Contact/Proof sheet: A necessary Evil?

Stoo Batchelor · Mar 18, 2006

Hi Everyone

I'm just heading to the darkroom for a printing session. I'll be printing from my Negs from my recent trip to the Isle of Skye. The Negs are looking good, 645, developeded in Prescysol EF, my usual.

I have this guilty, gut feeling, why?, because I'm not going to do a contact sheet to work from. I hate doing them. I mean, six to do, seven more to follow. That equals alot of time and spent developer/ fixer, right?

This is not how I always work. In fact I usually always do a sheet, just hate doing them.

What I would like to Know is: What do you Guys and Girls do?

We all Know how beneficial they are right. And that you can get alot of printing info from them, but surely I can tell that from a 645 neg?. At least I think I can.

I Know what I want to hear from you all but it will be interesting to hear how you all work/think.

I have read many times what an important part of peoples photography they are. Showing off your contact sheets is like bearing your soul. Cartier- Bresson used to say that he could tell how a future Magnum Photographers mind worked just by looking at their contact sheets. Tim Rudman Does his at different grades etc, to see how a final print will look. So alot of time spent on them by him. Ailsa McWinnie (correct me if I'm wrong Ailsa) Spends alot of time getting hers perfect, as little photographs. So a huge deal of time and effort from her.

So as I've said. I love time spent in the darkroom, just hate making these tedious sheets.

So what do you think? Am I just being lazy?

Your thoughts please

Kind Regards

Stoo

Joe Lipka · Mar 18, 2006

Whatever makes you happy. IMHO a contact sheet is nice for 35 mm, optional for medium format and not really necessary for large format. If you are just starting to use medium format, I would make one. If you are confident of your ability to read a negative, then you don't need to make one.

clarence · Mar 18, 2006

I can't say I feel the same way. I love printing my 35mm and 6x6 contact / proof sheets because they let me know more about my exposure techniques, and also the tempo at which I shoot. But a large part of that arises because I cannot read negatives well, and because I often bracket my shots.

If you are able to read negatives, then your work process would be much easier. You can rest easy as long as you're sure you're printing what you want to.

Nick Zentena · Mar 18, 2006

Never. I'll put the negatives in thier sleeve on a light box. Or just stick it in the enlarger.

Aggie · Mar 18, 2006

I not only do I make contact sheets (medium and 4x5) I will make work prints on RC (8X10) of the ones I think are good. Those work prints help me to decide if I want to crop the image or where I need to do extra work on making the print. It's a PIA to do, but in the end it saves time since I don't have to work with a negative that might have looked good using other methods, but once it was printed was just not there.

Dave Miller · Mar 18, 2006

It's a long time since I bothered with contact sheets. I look at the negatives on my lightbox, and make my choice that way. Like Aggie I produce a 10x8 workprint as an intermediate stage.

Ole · Mar 18, 2006

When I was a well-organised young man, I put all my MF negs in transparent filing sheets. Then I made a contact print of the whole sheet on 24x30cm RC paper. I filed both in the same binder - negative on the right, print on the left. So I could see at a glance which negative was where, and the reverse of the contact sheet worked as a white background for the previous negative sheet to make it even easier to confirm that I picked the correct one.

I have since abandoned this system in favor of the more traditional disorganised jumble, but I admit I miss it sometimes.

seadrive · Mar 18, 2006

Every negative gets a Fred-Picker-style "proper proof", which gets filed along with the negative.

rbarker · Mar 18, 2006

Hello, my name is Ralph, and I'm a recovering contactaholic. [hangs head in shame] As such, I recognize the personal character weakness shown by bouncing back and forth between organization (making contacts) and the lack thereof (not doing so). I know that contact sheets can be helpful, especially if one places tight controls on the process, but sometimes I just want to jump in there and make a print. Maybe its that inner free spirit, I don't know.

Now that I have that off my chest, I think I'll move on to bigger questions - like which goes better with printmaking, scotch or gin? (Once I decide, I'll have something to talk about at that other meeting.)

c6h6o3 · Mar 18, 2006

Stoo Batchelor said:
I love time spent in the darkroom, just hate making these tedious sheets.

So what do you think? Am I just being lazy?

The purpose of a contact sheet is to see what you got. For film that I've developed myself they are therefore a complete was of time, paper and chemistry. I feel the same way about test strips. I don't really know what I've got until I try to make the best print I can from a negative.

However, for C-41 color work developed at a lab I find contact sheets indispensible. I see what I got and can then decide which negatives I want to take back to the lab to have printed well. The cost of individual proofs is prohibitive for me.

pentaxuser · Mar 18, 2006

Unless I am in a hurry to print out a couple of shots I had already picked out in my head at exposure and literally can't wait, I always do a sheet first, especially 35mm. In every case I do one afterwards if I havene't done so before making prints. I find it indepensable for future reference. I find my ability to read even B&W negs is poor and in colour negs is non existent.

Pentaxuser

jim appleyard · Mar 18, 2006

FWIW, I always do a contact sheet. It puts my work into an organized style. I number them 0601; 06 being the year, 01 being the first roll of the year. I then write on the back of the contact sheet 0601 (this also goes on the 3-ring neg page) and any exposure, developer, times, temps, agitation method info I might want later. For instance, I may use D-76 1+0 for one roll and 1+1 for the next.

I also mark with a red marker any negs that are good, really good or ones that may have a flaw of some kind; focus problem, scratch, etc.

