Photography Tip: How to make simple contact sheets from film negatives.

Learn how to create simple and cheap contact sheets that you can either print or keep digitally and mark up just like traditional contact sheets.

Although I started to get back into photography a couple of years ago I just started shooting film again earlier this year. I think it was December or January when I decided I wanted to mix film and digital. Since then I have been slowly gathering tools to shoot, develop and scan my film. Now I have a good workflow setup to shoot a roll of film, develop it at home and then scan the negatives for archiving, posting and even printing them (via my Canon Photo Printer, not optically). One of the areas I have been missing in this film/digital hybrid workflow is contact sheets. Traditionally you could easily make an 8x10 contact sheet optically in a properly equipped darkroom. I haven’t been making contact sheets because I don’t have that equipment. I would either scan each negative, assuming all of my shots were good (obviously this is never the case) or I would just go back and look at each negative with a magnifier to decide what I wanted to scan and print. Since my scanner only scans a few frames at a time this takes a while.

Now I have a cool and cheap solution to create my contact sheets. I end up with PDF files that I can either print or keep digitally. Here’s how I do it.

Once I have my film developed I cut them into strips of 7 strips of 5 negatives. I put those into Printfile sleeves which you can find through many online retailers but I highly recommend Freestyle Photographic Supplies. Everytime I order stuff from them I’m impressed with their turnaround time and service. Here’s the link to the sheets on Freestyle’s site -http://www.freestylephoto.biz/357100-Printfile-35–7B-Archival-Negative-Preservers-35mm-7-Strips-of-5

Once I have my sheet filled with negatives I tape it using gaffe (gaffer’s) tape to my laptop screen, as seen in the photo…