Many (many) yeasr ago I was lucky enough to take a trip to New York with a friend of mine - it was just after a massive blizzard had paralised the city, and we were one of the first flights in - having spent a couple of days in Detroit but that’s another story.

So the city’s practically empty - we were first to go to most of the attraction when they reopened, and had a great time. I was heavily into b&w photography, and shot off so many rolls of film over the week that we were there that doing something with the images has been a job I’ve always meant to get roud to - at the time I had a darkroom - now I’ve got a scanner.

It’s a wet and windy bank holiday weekend and I’m doing many things that I’ve been meaning to get round to, so I thought I’d have a go at scanning some of the old negatives in and see what happens. Can I get as much enjoyment playing with images as I used to have in the darkroom?

First problem - figuring out how to scan negatives, how to tweak contrast, what resolution to scan at etc. First image has been moderately successful and I’m feeling encouraged to keep going.

I’ll post a link to the Flickr set when I’ve done them all - now there’s optimism for you!

Postscript: 1200 dpi is ample for 35mm negatives - ends up with 3400×2250 px images, and if you play with the scanners exposure settings you can have almost as much control over the final image as you could in a darkroom, if you know what you’re doing.

However - it’s not the same. In a darkroom it’s very tactile, takes time, and seems to be much more of a human, creative process. All this digital stuff somehow removes you from the final result. It seems too easy, yet it isn’t.

Given a choice, I think if I were really trying to exert my creativity I’d roll my sleeves up and do it the old fashioned way.

And I must learn to take better care of my negatives!