Negative sleeves and contact sheets

[Trius]

As much as who it's for, I regard the key question as what it's for.

 

[David William White]

I'm ambivalent about whether to proof in sleeves or not, I just do it before I sleeve because that is the process I follow: it seems natural that they should be proofed before they are sleeved. And my sleeves don't contact print well. If you've got good sleeves and can weigh them down, they'd certainly be easier to handle, especially the curly Efke films, etc.

However, like Trius and Gumby, I'll have to put my foot down on dodging & burning contacts. That defeats the purpose of 'proofing'. That word means something, and as I've said before, it's not just making 'thumbnails' for filing or whatnot. When done in a standard manner (minimum time for maximum black) as described by Fred Picker and others, you get immediate feedback on both your exposure and your development. And then beyond that, it gives you an indication of time & filtration when you need to print. That valuable information would be lost if you were to dodge and burn the proof. You'd loose the 'proof'.

Consider that contact sheets are supposed to be made at the same aperture, height, & time for your standard films. No test strips, no second-go-at-it, just one fast, simple standard exposure, with immediate results in your tray, then negatives into their sleeves. Fiddling around with selective exposures on a contact sheet to make them 'pretty' not only destroys valuable information you will need later, it also seems to me it would eat up a lot of valuable time.

I appeal to those that have blown a whole week printing half a roll of film, starting all over again on each negative with time & filtration determination. The time taken to do a proper proof (about 3 minutes) will pay back enormously when it comes to getting the prints out the door.

 

[dfoo]

Don't get me wrong. I generally do a standardized process. 8 seconds with Tri-X for example, gives me a good contact sheet. Delta 400 is 12.6 seconds, and so on. The main issue is some of my rolls have been quite underexposed (ie: shooting ISO 800 or similar) and so therefore provide very very dark contacts at 8 seconds, and so therefore practically they need to be exposed at 4 seconds. I also note that on the contact sheet which makes it easier to determine base exposure when printing.

 

[Gumby]

As much as who it's for, I regard the key question as what it's for.

Indeed. Good point. Inferring one from the other might not always result in the correct answer!

 

[Trius]

Yeah, proof and contact sheets/prints are different, but the terms are often used interchangeably.

And yes, if a whole roll has been underexposed, a "standard" contact sheet can be close to useless.

 

[David William White]

The way I look at it, you 'proof' the camera work (the 'shoot') with a contact sheet. That's what tells you you've underexposed or underdeveloped, base fog levels & whether you need to tweak your process. Hardly useless. You need that artifact smacking you in the forehead when you get around to printing.

I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I wouldn't show anything other than final prints to a client. Great way to kill a deal, in my experience. Maybe to editors or printers, who are used to seeing 'works in progress'.

What I'm attempting to communicate is that a properly made contact sheet is a valuable tool for improving the quality of exposure and the quality of development, a lesson that I think has been increasingly overlooked. It's especially useful when one switches to an unfamiliar film or unfamiliar developer and needs to find the 'sweet spot'.

 

[Al Kaplan]

It was always standard to do a shoot and deliver contact sheets to the art director or editor when you shot B&W. With color you'd shoot 'chromes (slides). Everybody had a loupe handy, or they'd use the lens off of their camera as a loupe. "Proofs" were what you showed wedding and portrait customers.

 

[Trius]

See, a contact sheet was regularly called a proof sheet in my neck of the woods when the medium was roll film, or with 4x5 exposures ganged on an 8x10 contact print. I get the sense that there may be regional differences in terminology.

In any event, the original question was about contact sheets, and I'll be damned if I'm going to go back and read this entire thread to discover where the term "proof" was introduced!

 

[Al Kaplan]

Another thing that some of us would do on occasion, if time and budget allowed, was make enlarged "contact" sheets.You'd get your local glass place to cut 2 pieces of glass to about 5x12 inches, and round the edges and corners. This would fit in the Omega D-2 in place of the negative carrier. You could stick 3 strips of six between them, projecting first the 9 frames at one end onto 8x10 (or larger) paper, then the 9 frames at the other end. On 8x10 paper the images would be about 2x3 inches.

Some commercial labs had 8x10 enlargers and offered 16x20 "contacts" of the entire roll. In either case the resultant prints were referred to as "enlarged contacts".

 

[Al Kaplan]

Those of us who were doing short deadline work for newspapers got to the point where we could eyeball the negative and/or the image on the easel, make a single test strip of an important part of the image, then make the finished print including dodging and burning on the first sheet of paper. It might not be the best possible exhibition quality but it had shadow and highlight detail and reproduced just fine.

For 8x10 paper my timer is "locked" a ten seconds. I give additional needed overall exposure with the on-off switch when I'm doing my burning in, and if I need a second or two less overall I put my hand beneath the lens before doing selective dodging. It's really just a variation of the "sunny 16 rule" when +-exposing film.

 

[Gumby]

Another thing that some of us would do on occasion, if time and budget allowed, was make enlarged "contact" sheets. (snip) Some commercial labs had 8x10 enlargers and offered 16x20 "contacts" of the entire roll. In either case the resultant prints were referred to as "enlarged contacts".

On occasion I once found these useful... for showing to clients (and thought they might be useful to an AD but I have never had one of them as a client). 😉

The terminology, however, has always perplexed me.

 

[Al Kaplan]

What we need to do here wherever possible is hook up some "new" film photographers with some nearby old dogs that still remember their old tricks. Maybe even swap a bit of expertise, teaching the old dogs advanced keyboard and mouse techniques at the same time. I'm game if you live in the North Miami-Dade County, South Broward County area of South Florida.

Who else is game?

 

[rlouzan]

Al,

Brings back those good old memories😀 of when we had to chain those 4x Schneiders to the light tables😱.

Regards,
RLouzan

It was always standard to do a shoot and deliver contact sheets to the art director or editor wWen you shot B&W. With color you'd shoot 'chromes (slides). Everybody had a loupe handy, or they'd use the lens off of their camera as a loupe. "Proofs" were what you showed wedding and portrait customers.

 

[Gumby]

Brings back those good old memories😀 of when we had to chain those 4x Schneiders to the light tables😱.

I think about 4X Schneiders with the same question as when I think about paper clips: Where do they all go?

 

[rlouzan]

Ed,

Ha! ha! ha! must be the interchangeable translucent and opaque skirts🙂.

Best,
RLouzan

I think about 4X Schneiders with the same question as when I think about paper clips: Where do they all go?

 

[Al Kaplan]

Sounds like a plan for the co-eds that hang out at Starbucks ~ interchangeable translucent and opaque skirts.

 

[Gumby]

You need to cut back on the caffeine, amigo; your mind is racing out of control and may have crash landed in the gutter. 🙂

 

[Al Kaplan]

My mind lives in the gutter.

 

[David William White]

Yes. And in the end, I'm sure we'd all rather be hanging out with Al, chasing girls.

 

[Al Kaplan]

At this stage of the game I ain't chasing anybody. "Girls" nowadays means females under the age of sixty.