Ah! The old proofing service!
Ah! The old proofing service!I no longer have the patience to print out every negative on every roll of C41 film, so I just send them off to be processed and printed for me so that I can look through all the prints at my own pace.
I specifically, deliberately, and in particular never never do contact sheets. Instead I print every negative, blanks and disasters aside, to the best of my ability even if it takes a bit of extra darkroom time.
This way of thinking emerged from my background in large format photography where every negative starts off being expensive and after exposure and processing becomes a commitment.
In recent years I've shot more roll film but I still ask myself the same hard question:
"Do I like this subject, this composition, enough to take the trouble to get the camera work right, to get the processing right, and to do the darkroom work in full?"
If the answer is no or maybe then I just don't take the shot. If the answer is yes then it stays yes all the way to the final print.
The obvious advantage to me is to get a better quality return for the amount of film shot and effort invested. The downside is due to a personal shortfall in talent, energy, and imagination that deceives me into passing up pictures I now regret not taking.
This was my enthusiastic idea when I started with darkroom printing two months ago, but I quickly realized it was far from reality given my current level of experience. It would take an enormous amount of paper just to print a single roll, and I have hundreds. I assume you shoot large format and print fewer images than you would if you were shooting 35mm.
I’d still like to print all my images, but I’m not sure if that will ever happen. One roll of 37 exposures would require at least 100 sheets of paper, and a box of 100 ILFORD MG FB WT 5x7 costs over $120. Not to mention the time it would take to print hundreds of rolls, which would also mean less time to take new photos. The more I write, the more I realize how unrealistic this is!
Buy yourself a cheap LED light box and teach yourself how to spot the faults that make a negative a reject and not worth printing. Things like missed focus, camera shake, under-exposure, bad composition. Then you’ll have very few to print, maybe 1 to 4 per roll, unless you are outstandingly good or very uncritical!
Alternatively, buy a scanner and use that to check whether you’ve captured what you intended. You’ll still need to examine negatives directly though, because scanners don’t capture everything.
I scan all my negs for years so I have them all in Lightroom. Of course, if I'm being critical, maybe 10% is worth printing. If I'm being very critical, that ratio is even lower. But there are many family snapshots, kids, travel, street photos, that are not masterpieces by any means, but would be cool to have them printed. What I end up printing is some abstract work, that I love, but maybe nobody else would care about it
My point is: I'll probably not ever print most of these negs in silver just because it's time consuming and expensive, even though I'd like to have them all printed, it's not worth. I’ve printed a lot of inkjets on the highest quality archival paper, calibrated everything to perfection, but they just don’t resonate with me. To me, inkjets are more like physical alternatives to screens—they don’t feel the same as my silver or platinum prints. But that’s okay, we’re not living in an ideal world.
I scan all my negs for years so I have them all in Lightroom. Of course, if I'm being critical, maybe 10% is worth printing. If I'm being very critical, that ratio is even lower. But there are many family snapshots, kids, travel, street photos, that are not masterpieces by any means, but would be cool to have them printed. What I end up printing is some abstract work, that I love, but maybe nobody else would care about it
My point is: I'll probably not ever print most of these negs in silver just because it's time consuming and expensive, even though I'd like to have them all printed, it's not worth. I’ve printed a lot of inkjets on the highest quality archival paper, calibrated everything to perfection, but they just don’t resonate with me. To me, inkjets are more like physical alternatives to screens—they don’t feel the same as my silver or platinum prints. But that’s okay, we’re not living in an ideal world.
If you feel like enjoying some contact sheet storytelling:
I make digital contact sheets in photoshop from scans and print to my office copy machine and keep them all in large binders by year...I'm 2 years behind at the moment. I like to have everything through time in this reference book form for easy leafing.
If you feel like enjoying some contact sheet storytelling:
Thanks Daniela !
Funny you posted that today. I have 5 hours booked in the darkroom, with just contact sheets on the menu. Rhythm is about 5 an hour. Tedius, but necessary (for me, at least). Got to see more clearly why there are some film/developer combos I'll never try again.
You need a darkroom assistant Alex to speed up the production!.
If I've got a bunch to do, I do 4 - 6 at a time and put them into a paper safe after exposure.
Then I develop them together, shuffling them in the tray.
It is easy enough to remake any with adjusted exposure if required.
........... I haven't been sleeping well — too much work, and some personal matters that are causing stress. I'm too tired for the type of concentration and attention needed to work on a print, but since just being in the darkroom is a balm, churning one contact sheet after the other is pure joy, even if I do take the work itself quite seriously.
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When I started again to shoot film in 2017 after thinking it was done for around 10 years earlier (zero distributors in my area) I took on the habit to scan them, and after 3-4 years I found myself with more than 80 rolls that I could only inspect on the PC.
I decided that was way too uncomfortable so ditched the digital flow altogether and in around an year and a half (whilst shooting more and more film rolls) I managed to cover ALL of my rolls with contact sheets.
In the process, as already mentioned by others, I found a number of photos I totally overlooked, and really loved to print those anew, it was like rediscovering photos that I liked, or that reminded me of some moment I almost forgot.
Btw this is the first post after a long lurking period. Nice to meet ya all!
Contact sheets are the most amazing tool for "scrolling" through photographic archives. I've been going through an archive of some 3,000+ contact sheets since my PhD, and they tell so much more about an artist than just their best prints.
You see all the outtakes, all the context, the shots that were taken for no specific reason but that, half a century later, show something incredibly rare or meaningful. You see people fooling around, waiting for the camera to be ready. You get to know what film was used, and how people worked.
They're also amazing mixed-media documents, because unlike prints and negatives, people wrote on them, scratched them, tore them, touched them, and circulated them without care. An old contact sheet is almost like a medieval manuscript, showing layers and layers of interactions with people, commentaries, commentaries on the commentaries, and so on!
I'm working on putting together a photobook with these materials, which I hope to see in press later this year.
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