In short, it is a pain, but a problem-solver later and a nice, quick index.

JonPorter · Mar 18, 2006

I couldn't work without contacts. For one thing, all the critical identifying information about the shots is written on the back of the proof sheet, along with camera used, developer, etc. Contacts are stored chronologically in empty photo paper boxes so I can quickly sort through them when looking for shots. But I use the Paterson glassless proofing frames, which are a thousand times easier to use than those hinged glass contraptions.

jim appleyard · Mar 18, 2006

Speaking of glass, I just went to the glass shop and bought an 11x14 piece of glass, 1/4" thick to put down on top of the paper and neg page. Cheap and easy.

RJS · Mar 18, 2006

Poor old Fred Picker was a really good salesman and not much of a photographer who loved to promulgate rules about the "best" stuff (he was selling it) and how to do things. Years and years ago I made contact sheets. And thn I found out somehow that they were absoloutely useless for me. I do just as well (or badly) looking at negatives on a light box. Recently I bought a box of telatively cheap paper and made contact sheets of my lates production. Still no help. Whatever suits is absoloutely and positely the best!

celluloidpropaganda · Mar 18, 2006

I find contacts are indispensable for me - I do something like Ole's well-organized system, only in a disorganized jumble remix. No order, no dating, no information, but generally negs matched up to contacts.

In 35mm I find it's a better system for quickly finding and identifying the negative I want to print than learning anything about the negative. MF and LF are more useful in other ways.

Phillip P. Dimor · Mar 18, 2006

I don't bother making contact sheets. I hate making them as well. I just put my negs mounted in a printfile page on a lightbox and pick the best looking ones to print.
I contact print 4x5 though, that I like
35mm and 120, I don't bother anymore.

Nikki · Mar 18, 2006

rbarker said:
Now that I have that off my chest, I think I'll move on to bigger questions - like which goes better with printmaking, scotch or gin? (Once I decide, I'll have something to talk about at that other meeting.)

Kahlua.

Mark H · Mar 18, 2006

I always make contacts and file them with the negs (I mostly do 35mm). I find them useful for identifying which composition seems "right" as I tend to shoot same subject at different angles. Moving the camera an inch or two can make a big difference and I can't tell that from the negative. Six months later I can just flip through the neg. notebook and see the mini-prints of whatever I'm looking for or discover something I missed. Those tiny prints also go into tiny frames sometimes. I've been tempted to cut lots of tiny openings in a mat board and do a sort of collage. But that can probably wait til another life time.

Maris · Mar 18, 2006

No contact sheets ever. All exposures, provided they are not blank, are taken through to archival 8x10 fibre base gelatin silver photographs. If I can't make the creative and financial committment to do this when standing in front of the subject matter then the camera does not "click".

To pause, think, decide, and walk away saved me a lot of time and money when I was shooting 8x10 exclusively. Very few genuinely good opportunities escaped. Those that did still cause sleepless nights. Now that I shoot roll-film as well as sheet film the same thought process persists.

Time, energy, talent, vision, and imagination are in short supply here. Making "empty" exposures or contact sheets demands more than I can spare. I envy, a little, those who can do it.

Dan Henderson · Mar 18, 2006

I will probably get pounded and regret admitting this, but I make contact sheets digitally. It stems from an instructor who says his job is to make us as efficient as possible in the darkroom. And me, being one to take things to the next step, think why not crossover if it saves me time. So I develop my film carefully and with time honored, traditional methods, put my negs in Print File sleeves to protect them, then scan them. It takes two separate scans with my scanner to get all 12 negs scanned in medium format. I combine both scans into a single file, adjust the overall brightness of each frame as needed, then print them on my inkjet. I thereby avoid a separate darkroom session to print contact sheets, and can do the scanning and printing before work in the morning while I'm drinking coffee. In fact, I'm about to take it to the next step and print out work prints digitally as well. I can then see whether and where I need to crop, whether I need more or less contrast, where dodging and burning is needed, and finally, if the image is worth spending time on in the darkroom. A fine, fiber base, traditional silver print from a film negative is always my final objective, but I have no compunctions about using digital technology to achieve it.

celluloidpropaganda · Mar 18, 2006

I didn't want to be the first to broach the issue, but I've considered doing that. With 35mm, especially, I was thinking I could even do enlarged contacts the negatives and farm out 8x10s to Costco or someone, and then just keep a set of negative sheets with each roll.

eddym · Mar 19, 2006

I always do contacts. Yeah, it is tedious, but then so is processing film. Like many others, I then file the contacts and the film (in printfile pages) in a binder, by date, for safe storage and easy retrieval... that is, except for the recent ones stacked up on the back of my enlarger easel, which I will get around to filing one of these days...

--Eddy

JHannon · Mar 19, 2006

Among the other reasons mentioned, I find contact sheets helpful in locating that one keeper photo, (on the roll of 12) that was printed a year ago. I admire anyone who can pick out a good negative on the light table. I can't.

Wayne Frederick · Mar 19, 2006

I always make contact sheets, and I like to sit around and look at them trying to decide if any frames are worthy of enlargement. I have a piece of card with a cutout the size of a 35mm frame, that I place on the sheet over the frame under scrutiny. I learned this technique from one of David Vestal's books; it helps isolate the frame from all the clutter on the contact sheet. I also examine the sheets with a loupe on a lightbox to check for focus, etc. Once in a while I get around to making an actual enlargement.

Contact/Proof sheet: A necessary Evil?

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