contact "prints"

N

nickchew

Guest
I was wondering how I could scan all my negs in a roll at once to get a contact print.
I put the negs in a plastic film holder and on my flatbed canon scanner, put a piece of glass on top to flatten the film (unsuccessful). I used a table lamp which I hand held and moved along as the scanning strip moved.

this is what I got.



Anyone got a better way of doing this?

Thanks

Nick
 
That is actually pretty good result for your work, using a lamp? Short of making a contact print the old fashion way with an enlarger, you'll have to scan all of them then use something like Photoshop (or equiv.) to create one. Photoshop has a Contact Sheet feature but you won't get the cool film sprockets ;).

Todd
 
Very innovative, Nick, and it seems to have worked pretty well, too! This is somewhat similar to what I used to do in the darkroom. I put the neg strips in a PrintFile sheet for storage, then placed an 8x10 sheet of enlarging paper under the enlarger head, put a clean 8x10 pane of window glass on top to hold it flat, and gave it an exposure with the enlarger. Later I found a source of 8.5x11 single-weight enlarging paper, and that was better. Kept 'em in a three-ring binder.
 
Folks at the turn of the century and after, used to do contact sheets of LF neg sheets using...the window of the house!:D
 
Nick, I thought of doing the same but you actually did it! Another method is to use a thin light table for even illumination.
I believe that most of Edward Weston's prints from his large format camera were contact prints made with sunlight as his illumination. I love the photos of your girls!
 
nickchew said:
I was wondering how I could scan all my negs in a roll at once to get a contact print.
I put the negs in a plastic film holder and on my flatbed canon scanner, put a piece of glass on top to flatten the film (unsuccessful). I used a table lamp which I hand held and moved along as the scanning strip moved.
Click to expand...

Years ago I saw a web site of a guy that had an 8x10 inch florencent slide previewer that he would flip up-side-down ontop of slides or negatives - he was using some UMAX scanner
 
Zorkiiglaza said:
Nick, I thought of doing the same but you actually did it! Another method is to use a thin light table for even illumination.
I believe that most of Edward Weston's prints from his large format camera were contact prints made with sunlight as his illumination. I love the photos of your girls!
Click to expand...

I have a film scanner that takes only 1 frame at a time. It is tedious and hence I wanted/needed and alternative way to view all the photos quickly. Since I do all the film processing myself it would seem silly to send it to a shop to get a contact sheet done.

I think your suggestion of the light table is a good one. With that I would not even have to use a piece of glass to hlod the negs down.

The girls are very used to seeing me with a camera. They have learnt that the small black (bessa) camera and the small silver (G2) camera have no picture window at the back to see what daddy just shot. It is only the big camera (DSLR) that they can shout "i want to see" before see themselves on the back. ;-)

Thanks

Nick
 
great idea nick, I'm going to try this! I also have a slide previewer I could slap on top. Hmmm I may actually be able to get MF negs scanned this way...
 
I think it was the February issue of Shutterbug that has an article where the author used a light box (home made I think) to place on the top of his scanner (your method is obviously cheaper and evidently works quite well).

DPIC at http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/gmm/fwgraphictools.html purports to make a contact sheet. As it says:

DPIC (Digital Picture Index Creator) allows you to create a picture index (contact sheet) from a directory and save it as single JPEG image. You can customize the output in detail, specify the size, select color fonts, details to include and image quality.

I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but hope to soon.
 
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