Say "No" to the Scans (But "Yes" to the Prints!) Part Two: Making Contact

In part one of Say "No" to the Scans (But "Yes" to the Prints) I explained why I had decided to stop scanning my black and white negatives and begin scanning the actual darkroom prints that I make from those negatives. For those film photographers who do not have (or want to have) access to a darkroom, this will not be a feasible direction. Furthermore, many film photographers possess advance scanning and digital editing skills that make scanning from a print unnecessary or even pointless. I, however, do not possess those skills, and I do not care to invest the time and effort to acquire them. I would much rather spend that time in the darkroom learning how to make better prints.

Why Contact Prints?

My previous article presented my new black and white photography workflow, and essential to that workflow is the contact print. The contact print serves as the replacement for negative scans, which I previously used to choose which negatives to print. Now, I look through my contact prints and choose  the negative(s) I will work on at my next printing session. However, I do not make traditional contact prints using a sheet of photographic paper. Paper is expensive, and since I am still in the beginning stage of my printing journey, I already waste more paper than I care to. Besides, I want to be able to look through my contact sheets in a more convenient way and anytime I care to, whether I have them with me or not. In other words, it's digital technology to the rescue!

Tools Needed

In short, I make digital contact sheets using a light table, a smartphone or tablet computer, an app that uses my device's camera to "see" the negatives as if they were positives and a pdf app to assemble my contact sheets into a single digital "book." Here is my setup:

Zecti A4 LED Light Box (8.5"x12")

My Zecti light LED light table is one of the most useful photography-related tools I have ever purchased. Whether I am looking a negatives or slides, this light table allow me to easily see and evaluate my developed film. Furthermore, it's portable, easy to store, powered by any USB power source, and at $25.99, a steal.

Apple iPhone or iPad

I can use either, although my iPhone has a better camera and is easier to manipulate. Android phones or tablets work just as well.

Film Lab

Film Lab ($5.99, available for Apple and Android) is a camera app for smartphone or tablet that "sees" in reverse, that is, the lights become darks and the darks become lights. Therefore, when is sees a negative being illuminated from behind (with a light table, for example,) it turns the negatives into positives. It works with both black and white and color negatives. After you have tapped its shutter button to capture the positive image, you can use its editing tools to quickly crop the frame and adjust exposure, contrast, and color. Once edited, the resulting contact sheet can be saved as a photo on your device.

Film Lab has a very low rating on the Apple App Store, and I think that is because people think that it can be used to make the equivalent of a negative scan of a single frame. It can do this, but the quality is nowhere near as good as with using a scanner. However, its real usefulness is in making a contact sheet of an entire roll of film. All I want is to be able to see what shots are on a particular roll of film and get a general idea of the worthiness of each frame. Film Lab does this very well.

Preview for Mac OS

Preview comes free with ever Mac. I use Preview to annotate the contact sheets, convert the jpeg files that Film Lab creates to pdf files, and assemble the pdf files into one master file. Adobe Reader works fine on Windows as well.

Contact Sheet Workflow

1.  The developed roll of film is cut into strips of six frames and inserted in a Print File negative page.

2.  The negative page is placed on my light table.

3.  I use my smartphone or tablet and the Film Lab app to take a photo of the illuminated negatived page, and Film Lab reverses the image into a positive. I also quickly adjust exposure and contrast and save the photo to my camera roll on my device.

4.  On my Mac, I find the photo in my cloud photo service (Photostream) and drag it to my desktop.

5.  I open the photo file with Preview and annotate it with information such as roll ID, date, camera, film, processing, and subjects. Then I export it to my desktop as a pdf file.

6.  Once I had done all of these steps to all of my negative pages, I used Preview to combine them into a single master pdf document. Here is how that is done in Preview. Here is how to do it using Adobe Reader.

7.  I drag the master pdf file into the iBooks app on my Mac, which will then sync up with my iPhone and iPad. Now, I can view my entire "book" of contact sheets anytime. Obviously, you also could drag this file into any cloud service that allows you to read pdf files (Google Drive, for example.)

Now, whenever I repeat this process with a new roll of film, I will simply add the new contact sheet to the master pdf file and replace the old file in iBooks with the new file.

Less is More

The seven steps may seem like a lot to some, but they are not in reality, especially if you know your way around the creating and storing of pdf files. And let's be honest:  The time it takes to make a contact sheet with this workflow is much less than the time I needed to scan, edit, label, and import negatives using my scanner and photo editing software. Also, I don't use near as much disc space with a contact sheet as I would with scans of each frame on a negative. And, as I made clear, if I do want a digital file of a negative, I will scan the print. Why? Because the print is the final expression of the photograph, not the negative.

