Greetings, I'm just getting started into analogue. I have an Olympus Om 10 that I havent used yet but just ordered some expired Fujicolor Superia X-Tra 400. I've been reading a lot everyday but I'm sure there will be some mistakes when I start out. I have several questions about developing and scanning that I found hard to get answers to. I don't have a darkroom and not sure its worth turning my bedroom into one, so I was planning on getting a changing bag since it seems to work. Since a lot of things in this field tend to be subjective, one thing I want to say is that I tend to lean towards doing things the old fashioned way and when faced with options, I tend to do things closer to how people did it in say, the 1930s if possible.

For developing, the basic formula seems to be devloper, stop bath, and fixer. Yet many seems to avoid stop bath all together. Is it necessary? did people use it in the old days?. Also, I see some adding an additional finishing bath after fixer. And is a pre wash/soak necessary? Is this a good thing to have? How important is it really?
And for all these chemicals, espeically developer, are their different kinds that give different results? I dont mean brands, I mean, for example, are their developers for color film that do different things that change the end product? Are are all color developers/fixers basically the same (for color)?

As for scanning, is DSLR scanning "good enough"? Is there really anything you lose going that way vs using an expensive scanner?

Has anyone here used vintage light meters? Im thinking of getting one to use for vintage cameras I might get in the future. The one I have now has a built in one but I have to study it more.