Contact sheets - Got a gap in my hybrid workflow...

[Bobfrance]

Hi Folks,

The desire to do my own film developing, plus reduced cost and incresed convenience, have ensured I have returned to souping again. Something I got out of the habit doing after moving house last year.

I'm not set up for producing prints and I'm not sure I will be anytime soon, but in the meantime I'm happy to scan in good images to post up to Flickr and the RFF gallery. The very best I will send off the neg for professional enlargement (or scan in hi-res and print digital if they need any retouching first).

My problem is that I could really do with a contact print from the negs so I can select which shots are worthy of further attention, but although I do have some of the gear I don't have a darkroom or the space to set anything up. Besides it's a lot of fuss and expense to go to to produce contact prints.

Are there any other alternatives apart from trying to judge the negs through a loupe? I did think of scanning but whilst I can scan up to 14 at a time, it stil is really a painfull business and a low-res scan (14 hi res would kill my PC!) probably wouldn't tell me what I needed to know.

I'd welcome any suggestions. For instance could I make contact prints without having to set up trays etc? Are there new fangled gizmos that I know nothing about?

Thanks in anticipation

Bob.

Edit: I plan to do 35 and 120 B&W negs BTW.

 

[Frank Petronio]

Nothing money can't solve -- look for a flatbed with an 8x10 inch transparency capability like the Epson 4990/700/750 and scan all 36 neg in an archival sleeve.

 

[gns]

Do you keep your negs in clear plastic binder pages? Just place the entire page on a flatbed scanner for a digital "Contact sheet".

edit: Here...http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/digital-contacts.shtml

 

[Bobfrance]

Thanks for the input guys.

I use clear archival sleeves and my Epson 2450 should be able to scan them all in, But surely in order to get enough detail out of them to tell if the image is any good the filesize would be massive?

 

[gns]

Well, it's pretty much the same problem as traditional 35mm contact sheets. You can't really see much even with a good lupe, so you have to make enlargements of a lot of "Potential" frames just to get a good look at them.

 

[Bobfrance]

Fair point. I'll certainly give it a try.

It would be good to have some kind of sheet I can store with the negs for quick reference .

 

[fbf]

I use the ContactsheetII function in photoshop cs3 and I then either print it myself or send it to local shops or online stores (adorama for example). I usually print them in 6x9. It works great for me.

 

[Sparrow]

I use the ContactsheetII function in photoshop cs3 and I then either print it myself or send it to local shops or online stores (adorama for example). I usually print them in 6x9. It works great for me.

It’s no help to Bob, but the contact sheet in iphoto works really well, it will fit more frames onto the page that the one in CS

 

[Bobfrance]

Well I just tried dumping a set of negs onto the bed of my scanner (Epson with transparency hood) and I have to say the results were initially pretty poor. The images came out dark with a low flat histogram meaning there wasn't much detail in there to lift out with levels adjustment. Then I remembered to keep the negs clear of the scanners calibration area.

The second attempt came out much better. Not as good as a proper contact sheet but good enough to give me an idea what they're like and keep for reference.

 

[ClaremontPhoto]

Take the negatives to a photo store minilab, not a supermarket minilab, and ask them for a scan and contact print.

 

[Bobfrance]

That's a thought Jon - I could do, but I can only get to one once a week if I'm lucky, which does kind of take the convenience out of it.

Besides I want to shoot more MF (which I assume most photolabs can't scan) and doing all this stuff will hopefully make it more economically viable for me.