Scanning Negatives

I got a new power supply for my scanner and started the long, drawn-out process of scanning some of my 4x5 negatives so I could upload them to Flickr.

I really would like to get back into 4x5 photography, but without access to a positive darkroom I need to work out a procedure for processing and printing the negatives I take. Otherwise it's just so much hand waving and problems with archival storage.

Even as I was pulling up photographs I'd done in the studio, landscapes, sunsets, etc. I knew the one I was really looking for was this one. It's the negative for the fabled 24x36" print of Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde. I had to smile as I loaded it into the scanner, and smiled even more when I saw how it came out. I scanned it at 1200x1200 dpi, but it could stand to be scanned at a much higher resolution if the file wasn't so big.

I remember a fair bit of dodging and burning when I printed it some ten plus years ago. So I pulled it into Photoshop and started to play around. It all came back. What regions I isolated, how much I over or under-exposed each one, all of it. That has to be the most powerful case of deja vu I've ever experienced in my life.

I was concerned, going into this, that I would find the whole digital end of the process tedious, and that I would lose the need to get back into 4x5 photography. Not so. If anything I'm even more excited, and can't wait to start exposing film again. It's been too long.

Tom