• site home
  • blog home
  • galleries
  • contact
  • underwater
  • the bleeding edge

the last word

Photography meets digital computer technology. Photography wins -- most of the time.

You are here: Home / The Last Word / Is digital photography a left-brain pursuit? — part 6

Is digital photography a left-brain pursuit? — part 6

November 15, 2011 JimK Leave a Comment

Here’s the way I used to proof 35mm B&W negatives (I used plastic pages as a negative storage and proofing device, tolerating the loss of proofing sharpness and eliminating several potentially negative damaging steps using methods that permit direct negative to proofing paper contact):

  • Turn on the safe light; let it warm up while doing the following.
  • Dilute the developer with 68° water. Pour into the tray.
  • Mix the stop bath and the fixer with 68° water. Pour into the trays, one for stop bath, and two for fixer.
  • Fill a fifth tray with 68° water.
  • Fill the sink with 68° water.
  • Arrange the proofing frame under the enlarger.
  • Set the enlarger to the proper height, marked by a piece of masking tape on the vertical.
  • Set the lens to f/8.
  • Set the timer to 10 seconds.
  • Turn out the bright lights.
  • Pull a sheet of paper out of the paper safe and put it in the proofing frame.
  • Put the negatives on top of the paper.
  • Close and latch the cover of the proofing frame.
  • Make the exposure.
  • Release the proofing frame, set the negatives aside.
  • Take the paper over the wet side and put it in the developer.
  • Develop for 2 minutes.
  • Transfer to stop bath for 15 seconds.
  • Transfer to first fix tray.
  • Turn on the bright lights.
  • Check the exposure.
  • After 3 min., transfer to second fix tray.
  • After 3 min., and transfer to water tray.
  • Make sure water is running into the water tray.
  • Repeat until all negatives are proofed.
  • Tip developer and stop bath trays into the dump trough.
  • Return fixer to the bottle.
  • Wash the trays, set them aside to dry.
  • Mix hypo neutralizer; put in tray.
  • Put prints in hypo neutralizer for 3 min.
  • Put prints in print washer; turn on water.
  • Cleanup darkroom. Turn off safelight.
  • After an hour, turn off print washer water.
  • Remove prints from print washer and arrange face down on Fiberglas window screens for drying.

Then, the next day:

  • Take the stack of contact sheets to a well-lit area.
  • Go through the contact sheets, putting check marks with a Sharpie next to the interesting images.
  • Set up the light table.
  • Find the negatives associated with each checked contact sheet image.
  • Examine the negatives with a loupe. If one is not sharp, go back to the contact sheets to find a similar image, then check that negative to see if it’s sharp.
  • Mark suggested cropping on the contact sheets with a Sharpie.

With digital, my processes something like this:

  • Start Lightroom.
  • In Library mode, set the program to display only unflagged images.
  • In Loupe view, set the program to fit the image to the screen.
  • For each image, hit X to flag the file for deletion (it then disappears because it’s no longed unflagged), or hit the right arrow to look at the next image. Zoom to one-to-one if necessary to check sharpness.
  • Tell Lightroom to delete the rejected photos from the disk.
  • Assign stars to each image to indicate which have the most potential.
  • In Develop mode, do preliminary cropping.
  • Close Lightroom.

As in developing, doing things digitally is much less labor-intensive. It is also less physical. You can get a much better idea of the potentials of an image working in Lightroom’s Library mode than you can with a loupe and a contact sheet. The creative parts of the operation, deciding which images deserve further attention, and coming up with a preliminary cropping, require the same kind of mental processes in either process.

 

The Last Word

← Is digital photography a left-brain pursuit? — part 5 Is digital photography a left-brain pursuit? — part 7 →

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

May 2025
S M T W T F S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
« Apr    

Articles

  • About
    • Patents and papers about color
    • Who am I?
  • How to…
    • Backing up photographic images
    • How to change email providers
    • How to shoot slanted edge images for me
  • Lens screening testing
    • Equipment and Software
    • Examples
      • Bad and OK 200-600 at 600
      • Excellent 180-400 zoom
      • Fair 14-30mm zoom
      • Good 100-200 mm MF zoom
      • Good 100-400 zoom
      • Good 100mm lens on P1 P45+
      • Good 120mm MF lens
      • Good 18mm FF lens
      • Good 24-105 mm FF lens
      • Good 24-70 FF zoom
      • Good 35 mm FF lens
      • Good 35-70 MF lens
      • Good 60 mm lens on IQ3-100
      • Good 63 mm MF lens
      • Good 65 mm FF lens
      • Good 85 mm FF lens
      • Good and bad 25mm FF lenses
      • Good zoom at 24 mm
      • Marginal 18mm lens
      • Marginal 35mm FF lens
      • Mildly problematic 55 mm FF lens
      • OK 16-35mm zoom
      • OK 60mm lens on P1 P45+
      • OK Sony 600mm f/4
      • Pretty good 16-35 FF zoom
      • Pretty good 90mm FF lens
      • Problematic 400 mm FF lens
      • Tilted 20 mm f/1.8 FF lens
      • Tilted 30 mm MF lens
      • Tilted 50 mm FF lens
      • Two 15mm FF lenses
    • Found a problem – now what?
    • Goals for this test
    • Minimum target distances
      • MFT
      • APS-C
      • Full frame
      • Small medium format
    • Printable Siemens Star targets
    • Target size on sensor
      • MFT
      • APS-C
      • Full frame
      • Small medium format
    • Test instructions — postproduction
    • Test instructions — reading the images
    • Test instructions – capture
    • Theory of the test
    • What’s wrong with conventional lens screening?
  • Previsualization heresy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Recommended photographic web sites
  • Using in-camera histograms for ETTR
    • Acknowledgments
    • Why ETTR?
    • Normal in-camera histograms
    • Image processing for in-camera histograms
    • Making the in-camera histogram closely represent the raw histogram
    • Shortcuts to UniWB
    • Preparing for monitor-based UniWB
    • A one-step UniWB procedure
    • The math behind the one-step method
    • Iteration using Newton’s Method

Category List

Recent Comments

  • JimK on Goldilocks and the three flashes
  • DC Wedding Photographer on Goldilocks and the three flashes
  • Wedding Photographer in DC on The 16-Bit Fallacy: Why More Isn’t Always Better in Medium Format Cameras
  • JimK on Fujifilm GFX 100S II precision
  • Renjie Zhu on Fujifilm GFX 100S II precision
  • JimK on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF
  • Ivo de Man on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF
  • JimK on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF
  • JimK on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF
  • Ivo de Man on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF

Archives

Copyright © 2025 · Daily Dish Pro On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Unless otherwise noted, all images copyright Jim Kasson.