How do you edit your films in 2013?

How do you edit your films in 2013?

  • Contact print -- the traditional way!

    Votes: 15 11.0%

  • Scan every exposure in Low Res

    Votes: 29 21.3%

  • Scan every exposure in High Res

    Votes: 52 38.2%

  • Look at negatives / slides in a light table or similar

    Votes: 39 28.7%

  • Scans are made by lab when film is developed

    Votes: 16 11.8%

  • Other (please explain!)

    Votes: 10 7.4%
  • Total voters
    136
B&W and color negatives are scanned at medium low resolutions, imported in LR, tagged as contacts, contrast and lightness quick adjusted and printed in a contact style for archival. Selection is made on a computer monitor and the good ones are than scanned at higher resolution and worked as they need.
Slides are edited on the light table and than scanned in appropriate resolution, depending on final use.
robert
PS: of course than everything has multiple backups.
 
clayne said:
I'm considering his children (if any), his relatives, his community, etc. all of which may later appreciate the physical medium when and if the virtual one doesn't pan out as he may think it to. It's just plain destructive to shred negatives.
Click to expand...

It is indeed plain destructive to shred negatives. That's actually the point of shredding something. Destruction is not inherently bad, though.

I'm sure Godfrey very much appreciates your heartfelt consideration for his family and community but I don't think he has any moral obligation to preserve his images for others. If that were the case then it would follow that people in general have a moral obligation to take pictures (as destroying the negs is essentially the same as never having taken the images on film at all).
 
My Workflow
  • Develop and Dry as my tested and tried method
  • Cut into 6 frame strips
  • mount in the V700 Film holder
  • Preview and edit each negative I will scan (basic levels and curves)
  • scan at 3200dpi tiff as a 16bit gray scale. (about a 95mb file)
  • open in PSCC and finish editing
  • Save as a 16bit JPG or 16bit Tiff
  • Use FastStone Image Resizer to make 2500pix on the long side files for web use
  • Use FastStone Image Resizer to make a Contact Sheet of the smaller files, and print it
  • File the Negatives, and label the file holder, and place the contact sheet in the sleeve of the file holder. "Print File #CP 35-6HB"
  • Hang the File Holder in my large Horizontal Commercial file cabinet with a TAB that has basic info of the Roll.
That is my normal workflow for 35mm B&W films


with my Dads stuff, 35mm Negs or slides, MF B&W and LF (4x5)... I scan a high enough resolution to include all the detail.

That can vary with the negative size... for instance, 4x5 are scanned to make about 150mb file.
 
Lauffray said:
This got me curious again, has anyone done this say with an Epson V500 ? ( digital contact sheet by scanning the negatives in the sleeves)
Click to expand...

The V500 does not have a full page transparency illuminator like the V700/750 model. You need that to scan a full page of negs or slides.

I make 'digital contact sheets' by scanning all the negs and then outputting them into a print or JPEG formatted as a grid. Its a great way to see the results of a roll of film all together. I'll post my latest roll, taken with the Nikon F, in a little bit.

G
 
Godfrey said:
The V500 does not have a full page transparency illuminator like the V700/750 model. You need that to scan a full page of negs or slides.

I make 'digital contact sheets' by scanning all the negs and then outputting them into a print or JPEG formatted as a grid. Its a great way to see the results of a roll of film all together. I'll post my latest roll, taken with the Nikon F, in a little bit.

G
Click to expand...

How do you output the grid?
 
Believe or not, but on B/W film, I have no problem to check it for OOF, just by naked eye.
Here is also option for Epson Scanner preview thumbnails to get them larger, if I'm not mistaken, but regular size is good enough to make decision before scan.

I don't know how to work with photo enlager yet. But going to for only few selected photos.
 
