Making negatives from a contact sheet?

[Pallycow]

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.

Why would a cd not last 10 years if stored properly? That is not a fair comparison since no one has cd's that have been stored properly for 30 years.

Not to mention storage space. We've had customers bring in 3-4 large plastic totes of negs and slides and walk away with a few cd's in one hand. So which again is easier to store?

Most don't know how to or have not stored negs properly anyway. I have seen a few come in with such negs and are nice, however 90% of them are crap and filthy that we have to clean firs.

What's the point of arguing that topic anyway? Silly really.

 

[vintagesnaps]

There were copy stands (which apparently are still made and used) that were similar to small table top tripods. The top had a circular mount which you'd use to hold and position the camera lens down, facing whatever you were going to photograph to copy. I don't know if those were used w/negatives or not; I'm thinking maybe they were used to copy slides.

With a contact sheet it wouldn't be hard to scan the entire sheet; I've scanned my own B&W darkroom 8x10 prints on my home printer/scanner. I haven't tried scanning one of my contact sheets and I don't know how the quality would be from each small image - like Sparky I'd wonder about the quality - I've scanned some of my own 4x6 prints that were made from color film and can get good results depending on the sharpness and quality of the original.

But to get negatives from the digital scans of course you'd need to have digital negatives made (which I think is what Pallycow is referring to). I know roughly that the image is printed onto a type of clear plastic but I haven't tried making any yet, although I'd like to learn how to do those.

When I get time since you've got me curious now, I might go dig out a contact sheet and scan it and see what I can get of the individual images.

 

[Pallycow]

There are a few ways to digitally "copy" an image. In the case of a contact sheet, we would either copy it on the badass scanner, or if it is needed, she shoots it on her copy table, which has a 5DM2 with a macro lens for copy work. From there you can crop out the single images and save them as individual files to be printed at later times if desired. As far as quality, obviously it has to be good quality contact sheets to start with. Crap in crap out. With technology out now you can reproduce prints easily and very good quality. We do a lot of restoration and copy work, and the results...while normal now to me...amazed me when I first started. I have seen folks come in with a small wallet type size print from the late 1800's and boss works her magic and customer walks away with a nice 8x12 print.

As far as creating a negative. I simply know it can be done, and its not best quality. I have no idea how they do it, I have not been taught that part yet. I just know I see folks come in and ask for it and they leave with it. lol. I have also seen folks come in with negs to have printed and during the course of the conversation I hear the boss tell them "this is not an original negative it was created from a print, so know that the quality will not be the same as a real true negative" So that is really all that I have to offer up on negs. It's done somehow, and it's not all that great quality for later printing.