Making a contact sheet

A contact sheet is a positive print of all the negative images from one film, made by a contact printing process. This is particularly helpful in the early stages of deciding what images to enlarge and work with.

First, set up the enlarger and then take it down two stops so the reading should be f8 or f5.6. Using the safety light, adjust the enlarger head so that the surface of the photographic paper is covered.

Negtive Strip

The negatives should be clean, dry and cut into strips of four.
Place the photographic paper emulsion side up on the baseboard.

Remove the safety light and set the timer to 10-12 seconds. It is a good idea to do a test strip first to get an idea of the amount of exposure needed. Simply do this by covering sections of the paper then increasing exposure in increments of 4 seconds or thereabouts.

Test Strip #1

Test Strip #2

Put the exposed paper through the developer machine.

Contact sheet

                                                                    

From the contact sheet, you can now choose what images work well, then enlarge them to make a photograh.