I
*Develop at home (B&W) or wherever (not B&W)
*Eyeball the negatives, or use a backwards 50 if I'm in the mood
*Take macro shots in the window light with my 1DS mark ii & FD 50mm macro lens on an extension tube, on a tripod, with a slide holder
*import to Lightroom
*Invert in PS
*adjust in Lightroom
*throw negatives into a pile / in a book 🙁 <--this needs to change soon
 
I usually scan the whole page of negs on my Epson 4990 flatbed as a 'digital contact'. I mainly use it for selection, though, so I don't worry that much about quality at this stage (there can be some weird irregular color shifts and shadows when scanning through the sleeves).

Another way to quickly view my images is by simply setting my iPhone to "Invert colors" (Settings->General->Accessability) and using the camera as a negative viewer. I have set it so this function is accessible through a triple-click on the home button. Works best with large bw negs against a cloudy sky. The smaller the negs, the harder it is to see anything. If it's color you get a strong blue cast (although you can filter it out with a gel if you don't mind the effort). Using a light table words well but you have to lock exposure beforehand otherwise you get a banding effect.
 
Godfrey said:
Thank you for your heartfelt concern.

The archival form of my photographs is in prints and books. Negatives are merely the recording media, they're not finished photographs IMO.
Click to expand...


I agree 100%. It's not a photo until it's a print and that is your archive.

Thanks
Joe
 
About degrading of negatives. On three occasions now I've been given negatives by people who had familly collections they'd inherited with a request for scanning. Up to 500 or more negatives in multiple formats and all stored very badly. Almost without exception I was able to give them back a disc of very viewable images that gave them an immense amount of pleasure.

Film is very resilient!
 
Original master aka the negative is by far the most important part of the archive. Prints are of course good to have, but I'd rather have an archived negative than an archived print any day of the week. You can't go backwards with a print to a negative (without serious loss) but you can always go forwards with a negative to a print (with no loss).

It would be like movie studios archiving release prints as the authoritative source of material and yet no sane studio does this. They archive original negatives, internegs or interpos, etc. and probably a few select release prints - but when it comes time to do a rerelease, they're heading back to some of the internegs or interpos based directly off the source negative.

Even after DI, they're sure as heck not ultimately relying on the data storage medium containing the post DI work. They're all printing to archive stock (*and* 3-color separations) as a long-term backup of the final edit *alongside* data-storage (if any).
 
Keith said:
About degrading of negatives. On three occasions now I've been given negatives by people who had familly collections they'd inherited with a request for scanning. Up to 500 or more negatives in multiple formats and all stored very badly. Almost without exception I was able to give them back a disc of very viewable images that gave them an immense amount of pleasure.

Film is very resilient!
Click to expand...

I'd done quite a few successful image restorations too, from both negatives and prints. That does not contradict the fact that the originals are badly damaged and degraded, no matter how 'resilient' the medium.

Of course, one could ask "If the medium is so resilient, how come it's so much easier to restore a scan of a damaged negative or print than to restore it in the darkroom?" ];-)

G
 
I have to question your archive methodology if you're seeing significant damage in under 30 years. Motion picture houses do what they do to protect their assets in the most foolproof fashion possible. Ask yourself why they're printing even digitally shot movies back to film stock for long term archiving. Do you think they don't know the research?
 
Come on guys, lets get back on topic, please.

I'm very glad that we have such a vivid discussion here 'cause I feel that the process of selecting images from a film strip is a very important part of the workflow.
However, whether you archive your negatives or shred them respectively is a completely different matter. (personally i have the impression that godfrey knows exactly what he's doing and only time will tell who's right or wrong).

Regarding my own technique: when shooting C41 I get pretty decent scans from my lab which I then import to LR. Selection is done in grid view on the computer monitor. The scans are rather small but colours are perfect, so i can use them for posting right away.
I did contact prints of my BW films in the past, but nowadays I just squint at the negatives and scan the promising ones. Thats far from perfect, i'd rather use one of the digital contact printing methods mentioned above, but sadly I don't have a flatbed scanner.

Regards, SayCheese
 
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