Contact sheet factory?

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

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

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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.

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.

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.

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..........