I bow in bewildered awe to your sense of organisation. I wish I had the patience to do this. It's fantastic. I even got myself the gear to do something similar to what you do (the same brand as you) some time ago, but except for most recent films I didn't get to introduce this systematic system yet. Maybe will ask my wife, she's excellent at filing. Agree that digitalising the negs is the best way to evaluate them prior to printing. Excellent Rembrandt btw. Thanks for the video, you really give me a drive to get my khyber behind the computer and eventually to the darkroom!
@@LYSYSTUDIOS That reminds me of around 15 years ago my wife helped me organize and label my binders… she is a saint for putting up moth my madness. I just do my best to stick with it moving forward. Helps to have a systematic approach.. I can say I never want to do it other than to see the conversions for the first time. But when it’s done it feels great! I slowly chip away at the backlog before I implemented this.
When I was running the MiniLab at work, we used an electronic film sleeving machine. The sleeves were on a massive continuous rool so it didn’t matter how long the film was, you always had enough sleeves. We would manually line up the gap in the negatives with a blade, the press the cutting leaver and the film would automatically advance into the next sleeve. In our lab, there would be up to 5 x 35mm negs in each sleeve. It did speed things up a lot if there were plenty of orders due to go out and didn’t matter if we were sleeving 12, 24 or 36 exposures. When rolling the film, this was done manually, rolling the film in our fingers and took a fair amount longer. It wouldn’t matter for one or two films, but multiple films after that would take up enough time to feed another 35mm through the scanning table. On top of that, we would also put the film into a film pot : I would just put the original film pot in the envelope if it came with one, or put one of the discarded pots in there when booking in. This made it stand out that the customer wanted the film uncut and I would double check the instructions if there was a film pot in the envelope when printing and packing. Me personally, I would never charge extra for rolling the films. The film pots were free as we usually discard them in a tub ready for recycling. This also gave me a little printing break while I carefully rolled the film with gloved hands. If the images were too light on the film to see between the frames, I would automatically roll the film after printing what I could and wait for additional requests from the customer when they picked up their film(s). You can’t uncut something when it’s been cut, I was always happy to please the customer where possible.
I'm not as organised as you with all the indexing and referencing, but working on a neg in Lightroom before darkroom printing saves time and money for sure!
amazing perfect workflow. I make it a little simpler. Regardless of the format, per film chronologically with year-month sequential number. Additionally list of all films with additional information about film, format, content.
Hi Matt, thanks for another great video. For certain photos I scan the neg so i can correct / work on aspects in photoshop send the digital file to someone who creates a physical neg and then print that new neg in the darkroom. I have a flatbed a Epson V850 but its not great for 35mm and i have been told its actual DPI is 2400. Do you think DSLR scanning can give higher resolution?
I have never had film come back from a lab uncut without scratching. It is usually scratched when cut into strips as well. I am sure some labs can do this safely, but you need to research/ test this. Developing and archiving film is not that difficult. Your digital archiving is a great plan.
@@briansilcox5720 That is a real issue. Was not that way with great labs back in the day. I think now many just want scans and toss the negs… so hard for me to comprehend 😳 I have developed all my black and white to this day. If I screw something up ok but if a lab did to where I could not print them in the darkroom I would be pretty upset. Guess I have control issues 🤷🏻♂️
Good catch. Been trying to find a correlation from scanning Raw files to contrast of actual prints on darkroom paper... WITH the benefit of a functional workflow for scanning sharing etc... has proven challenging but not without hope. Have found some references and seems we need a Raw completely unprofiled scan. WHich from what I can gather leaves out most of my workflow with camera / Negatve Lab Pro etc... This is more practical scanning Large format with Silverfast & less images. Will post my findings when I have something of value 👍
I stopped scanning negatives about 10 years ago and reverted to just making contact sheets. Nowadays I only scan when I'm prepping images for the web or a book, and often those will be scans from prints rather than negatives. I just found negative scanning really boring! I think I did too much of it...
Thanks for this! I was really missing the Capture Time - I could see it in other parts of lightroom in areas where I can edit other metadata items, but it wouldn't let me edit capture time there!
