A contact sheet is the best barometer of exposure and process there is. Totally unforgiving; a true taskmaster.
Agree. It is a very, very good tool. If you REALLY want to use it to get the most out of learning and optimizing your exposures and are willing to endure some PITA hassle now for rewards later, use your contact printing set up to find the "minimum exposure for maximum black" on your paper, with your set up, with the contrast filter (for VC) you choose as "normal," usually 2, 2.5 or 3, and then use that for your first contact sheet from a given roll from then on. Basically you make contact exposures through clear film base and find the minimum exposure that results in your paper's maximum black, darkest tone, exposed through that base. Then expose your contact sheets, at least the first one from each roll, for that time, at that aperture setting, with the enlarger at the same height, assuming you use an enlarger for a light source. A "perfect" exposure will be right on. More exposure resulting in too-light contact prints at that time won't necessarily be difficult to print well (they will usually print just fine with modern films unless they are VERY overexposed) but is denser than it needs to be which results in more grain than it needs to have. It could also result in reduced highlight detail but with most modern films that's not likely. Any exposure that looks too thin at that time is underexposed. You can, depending on how underexposed it is, still often make an acceptable, even good print from it, but it may not be as good and you will have to work more at it. If it has areas you want to print as black you will need to either burn them in or use a higher contrast filter which will push the blacks "down" but also the whites "up" and may result in having to burn the highlights for detail. It will also change midtone rendering due to different microcontrast in a way that may or may not look good to you.
It's not that hard to work out, but gives a pretty rigorous test of your film exposures. You will most likely end up shooting at something from 1/3 to 1 stop less than box speed if you calibrate your exposures with this method. But
maybe not.
Think about what you just wrote above. You've nailed the issue head on.
Because this is an exclusively chartered analog discussion forum, by reason of the fact that we are even here should make our preferences explicitly known. There should be no doubt. It says right in the site charter "non-digital". It can't be any more clearly stated, right?
And yet...
That so many here still feel the need to publicly differentiate themselves as analog photographers speaks volumes about the scope of the problem. No one here should ever have to defend their analog choices while visiting this exclusively analog discussion forum.
By definition, they should never even have cause to be challenged. They did not make a wrong turn. They are not in the wrong place. They are not lost and seeking the software abstracted light. They are exactly where they are supposed to be. They are exactly where they want to be.
And still their photo technology preferences are endlessly ridiculed as being too narrowly scoped. Not inclusive enough. Not modern enough. They are drinking too much wine, and not enough beer. And they are way too insistent that they like their wine better. How arrogant of them.
This needs fixing. And it will be truly fixed when the day comes that each group has their own identical space in which everyone choosing to enter that space can concentrate on practicing the preferred form of photography served by that space, and not be constantly sidetracked and forced to defend their preference.
Ken
Yes, but though it's an exclusively analog forum, that doesn't mean all the users are exclusively analog photographers (or even necessarily "prefer" it but just use it for at least some work, though I do certainly prefer it.)
I personally wouldn't mind allowing discussions of scanning to produce enlarged negatives for alternative processes, or optimizing for web display or the like, but I know I'm in the minority. Or at least among the vocal folks I am.
And that's totally ok because enlarged negatives for alternative process prints are right up the alley of the LFPF and such discussion IS allowed there, so...no problem. But I can see how the subjects will still come up, when someone bemoans the lack of any other good and reasonably easy way to print from slides now that Type R and Ciba/Ilfochrome are both gone for example.
