MY FIRST CONTACT SHEET!

[Sparky]

I thought I'd LONG ago lost several thousand (really!) of my earliest personal negs. I broke out the scanner I'd had long buried in a box and while looking for some earli-ER stuff to scan, I happened on an old 250-sheet fuji box. All my earliest stuff, including - the VERY first rolls of film I'd ever shot with ANY camera! (this was a Yashica my parents gave me for xmas one year).

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I'm QUITE excited about this. I'd like to go back and re-print some of it too. I scanned a few old things from my very first year doing photography - which was, ulp, 1982 or so... (actually two later shots from 86/87 slipped in - they're the ones on Kodak VPS & VHC).

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It'd be GREAT if we could post some more first contact sheets up here, too!

 

[Kino]

Great stuff! Looks like you had it from the start! Congratulations on the find!

 

[Sparky]

Very nice of you to say, Kino. I appreciate it - but can't really take credit for it. I cheated. I spent ALL my time drawing (and a bit of painting, etc.) when I was a kid. And I forced myself to read all the books available to me. So the medium was sort of a natural for me. There are still some shots that I like. But there are a heck of a lot of "what the hell were you THINKING sorts of shots also"... which is the funny part. I edited out some of that more embarrassing stuff. But those are the shots that are sort of fun to look at, to my mind.

It's been about ten years since I thought it was gone - I'd just forgotten I'd transferred it out of a series of three ring binders into photo paper boxes...!

J

 

[Sparky]

Actually - one alarming thing that I DID discover - was, in scanning these sheets of negs - that some of the C-41 had lost almost all it's color...! Unless my old scanner is way off... the negs look kind of wan, though! Especially the VHC (that was a film designed for intense color). I would expect a color SHIFT if anything... the ektacolor prints I have from the mid to late 80s still look quite good, despite a LITTLE bit of yellowing.

 

[Kino]

Color dyes are fugative; if you want to archive it, you have to do b&w color seps. Not an option many of us would consider, unless they have a huge body of color work...

 

[Sparky]

Understandable - it's just that I really wouldn't expect this from film processed in 1986 or 87. Maybe from the 1950s... anybody else having this experience??

 

[Jadedoto]

Hey, you did seem to have a running start! I wish my first contact sheet had as many keepers as that one.

Unfortunately, it took me a while before I figured out it was cheaper to make a contact sheet than printing them.