I have a similar workflow for evaluating my negatives. I camera scan them in using the Valoi setup. I don't like the scanner method as I always get banding on my scans. I think that is because the negatives don't lie flat on the scanner bed. The negative holders that came with the V850 scanner are painful to use for 135 and 120 film. And with the Valoi setup it is actually faster to scan with than the scanner. The scanning camera is tethered to LR, but I create my own filing system for the negatives. for some reason I dislike LR and can't be bothered with it. I process the negatives to positives in Photoshop and this gives me flexibility on what I may want the image to look like. Getting a good scan can also give me the opportunity to make a digital negative if I want to print larger in the darkroom, by contact printing the DN. I even make DN's from digital files and darkroom print them as well. They look fantastic this way. Great video.
Very similar way to how I organise. One step more, and maybe it's just my LR (Classic monthly subscription), I have to manually "save meta-data to file" so when I export to Flickr, all keywords are saved and transferred over. Keywording is such a chore, though.
I never have my lab cut my negatives. Never had an issue with scratches either. Can't say the same about my ECN film sent to the midwest. They don't sleeve and will roll multiple rolls and not use a sleeve. I've had some issues with dirty and scratched film with them. I still use them because I'm too lazy to develop my ECN, and their price is very reasonable.
I'm curious how you handle meta data so that it's not reflecting the scan, but the original film camera. I've been using Metalimage for this, but is there a way to do that directly in Lightroom without a third-party tool? Or does Negative Lab Pro handle camera EXIF? Thanks!
@@BudParr I only use key wording to let me know the camera, lens etc… when I can. I do edit the capture time in the metadata. But it would show the image was shot with a Canon R5 and 100mm macro. As far as I know Neg Lab Pro is not able to do this. But with embedding the keyword I can still search. Will look into the program you mention… does it take much time?
I'm guessing the charge to not cut the film is because they have a process in place and it's more efficient and less time consuming to stick to one process, than to have another branch off and be disruptive. The charge may be to cover that loss of efficiency and/or encourage customers to not select the option if they don't really need/want it. That and maybe a bunch of uncut negatives makes for a bigger, bulkier parcel to put in the mail and that may be more expensive than sleeved negatives that are laying flat. I think this may be the more likely reason.
I have a much different filing and cataloging method for my negatives. I put them all in 3ring binders , sleeved of course , no meta data or info of any kind. When I need to find a negative I brew up a coffee sit down with many binders and flip through them for several hours usually, ,I do have contact sheets to see the positive more easily, most of the time, after several hours I have either found the negative I want or have convinced myself I’ve found a better choice 😂😂😱😱😱🤣🤣🤣
aha, so the digital scanning is just for the "contact sheet", to preview the roll, and check the negs., but great to see you still analogue print them.
this was somewhat helpful as I have ben struggling with camera scanning and was not satisfied. But… I am still not sure about the previewing of darkroom technique in Lightroom for me. Nevertheless I will check out the smart shooter program 30 days trial… Cheers Rolf
Using Lightroom is weird because you can get a good Idea of things but no way to correlate exposure contrast, etc... directly to a darkroom print. Neg lab pro does some adjustments that make it unuseable for this. Am looking into how do do this more efficiently but it seems like Raw scans and skipping Negative Lab Pro which I like for the convenience.
It's true that when in depression and even post depression for any reason the last thing one can be asked for is to get organised. Moreover, I don't do photography for living - and while I do admire this system and would definitely fancy having something like that, putting that in place clashes with another personal objective of mine when it comes to analogue - to stay away from computers. Computers are depression catalysts in their own right, at least for me.
That was the best 15 mins i've spent on YT in a long time. I hope to implement your workflow from now on. Thank you.
@@SteveMillerhuntingforfood Thanks Steve, appreciate that and hope it helps!
Thanks!
@@SteveMillerhuntingforfood Thank you!
I bow in bewildered awe to your sense of organisation. I wish I had the patience to do this. It's fantastic. I even got myself the gear to do something similar to what you do (the same brand as you) some time ago, but except for most recent films I didn't get to introduce this systematic system yet. Maybe will ask my wife, she's excellent at filing. Agree that digitalising the negs is the best way to evaluate them prior to printing. Excellent Rembrandt btw. Thanks for the video, you really give me a drive to get my khyber behind the computer and eventually to the darkroom!
