Processing film to make contact sheets 18/11/20

Developing the film: After experimenting with the cameras and taking a few photos, it was time to develop them. This was a lot harder than I thought it would be (especially in the dark!) The process of actually developing the film from start to finish is very time consuming. I think it will take a few more practices before I'm 100% certain that I'm carrying out the process correctly.

Final negative: Although the developing process is lengthy and intricate I really like having something physical to take away from it all. Rather than just taking a phot0 digitally and quickly printing it off. Film photography really makes you appreciate the images and the time and thought that the photographer has put into a single image.

Creating a contact sheet: A contact sheet is a quick way to scan all the photos from one shoot and determines which ones you want to continue to process and enlarge or which ones you will no longer need. I really enjoyed creating a contact sheet as it gave me an insight as to what my negatives would look like as developed photos. I t took me a few attempts to get the exposure right for my series of photographs.

Contact sheet 1: This was my first attempt at creating a contact sheet. The photos are underexposed as I didn't allow enough time for each one. This means that they appear fairly dark and a lot of the detail has been lost.

Contact sheet 2: I increased the exposure time by a small amount and this definitely improved some of the images but not all. As you get towards the end of the series they start to get too underexposed again. As my photos all had a varying amount of light on each one is was tricky to find an exposure time that suited ALL of the images.

Contact sheet 3: This time I increased the time up even more. Here you can see a vast difference to the previous 2 contact sheets. Much like the previous sheets, this timing worked for some but not all of the photos. The image of the building definitely worked better on contacts sheet 2 as there's much more tonal range, whereas on this contact sheet it has been overexposed so that detail ahs been lost. The latter 3 images definitely are at their strongest on this contact sheet.

If I go further and enlarge any of these photos I will use a combination of contact sheet 2 and 3 as spread out across the 2 is where my strongest images are.