentation tend to grow much slowly: You have everything to write, and you sort important form not important.

I am a fan of handwritten, may be with some (less) glued in sheets of recipes and so.
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Old 11th August 2021, 04:16 PM
Richard Gould Richard Gould is offline
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Documents do seem to accumalate in my darkroom, I have many reporters type notebooks of exposure records going back many years, plus a lot of stuff to do with paper settings for the papers I use for my analyser, film developing records, times for various films in developers I have used over the decades, many that no longer exist, every now and again I have a sort out, but always seem to have more to keep than throw out, you never know, might come in useful
Richard
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Old 11th August 2021, 04:17 PM
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If I can reduce the technical reference material back to just one box file, I think I should be happy. The kodak data sheets alone on both T-max and Xtol are quite extensive. And then there's Ilford material.
I think I can forego the promo literature but I should probably keep the repair/CLA dockets just incase I sell something to show maintenance costs. Perhaps I should just move the non-essential info. away from the dry side and out of the darkroom altogether.
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Old 13th August 2021, 07:56 PM
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I used to have a fairly battered copy of the RB67 sales brochure and some years ago decided to recycle it.

I now regret it.

I still have an electronic version - but there is nothing quite like a paper copy.

If you are thinking of getting rid of it, a museum might possibly be interested ?

Martin
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