Printed some colour contact sheets, couple of negatives, and finished the day with a test print stuck in the colour processing machine. All in all, a massive success. The machine is fine.
Film printing is slow, colour film printing is doubly so. This was probably the reason why I'd largely neglected printing contact film sheets. As with everything, it takes a number of test prints to get it right, which eats away from a productive day in a darkroom. Since I'm scanning all films, and generally have an idea on how difficult a given negative would be, an extra step with printing contact sheets seemed very time consuming and unnecessary. However there is plenty of difference between a digital film scan and an analogue print, so today I've brought some freshly developed film and printed a few contact sheets.
Well, I was wrong. Contact sheets are fun, and incredibly useful. Not a waste of time in any way.
Fair enough, getting an index print with every single frame properly exposed is sort of impossible. But these are also not meant to be framed and hanged. They are very much for figuring out how difficult a given shot will be to print. You can spot easy ones immediately. The difficult ones also stand out. Not to say you should give up on the difficult ones - but it helps with time planning and managing personal expectations.
They also look a lot like sheets of developed slide film. I love slide. I wish I could print it in a darkroom - we used to have a special process in the past for reverse printing positives onto a colour photographic paper. This way you get double benefit - a positive slide film, and a positive print with amazing colours.
Full day of printing at Stills darkroom in Edinburgh resulted in:
* 3 final contact film sheets
* 2 final prints from negatives
* 1 chewed up test print stuck in the colour processor at the end of the day
The chewed up print was a test print after all, which will hopefully end up as a final print of the Storr from the recent trip to the Isle of Skye.
Комментарии