Contact sheet factory?

[sanking]

I am not able to evaluate the potential print quality from a negative so I have always made contact sheets. In the old days I made them in the darkroom. A number of years ago I switched to digital contact sheets. With ULF negatives I shoot them over a light box with a digital camera, one at a time. With MF and 5X7 film I put the negatives in Print File pages and scan the pages, at 600 dpi. I save these pages just as one would save a printed contact sheet. If I want to evaluate the potential of any given negative I open the page in Photoshop, select the image to be evaluated, and apply various tonal corrections to see how it will print. I find this procedure saves much time over making contact prints in the darkroom, and also gives me a lot more information to work with in evaluating how to best print the negative.

Sandy King

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

With ULF negatives I shoot them over a light box with a digital camera, one at a time.

That's what I do too but with 4x5 and 8x10 negatives and only the ones that have passed my "this has potential" step.

I have enough years of experience in the darkroom to evaluate without making contact sheets. For me, photo paper is a precious commodity and I'm on a tight budget as my wife keeps reminding me.

 

[hacked - sepiareverb]

I've found myself making contact sheets pretty regularly for the last few years, since returning to 35mm from 810. When looking back for something going through a notebook of contacts is way faster than trying to go through a notebook of negatives. I'm wishing I had proofsheets of more negative books.

 

[brianmquinn]

I also scan my negatives and print out injet contact sheets. It is good to keep track of negatives. I can also play around with contrast, tone and cropping to see what I like before heading off to the wet darkroom to acutually make the prints. I also like that I can email soft proofs so that the "client" can pick out what they like.

 

[TimVermont]

I have two projects this Autumn. First, make sense of my equipment and supplies, getting rid of what I don't need. Second, make contact sheets of all my past work that I haven't contacted yet. Just opened my third 250 sheet box of printing paper. It is tedious work, but I'm hoping that the first 500 were the hardest..........