Is anyone else struggling with the format of the article?<p>It starts with the name, age, and appearance of the darkroom? As if it's a character? And then all of a sudden it's a dialogue with no introduction whatsoever, where the bold text is one character and the normal text is another?<p>This doesn't explain why anything at all. It's just a weirdly formatted snarky dialog. With a strange do and don't at the end.
Imagine some average non-technical young person in his or her mid 20s who time travels and appears naked before someone like Newton or Maxwell.<p>It would be interesting to imagine the conversation when they try to decipher the future science and technology from the "commoner" from the 2019.<p>"You are Newton, you are famous man. You discovered gravity I think. But you were wrong and everything is relative. There are black holes that suck even light. Light has a speed and nothing can be faster than light."<p>"Maxwell. I have heard that name. Batteries or something. Anyways, there is this thing called quantum mechanics where everything is either particle and a wave and nobody knows how it works and its weird. Have you met Schrödinger and do you know about his experiments with cats?"
> It has to be dark, because too much light will destroy the negatives.<p>The author of this piece doesn’t seem to understand the process either. The light will expose the photographic paper, which will render it useless. The developed negative film is relatively safe from light-induced damage.<p>The author also fails to mention that one begins developing film (at least, the way I did it years ago) by transferring it to a lightproof container in a completely black room. They tend to not show this part in Hollywood, I suppose, since black rooms don’t really translate well to the screen. (Unless there is an alternative process I’m unaware of... I was very much a noob B&W photographer.)
To be fair to the younger fans, I feel like most older fans have never been in a darkroom, and are only familiar with them as a movie trope. I certainly would have recognized this scene <i>before</i> I ever developed my own pictures.<p>It's the retail photo lab that really distinguishes my generation from the last.
That article made no sense to me, so here's a much better version on People:
<a href="https://people.com/tv/stranger-things-fans-photography-darkroom-confusion-goes-viral/" rel="nofollow">https://people.com/tv/stranger-things-fans-photography-darkr...</a><p>This is the StackExchange question that went viral:
<a href="https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/102266/what-is-the-purpose-of-this-red-room-in-stranger-things" rel="nofollow">https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/102266/what-is-th...</a>
>> “What is the purpose of the information feather?”<p>Hey, I think I know that one. The name sounds wrong but it's definitely referring to a device by which one enters virtual reality:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vurt" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vurt</a>
When the older voice in the article says the dark red light protects the fragile negatives, it perpetuates a common misunderstanding about film darkrooms. Most undeveloped film would be destroyed by the red light, except very uncommon orthochromatic film. Once developed (or technically, once fixed) the negative is fine in bright light. Maybe that’s the point—older people know what a darkroom is, but few know the details.
I still have a red room, though I have to admit it doesn't get used as much as in the past. The cost of paper these day is nuts (though it was never really cheap).
I have a project to do with my daughter then :D<p>I remember I created a small camera-obscura based photo-camera with friends for a physics project from piece o aluminium, old shoe-box and photo-paper :)<p>Reloading it was a pain, cause you had to be in a dark-room to put in in the box :D<p>Exposition was minutes.<p>It was awesome!
If you really want to blow the minds of younger fans, tell them about photolithography.<p>"You mean he can make computer chips in the red room?"<p>"No, the chemicals are different as are some of the steps. What I am trying to say is that similar concepts are used. Things like the exposure of photosensitive materials to light and using other chemicals to change the properties of exposed areas."<p>"That doesn't make any sense at all. Light can't change chemicals."<p>"Of course it can. That is how photosynthesis works."<p>"What do plants have to do with this?"<p>"Very little. I was just using a common example to prove that chemicals can changed by light."<p>"Okay, but plants are different from computer chips and photographs so I still don't see how it's related."<p>(The conversation continues in circles for a bit.)<p>"Look, we used to think about things in very different ways. When your generation and my generation sees stuff coming off of factory line, we have a tendency to think of things being made in mechanical ways. So we're the same in that respect. On the other hand, you see a lot of things being created digitally so you have a greater tendency to think of things being built up from bits in computer memory. My generation saw a lot of things being made by carefully controlled chemical reactions, so it is easier for us to imagine things being created that way. Just because I have less exposure to the former doesn't mean that it does not exist. Just because you have less exposure to the latter doesn't mean that it does not exist. The world changes. Get used to it. Heck, have some fun in the process and explore the old ways as well as the up-and-coming ways. It will make your worldview much richer."
The article is bad. Really bad.
The point made though is something I took for granted. I know what a darkroom is. My parents had one in the house. My dad had one at his work. Not sure my kids will have any idea what it is though. I have an urge to make sure they do. The now know about Rotary phones and audio tapes and vinyl - they should be aware of darkrooms.<p>The problem with modern life, as wonderful and amazing as they are, is that many people lack the history of how we got there. Obviously younger ones have not lived through it, but at least a basic knowledge of the progress made will help them appreciate just how wonderful and amazing our times are.
I like how not once does the author of this explain that the room is dark and red because you actually have red lights in a darkroom; the photo-reactive paper you’re printing images onto does not react to red light.
The whole thing is made up by the blogger who wrote this post at the guardian.com and wants to promote himself at HN, and the format of the article my suspicion even more clear to me.<p>Young people with interest by photography will still know about these things because they will buy an analog camera and become what we call “hypsters” nowadays (the equivalent of “nerds” back then). And back then also not everyone knew or could go through the whole negative reveal process, as much as nowadays not everyone can format a hard disk and install an OS.
Now that I remember, the last time I had photographic film developed was in 2003 or 2004. I was a bit late to the digital photography game.<p>Today my phone (far from a top of the line model) takes better pictures (both in pixel size and sensitivity) than my first digital camera (which I think had a whopping 128MB memory card)<p>(Having read about it a long time ago I'm a bit familiar with how film is developed - note the red light is only useful for some types of B&W film, your regular color film will get exposed even with a dim red light)
Hey while we're all poking and having fun, has anyone mentioned here why 'red'?<p>I've never developed film photographs myself and just assumed it was for the benefit of preserving low-light sensitivity in our eyes rather than anything related to exposing the paper to different wavelengths of light--just lower intensities that we can still see.
Is it confusing anyone? Google trend for "red room" shows only a few brief spikes, the most recent from February. That seems to be because of the book "The Haunting of Hill House".