Well, I wouldn't say that darkroom techniques were limited, and that you have more options now. I don't know how it looks on your side of the world, but here in Zagreb, Croatia we had a factory called Fotokemika that made wide variety of papers: from chloride, over chlorobromide to bromide emulsion. And then you were able to choose from matte, pearl, crystal or shiny surface. Each paper was produced on plastic base or on traditional paper base. That all made huge number of possible combinations e.g. I prefer chloride matt paper on traditional paper base. There are papers of various contrast from 0 to 5, and there are also multicontrast papers that opened entire world of possibilities, because if you are skill enough you were able to print different parts of picture with different contrast. They also produce canvas catted or in rolls, and photographic paper in rolls of different size. If you ever use canvas in darkroom it was from Fotokemika, they export it all over the world.
They also made liquid emulsion – you can brush it on any surface you like, which opens new possibilities, I like to use it on artistic watercolor papers, even brush it over the watercolor paintings and that expose black and white picture over it. Liquid emulsion was also made in different gradation or multigrade, also with different composition, chloride or bromide mainly.
Then you have at least 10 different film developer and probably around 20 different paper developer, each combination gives different results. We had Lith printing, toning to various tone in sepia or entire range from selenium to uranium.
Trust me I know what I am talking about, I have master degree in Photochemistry – not photographic chemistry as photochemistry also includes interaction of all kinds of material with light, not just darkroom material, but also interaction of traditional art and painting with light and ozone, I did measure such values in Egypt and Greece around monuments. As a matter of fact, I come to photography over a darkroom work, I needed some photos to work with.
It is easier to do printing now, I agree, but just because it take less time, knowledge or physical skill. There is no undo button or history in darkroom. It is also easier to do large formats, although in the darkroom days I printed 1,5 meters wide prints, on paper or canvas, length depends about format, usually 2 or 2,5 meters, as it was printed mainly from large format negatives.
For this reason, I treat every process in which chemistry is used to develop picture – you run paper through the chemistry to get picture – as analogue one, no matter what is on the input side.
I also need to say something about mechanical properties of darkroom prints. Hardened gelatin is one of the most tough material you will ever see in picture making. It is not prone to scratch, again it depends about manufacturing process, or darkroom use, it was possible to put hardening agent in the fixing bath if it is not hardening in factory. I worked with very old black and white photos, more than century old, I had access to collection of photographs that range from 19 century photos till modern injet printing photos. Darkroom photos was in excellent condition, as it was printed few years ago. Of course, you can even scratch the glass if you want, this means nothing, but inkjet prints are so easily scratched, if you compared it to darkroom prints, that it puts it in completely different category. Also, yellow or brown staining means that darkroom operator did not wash print properly, so there is residual thiosulphate in paper which decompose and stain it.
I also suppose that dark prints were because of „fashion“ not because material was bad. I printed lot more high key photography with an eerie quality than today. What I like today is that it is so easily to print in color, all I was talking about was about black and white prints. Color was a different beast, a dragon for darkroom user.
