On Thu, 8 Oct 2009 07:06:36 -0700, "Lawrence
Akutagawa" wrote:


"laran" wrote in message
...
Am looking to buy a film scanner to make contact prints mainly. Needs to
be inexpensive, run on linux and also do slides to a reasonable quality.
Ideas?????

Now why in the world would someone be using a film scanner in the darkroom?
hmmm...contact prints are created by keeping the negatives in contact, as it
were, with the photo sensitive paper. How does the film scanner come into
play during this process? Care to explain?



October 8, 2009, from Lloyd Erlick,

I think it's fair to say I've replaced my
contact sheets with scans of my negatives. I
call them contact sheets or contacts, but
they don't exist on paper.

I was always lazy about making contacts of my
processed films. Years would go by before I
got a look at lots of the things I did. The
dread of hours of darkroom labor to make the
piles of contacts I had yet to do kept me
from even starting.

A big part of it was that the size of the
contact prevented me from really seeing what
was there, even if I did make the damn
things.

So when I finally got a scanner with a light
in the lid, I could just slap my negs down on
the glass still in their expensive PrintFile
plastic sleeve. A whole roll of 35 mm or 120
format could be scanned at one go, and the
resulting file was big enough that each frame
could be enlarged on screen (sorry, wrong
lingo, they could be ZOOMED!). This way I
find it very easy to judge a portrait in
terms of facial expression and desired
cropping of the image. These are two very
important factors for me, neither of which
was ever properly satisfied by a paper
contact print.

So I find a scanner an essential darkroom
efficiency improvement tool. I can go into my
darkroom knowing exactly which frame I'm
going to work on (expression and overall look
are settled), and very close to knowing
exactly how to crop it. Much less time wasted
while darkroom is standing ready.

For someone like me who attempts to do
business by selling people pictures of
themselves (really dopey thing to do, eh??),
the scanner also lets me send them very good
"proofs" cost free (well, as cost free as
email...). This way, with a bit of luck, the
scanner again gets me a reason to go to the
darkroom.

I produce very few dud prints now. The
scanner improves my darkroom productivity.

regards,
--le
________________________________
Lloyd Erlick Portraits, Toronto.
website: www.heylloyd.com
telephone: 416-686-0326
email:
________________________________
--