Post your contact sheets please.

[Eric Rose]

I'm with Les here, never found contact sheets helpful! I would rather scan, or make a small RC work print!

Did you shoot the barns at the same time?

Ian shot the barns probably a year before I did. I guess I grew up with contact sheets and find them very useful. Each to their own.

[CPorter]

I make a contact sheet for each roll I shoot, I find them helpful (old habit I guess).

[bjorke]

I usually do a bulk scan and print a 300dpi "contact sheet" as described here:

http://www.botzilla.com/blog/archives/000286.html

I'll post one. Film negs, computer collation. I like it both for ease and the fact that the space between frames is white and writable

(Click here to see 100% detail)

[Thomassauerwein]

Eric, I always do proof sheets and will dig through and find something. I'm not sure how useful it will be, as most my stuff is concept driven and by the time we get to film the shot only really leaves room for small variations. Polaroid is my tool to weed out the problems in an image then once the shot is complete we shoot film. It may be more interesting to keep all the polaroids from a session to show the changes and compromises through a session them the proof sheets.

[Jeremy]

Eric, I always do proof sheets and will dig through and find something. I'm not sure how useful it will be, as most my stuff is concept driven and by the time we get to film the shot only really leaves room for small variations. Polaroid is my tool to weed out the problems in an image then once the shot is complete we shoot film. It may be more interesting to keep all the polaroids from a session to show the changes and compromises through a session them the proof sheets.

Thomas, I for one would like to see these!

[Nicole]

Bjorke, here's a doozy question for you.

Please teach me - How in PS (CS) do I collate a contact sheet from my negs with neg numbers as you have done?

I'm such a techo wizkid!

BTW, I like Nov03A-33 best

[bjorke]

Please teach me - How in PS (CS) do I collate a contact sheet from my negs with neg numbers as you have done?

Well as described in more detail here and here, I use a French program called XnView, which only runs on PC (I use both PC and Mac, an unstructured "system" of cross-purposed scanners and printers). Once the negs are scanned, I use XnView to build the proofsheet. Once the proof is made (as appropriate), I also use XnView to do some bulk rotations on the images, if they are sideways. Then I close XnView and launch PS-CS.

I sometimes also use XnView for running slideshows from rolls — I like to select all the pix, start the slideshow on "random," and let it go for a while, just to sort of let the pictures percolate (sort of a computer equivalent to pinning up prints on the wall all the time). This is on the PC -- on Mac, I drop pix into a folder and set the screensaver to randomly cycle them. Sort of the same idea.

XnView does a lot of other stuff, but really those are about the only operations I use. Everything else goes through Photoshop. XnView, like PS-CS, is also able to read Canon RAW files — but that's a different thread, heh

BTW, I like Nov03A-33 best

me too

[Ole]

When shooting MF, I make contact sheets every time. For 35mm TF I find the contacts too small to bother with, but 645 an up is big enough that you can actually see whether it's worth the trouble to enlarge that negative.

Since I only scan individual frames I have no need to make "electronic" contact sheets, but I do know that IrfanView does that nicely. Incidentally that's the same program I use for making html albums like my home pages, and also for all finishing processing such as resizing and colour adjustments before posting images here.
You reading this, Nicole?

[Nicole]

Ole, yes thanks for that. I have seen IrfanView before.
I've heard Compupic's quite good as well.
Sorry to hijack the thread Bjorke!
So, please post your contact sheets.

[Eric Rose]

Ok now that we have all the technical stuff out of the way, there is no more excuses! Lets see those contacts!! No matter how you produce them.

I have posted a set from one of my favorite haunts around Calgary. The contact is in the Technical Gallery and a couple of prints are in the Standard Gallery to show how I cropped a couple of shots I liked.

The joys of a square format as I can crop either vertical, horizontal or keep it square. Choices, I love it.