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Old 24th February 2016, 08:19 PM
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AlonewithmyBW AlonewithmyBW is offline
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Default Cheap digital contact sheets, basic scanner cheat

Not sure if this is relevant, helpful or even in the right place, but it has offered me a solution to contact sheets in the darkroom and complicated evaluation of negatives.

So the issue I have is that my darkroom is a temporary set up, so I have to move it back and forth, thus limiting my darkroom time substantially. Therefore I budget that for just producing prints at the moment. So contact sheets make me cringe as I lose time to making them which I would rather spend making a good print, or even a mediocre one!

Now I know this forum is all about the analogue, but cheating a little for a contact sheet feels 'within the rules' to me and anyway I am still making analogue prints from analogue sources.

I have looked at digital scanners. Digi scanners for negatives are, in general, very expensive, I shoot almost exclusively 120 so that makes it even more so. However I do have a couple of old flatbed positive scanners, and some software to play with the result.

So and if you skipped the rest of the post here is the important bit:
You can use a flatbed positive scanner to scan negatives, using a piece of glass and an angle poise lamp.
1) position the scanner so it has an open lid and a flat plain surface above it, preferably white (I use the ceiling)
2) position the negatives on the glass and place the other piece of glass over the top (I bought a cheap 10x8 clip frame)
3) set the angle poise lamp so it reflects light above the scanner, do not do it directly it will burn out the scan
4) if you can generally increase the ambient light in the room do so
5) scan with a professional mode if possible and tweak your initial results to get the best you can from the sheet (I scan in colour for a more natural representation of the negative)
6) use what software you have to invert and tweak any levels either on individual negs or to the whole page.
7) save the results so you can refer back to them if you want to, earmarking the shots you want to develop

It is remarkably simple and with basic scanners at around the £30-£40 mark not indescribably expensive to set up. For my needs it is a real winner as it saves me darkroom time better devoted to something else other than contact sheets, and gives me a record of what shots I want to develop and practice on.

Hope this is of some use to someone and reading this hasn't wasted your time, energy and darkroom schedule!
Thanks for reading.
Oh and here is the results…

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Old 24th February 2016, 09:02 PM
big paul big paul is offline
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the funny thing is I like making contact prints but then I have a room that is permanently my darkroom ,a lot of us have been through that stage of temporary darkroom and I know what you mean ,it can be a pain .I am sure your tip will come in handy ,even a old luddite like me use a scanner from time to time .
so thanks for the tip as you say 120 scanners can cost a few bob mine will only scan prints and 35mm film strips ,so that's is a cheap way of scanning 120



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