Making Contacts

Last episode I shared my experience returning to making prints in the darkroom after a couple decades away from that particular form of photographic alchemy. Having my images exist in the world as prints is a huge deal to me as a photographer. Wonderful though the ability to share images across the world online is, the print is the real end product I have in mind throughout the entire process. It's the one thing can truly be called a photograph.

A contact print from a roll of  6x7 negatives. The 8x10 photo paper is a little short on real estate with this format. 

But restoring the capacity to make prints fills in a less obvious hole that I didn't mention in my last post because I think it's important enough to warrant its own post. That hole I'm referring to was my former inability to make proper contact sheets.

Contact sheets are usually thought of simply as a quick cheap way of viewing your negative as positives, a tool for selecting the best images. If that's all there was to it then a quick low resolution scan of each new image, which is what I have been doing,would be a worthy substitute. But a properly made contact sheet is much more than this however because, in a sense, it's the only way to see your negatives as they are.

As it is, or at least has been, I've been evaluating new images on screen that have each been individually adjusted for exposure and contrast by the scanning software. Looking at these I'm able to determine some things about how good my choices have been with respect to exposure and development. Empty shadows or blasted highlights would tell me if the exposure was way off, but black and white film allows a good margin for errors of this kind, and the Fuji Acros I rely on most heavily has possibly the widest latitude of any general purpose film made. But it's one thing to know an exposure falls somewhere within this generous boundary, quite another to know it landed right where you intended and won't reqire drastic measures to print like an extreme contrast grade once it does make it to the enlarger. All I can really tell from a scan is whether a negative is ultimately salvageable. My aspirations are a bit higher than to produce negatives that are salvageable.

Enter the correctly made contact sheet. For those of you who not versed in standard darkroom practice contact sheets are made by laying negatives emulsion (dull) side down on a sheet of photo paper under an enlarger or other light source, laying a sheet of glass over the top to press them hard against the paper then exposing the thusly made photo sandwich under the light source. When the paper is developed you wind up with a sheet of unenlarged positive images of each negative. By correctly made I mean that the contact sheet is made using a standard middle contrast grade and given just enough exposure to render unexposed margins of the film at maximum paper black and no more. These are the conditions under which the images on the contact sheet should appear normal. If by and large they don't it's a sign you need to make some adjustments. If your images are too flat or too contrasty then the time your film spends in the developer should be adjusted accordingly (more time = more contrast). If they are too light or dark then you should adjust the ISO you set next time you are using that film. Since no adjustments are being made to compensate for the shortcomings of individual images the contact sheet is giving you the unaltered truth about your exposure and development routine.

A contact sheet of 35mm negs from decades past. 

My plan going forward is to make contact sheets from all my new work rather than scanning each and every individual negative to keep them stored one and all filed away on my hard drive which has been my practice to date. Having run a few contact sheets from previously shot and scanned rolls I've been reassured that my own exposure and development practices have been close enough to spot on to keep me happy. I have discovered a bit of a sticky problem however, for while twelve 6x6 cm negatives cut into four strips of three negatives fit nicely onto an 8"x10" sheet of photographic paper, ten of the 6x7 cm negatives I get from my weapon of choice the RB67 cut into two strips of two images and two strips of three images do not. Even the much less common 8.5"x11" size is a bit too narrow. The situation is no better when I shoot 35mm. Consider the contact sheet above, one I made many a year ago when I cut negatives into strips of five. As you can see seven strips of five images fit just perfectly on an 8"x10" sheet, but a quick bit of math and you'll realize the problem when you're shooting rolls of 36 exposures. These days I cut 35mm film into strips of six, which runs me into the same paper width issue. Looks like I need to get my hands on some 9.5"x12" paper, meaning I'll not only need larger trays but figure out a way to stack them. I'm already at the limit with 8"x10" trays in a darkroom that's dangerously close to qualifying as closet sized. Looks like another project has been added to the list. (SFX: grumbling noises) I'll keep you posted.