When I returned to darkroom printing last January, I had no real plan regarding what negatives should be printed. Often I would make the decision in the darkroom, which wasted time and something paper. Now, I will plan ahead by perusing my virtual contact sheet book before I leave for the darkroom. I even can make decisions as to what strategies might be needed to get a good print, based on what I see in the contact sheet. Hopefully, the end result will be more prints in less time with less wasted paper, while gaining experience and confidence in my (hopefully) growing printing skills. In the long run, I hope to become a better photographer from camera to print.

Say "No" to the Scans (But "Yes" to the Prints!) Part One: Can the Scan

I have made a big decision regarding my film photography workflow, and I would like to share it with you. From now on, I will not be scanning my black and white negatives. Instead, I only will be scanning darkroom prints of my negatives (this article concerns my black and white photography only. I will continue to scan my color negative film as I have done since I returned to shooting film in the spring of 2017). In the next few paragraphs, I will explain how I came to this decision, why I think it will serve me better, and what my new workflow will look like going forward.

Hometown Brew (darkroom print scan)

Oh, the Irony . . .

Before I begin, however, I want to recognize the irony of this decision, as it was the ability to scan negatives into positives (using my Epson Perfection V500 Photo flatbed scanner) that was a major factor in my returning to film photography, along with the ability to develop my own film at home, especially color negative film. At the time, I was so excited by the prospects of existing in a digital world and still being able to shoot film, and I was content with that blended workflow. In fact, the more skills I learned, such as dust control and getting my scanner to scan two six-frame film strips without stopping while both naming the images and saving them in a specified folder, the more the workflow satisfied me. But now that's all changed, and here's why.

Post Office Eagle (darkroom print scan)

When Did I Know . . . ?

Thanks to invaluable advice I have received from mentors coupled with practice and persistence, I have started making darkroom prints of which I am quite proud. And one of the things I liked most about them was . . . they look much better than most of my negative scans. Sometimes the scanner gave my negatives more grain, and sometimes the contrast was more or less what I thought should be. My darkroom prints tended to  look more like I envisioned when I snapped the shutter. Admitedly, my lack of digital editing skills is responsible for this disparity, but nothing I have ever done with a photography on a computer has ever made me feel like how I feel when I see my finished darkroom print. So recently, when I was asked by the owner of my local community darkroom (Safelight District Community Darkroom in Chattanooga, Tennessee) if I would contribute two photographs for a local arts website, I mindlessly found the negative scans and looked at them with great disappointment. They did not represent the "final say" that my actual prints do. In fact, the scans, like the development of the negatives, were done at home and did not represent Safelight District either. In the end, I decided to try scanning the prints, and the results blew me away. The scans looks much better and much more like the prints. It was then that I realized that I had "outgrown" my previous workflow.

Superior Pilsen (darkroom print scan)

Reflections on Clouds (darkroom print scan)

A Change for the Better . . .

So why will scanning my prints rather than my negatives serve me better? I think the best way to answer that question is with a series of statements:

1.  I have come to understand that the print is the full and final expression of my photography in every way, including and especially quality.

2.  My return to film photography was not motivated by a desire to improve my digital photo editing skills.

3.  I am not compelled to print or even share every frame of a roll, so there is no need to scan the whole roll.

4.  I am very interested in improving my ability to read negatives and not depend on the crutch of negative scans to form a vision of the final image.

5.  I am feeling less compelled to "share" my photographs online, but I love getting my prints into the hands of people, even for free (but I also love selling them, of course.)

6.  While not a terribly nostalgic person, I believe that I am more greatly understanding and appreciating what it was to be a photographer before the digital age.

A New (Old) Workflow . . .

1.  Develop the film either at home or at the darkroom.

2.  Make a contact sheet of the roll.*

3.  Use the contact sheet to choose what frames to print.

4.  Choose which prints (if any) to scan for the purpose of sharing online.

* but not the way you might think.

Making Contact . . .

The main component of the above workflow is the contact sheet, which is made by laying strips of negatives on top of a sheet of analog photo paper and exposing the paper to light.** However, photographic paper is expensive, so I have come up with a digital solution that allows me to make contact sheets that I can take with me on my iPad or even iPhone and not waste paper. In part two of Say "No" to the Scans (But "Yes" to the Prints!), I will break down my contact sheet workflow that, I believe, will make me much more efficient and effective in the darkroom.