@@LYSYSTUDIOS That reminds me of around 15 years ago my wife helped me organize and label my binders… she is a saint for putting up moth my madness.
I just do my best to stick with it moving forward. Helps to have a systematic approach.. I can say I never want to do it other than to see the conversions for the first time. But when it’s done it feels great!
I slowly chip away at the backlog before I implemented this.
When I was running the MiniLab at work, we used an electronic film sleeving machine. The sleeves were on a massive continuous rool so it didn’t matter how long the film was, you always had enough sleeves. We would manually line up the gap in the negatives with a blade, the press the cutting leaver and the film would automatically advance into the next sleeve. In our lab, there would be up to 5 x 35mm negs in each sleeve. It did speed things up a lot if there were plenty of orders due to go out and didn’t matter if we were sleeving 12, 24 or 36 exposures.
When rolling the film, this was done manually, rolling the film in our fingers and took a fair amount longer. It wouldn’t matter for one or two films, but multiple films after that would take up enough time to feed another 35mm through the scanning table. On top of that, we would also put the film into a film pot : I would just put the original film pot in the envelope if it came with one, or put one of the discarded pots in there when booking in. This made it stand out that the customer wanted the film uncut and I would double check the instructions if there was a film pot in the envelope when printing and packing.
Me personally, I would never charge extra for rolling the films. The film pots were free as we usually discard them in a tub ready for recycling. This also gave me a little printing break while I carefully rolled the film with gloved hands. If the images were too light on the film to see between the frames, I would automatically roll the film after printing what I could and wait for additional requests from the customer when they picked up their film(s). You can’t uncut something when it’s been cut, I was always happy to please the customer where possible.
Thank you, this makes sense… never knew the workflow or process until now!
I'm not as organised as you with all the indexing and referencing, but working on a neg in Lightroom before darkroom printing saves time and money for sure!
@@mike747436 got really sick of spending hours trying to find a negative 😂
Really useful suggestions and great to see your approach in detail - thanks.
Glad you enjoyed it!
amazing perfect workflow. I make it a little simpler. Regardless of the format, per film chronologically with year-month sequential number. Additionally list of all films with additional information about film, format, content.
Pain to do but it helps so much!!!
Hi Matt, thanks for another great video. For certain photos I scan the neg so i can correct / work on aspects in photoshop send the digital file to someone who creates a physical neg and then print that new neg in the darkroom. I have a flatbed a Epson V850 but its not great for 35mm and i have been told its actual DPI is 2400. Do you think DSLR scanning can give higher resolution?
I have never had film come back from a lab uncut without scratching. It is usually scratched when cut into strips as well. I am sure some labs can do this safely, but you need to research/ test this. Developing and archiving film is not that difficult. Your digital archiving is a great plan.
@@briansilcox5720 That is a real issue. Was not that way with great labs back in the day. I think now many just want scans and toss the negs… so hard for me to comprehend 😳
I have developed all my black and white to this day. If I screw something up ok but if a lab did to where I could not print them in the darkroom I would be pretty upset. Guess I have control issues 🤷🏻♂️
Notice a Stuffer Graphic stepper in the Ligthroom catalog. How do you use that ? Thanks always great content.
Good catch. Been trying to find a correlation from scanning Raw files to contrast of actual prints on darkroom paper... WITH the benefit of a functional workflow for scanning sharing etc... has proven challenging but not without hope.
Have found some references and seems we need a Raw completely unprofiled scan. WHich from what I can gather leaves out most of my workflow with camera / Negatve Lab Pro etc...
This is more practical scanning Large format with Silverfast & less images. Will post my findings when I have something of value 👍
@@Distphoto Thanks! I'm sure you'll find some interesting stuff 😄
I stopped scanning negatives about 10 years ago and reverted to just making contact sheets. Nowadays I only scan when I'm prepping images for the web or a book, and often those will be scans from prints rather than negatives. I just found negative scanning really boring! I think I did too much of it...
@@ianland4768 Well, I would not call it exciting 😂
Thanks for this! I was really missing the Capture Time - I could see it in other parts of lightroom in areas where I can edit other metadata items, but it wouldn't let me edit capture time there!
@@paulstillwell your welcome, glad it helped!
