My first camera was a Kodak Brownie Cresta which used 120 film, giving 12 x 2&1/4 inch square negatives which we took to the Chemist to get developed and printed. I think this was my 7th Birthday present circa 1954. Christmas or next birthday I had Johnsons developing tank with its' plastic spindle and spiral grooved ratchet wheels into which the film had to be loaded in complete darkness, tricky, in Mum's broom cupboard under the stairs. The developer had to be mixed and maintained at 78 degrees F whilst the spindle was twirled tens times every minute, then tipped away and the filmed washed in running water then fixed in fixer solution for 112 minutes followed by a 30 minute wash then hung up to dry over night. Dad and I then contact printed the prints from the negatives using a wooden contact printer box that Dad made in his shed. After exposing the light sensitive printing paper through the negative the paper was agitated in a tray loaded with developer then washed for one minute, fixed for 15 minutes then washed for 30 minutes. a long process mostly in the darkroom/broom cupboard. My best camera was and is the Exakta Verax 1000, unfortunately it is not digital!

Thank you all very much for your helpful advice it has been much appreciated, I will endeavor to put these methods into practice on my next woodland Fungi Safari, I hope that there are still some fungi around.
Thanks again,
Regards Photon

Help, with Burnt out sky please.
When photographing fungi I often find that getting the best shooting angle for the subject content, necessitates facing pale sky in autumn when woodland is bare of colourful foliage and yet the subject is ill lit because of it's woodlands habitat;. this results in burnt out and painful backgrounds such as my shot of two Panaeolus Papilionaceus recently uploaded to the 'Gallery'. What can I do to reduce this problem at the time of shooting, are there magic lens filters that I can use to give the bare but relatively bright sky a bit of colour? The only filters that I have used before have been Sky Lite/UV filters; as lens front element protection. Advice would be most welcome.
Photon

I only had 12 this time but I had 58 last time! I recommend that someone amend the mail merge software and do a small batch send test run prior to each distribution or that they stop stuttering on the send button. Surely all these multiple copies around the world is causing a hell of a lot of unnecessary electron flow through all of those cable, servers, transmitters and receivers around the world which must be a costly energy waste to say nothing of the 'in thing worry' about 'Carbon Footprint'. What would the Green Issue people say about it? I suppose it is little, when compared to all of that daily unnecessary flow of spam/scam around the globe, what an unnecessary waste of energy and contribution to that 'Carbon Footprint'!.
Whilst on my soapbox, it is almost as annoying as those postmen, freebie newspaper, deliverers, leaflet droppers, and charity bag deliverers, that insist on leaving our letter boxes jacked open all day, so that the heat can flow from our expensively heated homes, into the ambient atmosphere in an unconscious attempt to heat up the neighborhood; heat will always flow from the hotter body to the colder body, one of the basics of thermodynamics! Most of the stuff that they deliver is unwanted rubbish, that necessitates yet more energy and money to both produce and destroy. We should make it illegal for these people to continue such inconsiderate practice! Sorry this is non photographic but your question ignited my slow burning fuze. I'll get off my soapbox.
Regards Photon

Yes, I believe I've just received the same scam message from a ' ROSELINE KOMO WILLIAMS.
EMAIL: I also received a message in my home e-mail box purporting to be from the 'Pentax User Club' advising me that there was a new message for me at the Pentax User Club web site and giving a link which brought to this site. I'm no computer whiz kid (I'm an oldie) but I suggest the security aspects of this site need to be improved. Does this mean that all personal info divulged at the time of joining the 'Pentax User Club' is now held on some third party data base and being sold or passed on? People with cameras must appear to be reasonably worthwhile financial targets! Regards Photon