Workflow: Do you scan every image?

[.ken]

Do you scan every roll you develop or do you just look thru to see which ones are "good" and scan those. I was watching a Winogrand video and it looks like he cuts up and only marks shots he likes and gets them enlarged, even then he doesn't really care much about the rest to "save" them somehow... they're maybe archived and never looked at again. Then of course, he had quite a few thousand rolls...

 

[Bassism]

I usually scan everything. I've had a few occasions where I've skipped a neg then come back later and found I liked it, so now I usually just save myself the hassle.

The only exception is that Silverfast has a function where you can zoom in on a frame during the prescan. If I can obviously see that it's blurry or horribly exposed, then I don't bother. But I do tend to scan everything that checks out technically.

It helps that I only tend to shoot a roll a week. I imagine if I shot in higher volume, I might make contacts and choose from those or something.

 

[Keith]

I do scan every frame of every roll then go through and separate the shots I think are worth while and copy them into a sub folder. Sometimes it will be fives shots of the thirty six and other times twenty or more. These are the images I spend time on post processing and often in reality only a couple of these will really please me and finish up in my gallery.

The keepers get saved as full size tif files but the initial scan which is really just archival I save as compressed jpg's.

And then of course you have to archive the negatives!

 

[feenej]

I preview then scan the ones I like. I started throwing out the filmstrips with no photos that I bothered to scan. Hey, that reminds me, I was scanning a roll of film before supper...

 

[aad]

I scan everything on each roll of negatives, at a reasonable, not so high resolution.

I am selective with slides. And if I had prints made when the film was developed (rare), I only scan the good 'uns.

 

[DougFord]

I'll preview scan everything to get a better look at my shots. Then I'll decide which ones to scan and save as a tiff. If there's a strip that I decide not to scan any frames from, I'll usually just toss the strip.
The tiff files are saved and worked on at a later time. Often I'll go back and look at some of my older tiff files that i had previously thought didn't merit my full attention and have discovered that my opinion has changed with regards to the image.
Some of my favorite pics are ones that I had some interest in at the time I scanned them, but had for whatever reason, decided that they weren't Penski material. 🙁

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

No, I only pick the ones that have potential to scan. I shoot way too much to scan everything, and besides I shoot every photo a couple times as insurance against a developing problem, etc. So not every frame is needed, and of course even I take crappy photos occasionally LOL

 

[photogdave]

I also tend to preview scan every neg then only scan the ones I like at the time. I don't do this with mounted slides. I usually preview them on a light table.
I NEVER throw out a strip with images on them (unless they're all out of foucus but that never happens) because you never know how you may feel about an image in the future.
I sleeve and archive every frame I shoot.

 

[Bob Michaels]

Do you scan every roll you develop or do you just look thru to see which ones are "good" and scan those.

I edit negs tightly with a good loupe and a light table. I scan around 2 to 5% of what I shoot. Once a scan a neg, I am pretty much committed to seeing it through to an 8x10 proof print. There is also a very high attrition rate in proof prints as probably only 5% of them ever end up being a final print.

 

[bmattock]

I scan everything but total flubs.

 

[kipkeston]

I scan all 35mm photos. It's just easier that way.

 

[Morca007]

I scan everything except blank frames. I could probably save myself a little time and a few headaches if I scanned only the ones I like, a ta higher resolution than I do now, but for some reason I don't.

 

[dmr]

For negatives, I usually have a CD done at the lab, I'll re-scan only those I want to make a nice print of.

For blog, web, or work photos, I'll usually use the lab scan.

For slides, I'll scan the ones that look good. I frequently bracket, so I will not scan all but the one from the set that looks the best.

 

[Ronald_H]

Yes, I scan them all at max res, max bit depth. Yes, it takes a lot of time.

The good ones I keep as .tiffs, the less good ones as .jpegs. If a picture is really bad I delete the scan.

 

[md2008]

"Proof"

"Proof"

I make "proofs" use a digital SLR with macro lens and a light table to photograph the negs and batch convert the negs to positives to take a quick look. It takes about 10 minutes for a 36exp roll. Here's an example frame. The first photo is the "proof" and the second photo was made from scan by CS. They're small images just to see how well the proofs work, not to judge image quality.

 

[__hh]

On my V700, I can preview 24 negs (4 x strips of 6). Apart from the obviously badly exposed photos, I scan all of them at 2400 dpi (out of the possible 6400 dpi) and save them as jpegs.

I keep them for about 3 months. In that time, anything ***really good*** will be printed out (and possibly be scanned at higher res if needed). They are then burnt to CD/DVD/external HDD and all is then batch resized to 1600 pixels for storage on my main PC for casual viewing.

I don't bother saving them as ultra-high-res .tifs/RAWs/PSDs as I already have my negatives for that purpose 🙂

 

[Toby]

I lay the negs on my flatbed scanner and make a virtual contact sheet at 600 dpi. I then edit from that, works out much quicker than trying to scan all the 'maybe' negs individually.

 

[Nate Butler]

I cut my negs into strips of 6 frames, scan the entire strip at low res and assemble a contact sheet in Photoshop. Negs are stored in a PrintFile sleeve and stowed away in a binder (or a flower press if they're really curly). After several weeks, I'll review the PS contact and scan the keepers at a higher res.
I just got a light table and loupe for my birthday... I suspect that my process will change as the table and loupe are much more enjoyable to work on than a scanner and computer.

 

[funkaoshi]

I don't have a light table or a loupe, so I end up scanning my rolls so I can see if they turned out.

 

[maddoc]

I scan every single frame (except blank ones) of every film at 4800dpi (or 3200dpi in case of 120 color film) with either 24bit (color) or 16bit (BW). and save them as jpg. I roughly adjust the contrast (exposure) and set USM to medium using the Epson software. The V700 scans 24 frames (135) within ~50 min (color) or ~ 40 min (BW) using this settings and I usually start the scan process at night before sleeping. Since I usually shoot up to 20 rolls per month and develop them myself, it turned out to be the most practicable way for me.

In Adobe PS, I only downsize for web, sometimes crop a little or make small adjustments for the contrast.