I have a similar workflow for evaluating my negatives. I camera scan them in using the Valoi setup. I don't like the scanner method as I always get banding on my scans. I think that is because the negatives don't lie flat on the scanner bed. The negative holders that came with the V850 scanner are painful to use for 135 and 120 film. And with the Valoi setup it is actually faster to scan with than the scanner. The scanning camera is tethered to LR, but I create my own filing system for the negatives. for some reason I dislike LR and can't be bothered with it. I process the negatives to positives in Photoshop and this gives me flexibility on what I may want the image to look like. Getting a good scan can also give me the opportunity to make a digital negative if I want to print larger in the darkroom, by contact printing the DN. I even make DN's from digital files and darkroom print them as well. They look fantastic this way. Great video.
Very similar way to how I organise. One step more, and maybe it's just my LR (Classic monthly subscription), I have to manually "save meta-data to file" so when I export to Flickr, all keywords are saved and transferred over. Keywording is such a chore, though.
I never have my lab cut my negatives. Never had an issue with scratches either. Can't say the same about my ECN film sent to the midwest. They don't sleeve and will roll multiple rolls and not use a sleeve. I've had some issues with dirty and scratched film with them. I still use them because I'm too lazy to develop my ECN, and their price is very reasonable.
@@SteveMillerhuntingforfood Scratches have not been a huge issue for me but I do develop nearly all of my film ( and I have scratched some 🤔).
I'm curious how you handle meta data so that it's not reflecting the scan, but the original film camera. I've been using Metalimage for this, but is there a way to do that directly in Lightroom without a third-party tool? Or does Negative Lab Pro handle camera EXIF? Thanks!
@@BudParr I only use key wording to let me know the camera, lens etc… when I can. I do edit the capture time in the metadata. But it would show the image was shot with a Canon R5 and 100mm macro.
As far as I know Neg Lab Pro is not able to do this.
But with embedding the keyword I can still search.
Will look into the program you mention… does it take much time?
Question, and apologies if it seems basic. Why do you save jpeg and tiff files?
@@injuringnico17 I don’t. Occasionally I find jogs with my tiff exports but it would be an accident. But here I don’t only raw and tiff
I'm guessing the charge to not cut the film is because they have a process in place and it's more efficient and less time consuming to stick to one process, than to have another branch off and be disruptive. The charge may be to cover that loss of efficiency and/or encourage customers to not select the option if they don't really need/want it.
That and maybe a bunch of uncut negatives makes for a bigger, bulkier parcel to put in the mail and that may be more expensive than sleeved negatives that are laying flat. I think this may be the more likely reason.
@@joshuagaude6084 Makes sense. Still don’t like paying it 😂
I have a much different filing and cataloging method for my negatives. I put them all in 3ring binders , sleeved of course , no meta data or info of any kind. When I need to find a negative I brew up a coffee sit down with many binders and flip through them for several hours usually, ,I do have contact sheets to see the positive more easily, most of the time, after several hours I have either found the negative I want or have convinced myself I’ve found a better choice 😂😂😱😱😱🤣🤣🤣
@@michaellong9526 Yes, that is my old system 😂. As the binder grew it became unbearable
aha, so the digital scanning is just for the "contact sheet", to preview the roll, and check the negs., but great to see you still analogue print them.
Pretty much! Also helps to keep record and find them. Nice for sharing quickly as well! But ultimately it’s to PRINT 💪
this was somewhat helpful as I have ben struggling with camera scanning and was not satisfied. But… I am still not sure about the previewing of darkroom technique in Lightroom for me. Nevertheless I will check out the smart shooter program 30 days trial…
Cheers Rolf
Using Lightroom is weird because you can get a good Idea of things but no way to correlate exposure contrast, etc... directly to a darkroom print. Neg lab pro does some adjustments that make it unuseable for this. Am looking into how do do this more efficiently but it seems like Raw scans and skipping Negative Lab Pro which I like for the convenience.
I used to be organized and neat until I got my post cancer depression. Now I don't care.
It's true that when in depression and even post depression for any reason the last thing one can be asked for is to get organised. Moreover, I don't do photography for living - and while I do admire this system and would definitely fancy having something like that, putting that in place clashes with another personal objective of mine when it comes to analogue - to stay away from computers. Computers are depression catalysts in their own right, at least for me.
A lot of truth.
Sorry to hear… prayers and hoping you feel better.