{"id":431,"date":"2020-09-06T15:16:50","date_gmt":"2020-09-06T22:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aegraves.com\/words\/?p=431"},"modified":"2026-03-08T12:24:40","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T19:24:40","slug":"darkroom-photography-contact-sheets-are-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aegraves.com\/words\/2020\/09\/06\/darkroom-photography-contact-sheets-are-great\/","title":{"rendered":"Darkroom Photography: Contact Sheets Are Great"},"content":{"rendered":"

I miss working in the darkroom.\u00a0 It’s hard work to be on your feet all day, walking from enlarger to pan to pan, timing each step, taking notes, making test strips, making adjustments, and doing it all again…\u00a0 But it’s also very satisfying to learn and improve!<\/p>\n

One of the things I miss the most is having contact sheets.<\/strong>\u00a0 These are just prints made by putting your film on photo paper, pressing them flat with glass, and exposing them to light.\u00a0 (If you are using paper that requires filters, you’d add a colored filter to the light, so that the negatives would look similar to the way they would when printed.)\u00a0 They’re indexes of what is on each roll of film, in order, with the film numbers and film type displaying.\u00a0 They’re great for organizing, and for large negatives like my medium format exposures, they also provide a preview of the work.<\/p>\n

I love them love them love them.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I’m sad that I don’t have these for every roll I’ve shot.<\/p>\n

Yes, we have digital indices now, but they aren’t as good looking.\u00a0 They look like any other kind of file I have on my computer (which looks better than back in the day, understand that)!\u00a0 But contact sheets are… SPECIAL.<\/p>\n

I love to see these in photography exhibits, because instead of just seeing a photographer’s greatest hits, you get to see everything they really shot, the bad photos, the odd compositions, the experiments that didn’t work out, the great photos they just chose not to print – all of it.\u00a0 There is something very COMPLETE about them.<\/p>\n

\"AEG<\/p>\n

If you haven’t worked in a darkroom with film before, I really recommend it…\u00a0 even the test prints can teach you something new. Contact sheets can put your work into a context that you may not have had if you just delete all of your ‘bad’ images digitally and move on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I miss working in the darkroom.\u00a0 It’s hard work to be on your feet all day, walking from enlarger to pan to pan, timing each step, taking notes, making test strips, making adjustments, and doing it all again…\u00a0 But it’s also very satisfying to learn and improve! One of the things I miss the most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":432,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,19],"tags":[85],"class_list":["post-431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-darkroom-photography","category-monochrome-black-white","tag-darkroom-magic","entry","fw-tab-6 fw-tabr-4","has-featured-image"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/aegraves.com\/words\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/AEG-BW-Contact-Sheet001.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aegraves.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aegraves.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aegraves.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aegraves.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aegraves.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/aegraves.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":434,"href":"https:\/\/aegraves.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions\/434"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aegraves.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aegraves.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aegraves.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aegraves.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}