View Full Version : Time lag between snap and see
Martyn
31st May 2015, 10:45 AM
I have many exposed rolls of film in my fridge going back five years. That is I expose rolls of film, put a bundle of them in sandwich bags with a scrap of paper indicating approximate date and leave them nestled between the various food stuffs until I have the urge to do a mass process. Sometimes, if I need the work for an exhibition maybe, or if I'm giving a lecture, I process them within weeks of snapping them, sometimes I leave them for months, sometimes years. I have found that the nearer to the exposure time that I see the picture, the less I am interested in the results, my editing process is different, my printing concerns are more difficult. If I wait a long time between snap and see however, my treatment is far more respectful - like meeting a long lost friend perhaps. I will take a longer time in the darkroom finding the right 'groove' for the print. I know that Winogrand's compulsive shooting led to him leaving thousands of rolls of undeveloped film to be discovered upon his death, not that I am comparing my work to his, no, this hoarding impulse appears to be a common phenomenon. How do other members treat their film before processing and printing?
David Lingham
31st May 2015, 11:53 AM
Martyn, The loose routine that I have adopted over the years is, I try and process my films straight away, and have a brief look through them to mentally bookmark any interesting frames. Then they are put away in a ring binder for several months. Sometime later on in the year I start looking through the more recent films on a light box with a loupe to see what appeals for printing. Often the more immediate and obvious ones are not the ones I end up printing. Very often I will leave films three or four years before going back to them and find a frame that I had previously overlooked, or I come up with a new interpretation of something I have already printed. The only departure from this process is when I am working on a specific project.
Richard Gould
31st May 2015, 12:41 PM
I try and process my films within days of taking them, very often I will process on the same day, I take a quick look, then, depending on the subject, either put them in a ring binder for printing at a later date, this for landscape/seascape photos, or put them in a pile for printing within a week or two, this is for my ''found still life'', and studio still life, or people/street photos, but I will rarely print the negatives for at least a fortnight, with landscape/seascapes it is more like 6 months to a year, when I have forgetten the emotions I felt at the taking stage, and approach them as a new image, getting, I hope, a better print for the waiting
Richard
DaveP
31st May 2015, 12:47 PM
With E6 film my longest has been about 18months, that was odd sheets that were waiting for me to do a push process. All develop with no hint of any problems or latent image fading. Normally my E6 stuff, and b&w, gets developed inside 3 months normally. i don't generally have enough spare time to dev straight away, though it does happen.
However, just finished a roll of TriX400 that had been lingering in an Olympus Trip for a year. I'm sure the shots at the last-year end of the roll look a bit thin.
CambsIan
31st May 2015, 01:18 PM
Not really sure that I have a method or a routine.
Guess I tend to develop within a week or two of shooting as and when time allows, a quick look at them once dry and then file until I can fit another printing session in.
Think the next time I take a serious look at them will be when I try to sort out my prints for the yearbook.
Ian
Argentum
31st May 2015, 02:53 PM
when I expose an image I have an idea about how it will be printed and what I'm expecting it to look like.
How you do that if you have waited several years between exposure and develop and print I have no idea. Your head can't be full of the moment from each of the images on film from several years ago and even if it was, memory isn't that good.
For me the process is holistic from seeing the image in the subject to the final print and the shorter that time is the better. Tripping the shutter is only half the job, I would hate to have hundreds or thousands unfinished little jobs nagging me to get done.
Mike O'Pray
31st May 2015, 04:42 PM
I tend to subscribe to your sentiments Martyn. The only caveat that may need adding for we take-the-pics-and-store the film bods is that Pan F is reputed to have quite poor latent image retention so once taken, a few weeks max storage before processing is the order of the day.
That's the only film I have heard of that appears to have the problem but others may know differently
Mike
MartyNL
31st May 2015, 06:20 PM
No regime for me. Just purely when I have the time and inclination.
I am also quite fond of contact prints so that adds another step to the process.
Jakecb
31st May 2015, 09:59 PM
I tend to develop and print within a few weeks of exposing the film. I do go back and reprint a negative from the past, sometimes repeatedly if it is particularly interesting to me. As Argentum mentioned, I would be tormented by endless films not developed as the ideas contained are waiting to be born.
photomi7ch
1st June 2015, 08:29 AM
I tend to develop my negatives with in a few days of exposure. My time is limited so a back log is bad news. Once I have a few sheets of negatives waiting for a darkroom session I contact print them.
big paul
1st June 2015, 12:17 PM
I like to develope my films the same day or the day after I have shot it ,and then print them as soon as possible ,if there are not many that I want to print from a roll of film I will leave it till I take another roll .I don't think I could stand the pressure of knowing there are undeveloped film in my freezer .To me its the excitement of the proses that I like, to start with a film and end with a print with not to much time in-between ..
www.essexcockney.com
Phil
2nd June 2015, 04:50 AM
Always develop same day if I can. If I've been on holiday, it'll be a mass process as soon as I can. I find the thought of what could be on the film too exciting to leave hanging around. This being said, I'll sometimes not print a thing from a film until months or even years later - it'll sometimes be one image on a current film that you look at and have a "Aha!" moment, and go back and rediscover something you made years back and print the two or three or four of them as a series - a nice little bit of happenstance.
Rob Archer
4th June 2015, 06:49 AM
I usually develop my films within a week of shooting them and a make a contact sheet soon after to see what I've got. It may be weeks, months or even years before I make a proper print though. Just occasionally the contact print will show an image that excites me and ill pull out all the stops to print while the memory of the moment is still fresh.
vBulletin® v3.8.11, Copyright ©2000-2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.