Digital Contact Sheets

I’ve been trying, somewhat, to more properly organize all of my negatives and positives in a way that allowed me to easily find what I’m looking for. I have a folder system, both phsyical and digital, that works decently well.

Over the last few years, pandemic, depression, excuses, I’d let everything fall apart when it came to organization. Trying to right that ship has taken a long time - I’m not even close yet. One thing I decided I was going to do, though, is digital contact sheets. Not only does this provide me with an easier way to look at a whole roll on my computer, it also provides me with an easy way of sharing a roll with friends.

For example: I sent a contact sheet to some friends, and they liked some images that I found to be not great. I went back, and re-evaluated the images and do you know what I learned? My friends have bad taste.

My setup to shoot these is simple: My Nikon DF on a tripod head stuck right on the wall, a light table, and a piece of glass over the top of that to keep the film flat. Upload to Lightroom, crop, invert if needed, save. BOOM: Contact sheet.

I then upload these to Flickr, where I can put them in folders relating to the camera they’re shot with, as well as use as many tags as I’d like to locate whatever roll is needed. Some day, I’ll get to the point of a numbering system that can be added to the tags, I’m just not there yet.