Re: [Leica] making contact prints

[Ted Grant <tedgrant@home.com>]

Tina Manley wrote:
> 
> For those of you using the PhotoShop Contact sheet feature, I just
> discovered a tip on the Adobe forum.  You can unclick "Use Filename" and
> make the contact sheets without labels, then in PhotoShop use the Text tool
> to add labels in any size font you want.  This really helped me fit the
> filenames under the thumbnails.
> 
> I cut my negatives up and mount them in hanging slide pages, 20 to a
> page.  I make the contact sheets to match each page - 20 thumbnails to a
> page.  It's easier to scan negatives and file them by subject in the slide
> mounts.  I can also discard all of those awful out-of-focus shots that
> always seem to be in the middle of strip!<<<<<<<<<<<

Hi Tina & others,

Sandy and I just contacted 60 rolls of film in the following fashion.

All rolls shot with M6 and metering from same. Therefore, all rolls
correct exposure!  Well OK very very close  99% 0f them. :-) 

We contact one roll and  process.
 If the exposure is right on the mark, we then contact the remaining 59
rolls one sheet right after the other and drop exposed paper into old
paper box. When the printing is complete Sandy takes half the sheets and
feeds them rapidly into the developer face down and I dunk them until
she has them all in, then I rapidly flip them until the 1 min. 30 sec
development is up on the first sheet to go in.  Then pull each sheet in
time order and drop it in stop bath, she dunks them right under.

I move over and continue the procesing by quickly shuffling prints in
stop. Pick-up 30 prints at one time, drain and place in fixer where I
shuffle them for 2 - 3 minutes. 

The development time of 1 minute 30 seconds allows just the right time
for every sheet right on the mark and within a total time of approx. 5
minutes we have 30 sheets of contacts completed and in the wash and
rockin and rollin' on the second batch,  so that within 15 minutes we
have some of the first batch in the print dryer.

My question is?  Can you do 60 sheets of contacts that fast on the
computer? And with that little fuss?  I realize we do some things
quickly with the computer,  thank goodness. However, I'd have to see 60
sheets of contacts in fifteen - twenty minutes off a computer print out.

Or maybe I'm all wet and it can be done? :-)

Contacting rolls has never been a big deal for me, as it seems for some
others. I maintain, if you keep it simple you can fire those contact
sheets out very rapidly no fuss, no muss, whether it's one roll or 100
hundred.  And when it's a hundred rolls you really want to see the hands
flying in the soup! :-)

ted