Making negatives from a contact sheet?

thomas96 · May 2, 2013

I've heard of making negatives from a print, but is it possible to make negatives from a contact sheet? (Taking photos of each shot and duplicating the negatives? I have a lot of vintage contact sheets with many great shots, but no negatives and no full prints. I want to make full prints, so is this possible? Thanks.

Pallycow · May 2, 2013

Yes it can be done. If you have a local lab, I'd go there and take your stuff to them. Don't expect great things, while it "can" be done. It is more for backup really. Should you try to print from them later, it will not be as good of quality as original negs. Personally, I think you would be better off having a lab do a high quality digital scan of the contact sheet and cropping the pics individually and saving them. Better preservation and even printing should you want it done at a later date than making a neg of it.

So yes, it can be done, but it's not the best way in my opinion.

We get such requests in the lab all the time, so I've seen it done both ways.

thomas96 · May 2, 2013

Pallycow said:
Yes it can be done. If you have a local lab, I'd go there and take your stuff to them. Don't expect great things, while it "can" be done. It is more for backup really. Should you try to print from them later, it will not be as good of quality as original negs. Personally, I think you would be better off having a lab do a high quality digital scan of the contact sheet and cropping the pics individually and saving them. Better preservation and even printing should you want it done at a later date than making a neg of it.

So yes, it can be done, but it's not the best way in my opinion.

We get such requests in the lab all the time, so I've seen it done both ways.

Will it ruin the contact sheet? You said you suggest scanning it, but could you do both and still have the contact sheet in good condition? Thanks.

Pallycow · May 2, 2013

To my knowledge it will not hurt the contact sheet in any way. I don't know the exact process of making a negative, as the boss does that, not me. I have not heard of anything happening to originals though. As far as digital scan, it does nothing to the original in any way hurtful. Sure you can do both, I don't see why not.

thomas96 · May 2, 2013

Pallycow said:
To my knowledge it will not hurt the contact sheet in any way. I don't know the exact process of making a negative, as the boss does that, not me. I have not heard of anything happening to originals though. As far as digital scan, it does nothing to the original in any way hurtful. Sure you can do both, I don't see why not.

Thank you very much. And how about the cost? I've got about 15 contact sheets with about 20-25 shots on each and maybe 50-60 full prints that I'd like made into negatives, do you have any idea about how much that'd cost to get them made into negatives and scanned? Thanks again.

thomas96 · May 2, 2013

Pallycow said:
To my knowledge it will not hurt the contact sheet in any way. I don't know the exact process of making a negative, as the boss does that, not me. I have not heard of anything happening to originals though. As far as digital scan, it does nothing to the original in any way hurtful. Sure you can do both, I don't see why not.

Oh, and theres a few that I don't have the rights to. Will that stop them from doing it for me? I don't plan on selling, I just would like negatives to make prints for myself. Thanks again.

Pallycow · May 2, 2013

depends on the lab. You're in boston, so probly not too bad seeing it's a populated area. If we did it, it would get expensive...as we are in a small area and Bangor, Maine is not so populated. So I really would not guess at it. Just call and find out and piece meal it to avoid a huge upfront cost.

The scanning part, we have "bulk scan" rates for those customers who have a lot of stuff. However, it does matter if they are all same size...larger or smaller, etc etc. HQ scans to jpg on a cd starts at 4.50 and go down as the number of prints go up, to keep it reasonable. I'm sure a local lab there would do the same. I just took one in today, lady had 50 images to scan, it boiled down to about .95 per image. Reasonable. We get a lot of old photos and restoration jobs lately...which is good, helps me practice my PS skills. lol I love restoring old photos. Boss scans 'em and now and then I get to edit to make 'em pretty when the workload is high. My favorite comment from customers is "man...this looks better than the original" In my head I say "no chit, I spent an hour on it" to them I say "i'm glad you like it....it's on Kodak Royal paper so it will last you 100 years, and you have a digital file as well to store for future prints" blah blah. lol, got on a tangent there but whatever. lol

Pallycow · May 2, 2013

thomas96 said:
Pallycow said:

To my knowledge it will not hurt the contact sheet in any way. I don't know the exact process of making a negative, as the boss does that, not me. I have not heard of anything happening to originals though. As far as digital scan, it does nothing to the original in any way hurtful. Sure you can do both, I don't see why not.

Click to expand...

Oh, and theres a few that I don't have the rights to. Will that stop them from doing it for me? I don't plan on selling, I just would like negatives to make prints for myself. Thanks again.

Also depends on the lab. Some take copyrights seriously, some don't. If the company who made it is no longer in business, it's a non issue. If they are, we would have you get a release from them.

480sparky · May 2, 2013

Unless the contact sheet was made from fairly large negs, I don't think any neg made from the contact sheet will have much resolution. If you're working with 35mm film contact sheets to start from, you certainly won't be happy with a 5x7 enlargement from the resulting negative.

thomas96 · May 2, 2013

480sparky said:
Unless the contact sheet was made from fairly large negs, I don't think any neg made from the contact sheet will have much resolution. If you're working with 35mm film contact sheets to start from, you certainly won't be happy with a 5x7 enlargement from the resulting negative.

So is it not worth doing at all, and it's a lost cause?

Pallycow · May 2, 2013

I would not bother making negs. Not just the quality standpoint. but storage reasons, a digital image on cd will hold up better in the long run than a neg.

KmH · May 2, 2013

Only you can decide that. Just get 1 done, see how it goes, then decide.

snowbear · May 2, 2013

Since they are contact sheets, scanning them would give you the same resolution as scanning the original negatives. I'd get one scanned as a test, and see what you end up with.

KmH · May 2, 2013

Pallycow said:
I would not bother making negs. Not just the quality standpoint. but storage reasons, a digital image on cd will hold up better in the long run than a neg.

CD's don't last as long as film negatives do that are stored properly.

Many of us have 30+ year old negatives that have hardly degraded at all. I'd be happy if a CD lasted 10 years.