New Scanner/New Feature

  Just a quick one today; my sister is on her way up from London for a visit and conveniently she has picked up a scanner i found for sale on Gumtree for me (nice one sis)!  So hopefully by the end of the week ill be able to upload my latest prints and get some more posts going up on here.

  I also just wanted to direct you to a new feature on the blog - the "downloadable content" page.  Here i will put links to various film photography forms and spreadsheets that i use to keep myself organised and to help me remember things.  Hopefully you will find useful things on there - it will get updated regularly so keep checking in.

  Anyway, if you come back early next week there should be a lot more content uploaded onto here (hopefully) and i can get back on track with the blog!  Thanks for stopping by!

Darkroom Record Template

  Well i still haven't got my scanner fixed.  I have done loads of prints over the past few weeks and im dying to upload them onto this blog and my flickr page.  My sister is coming up from London way for a visit this weekend and she's bringing with her a scanner i found on Gumtree for a decent price that should keep me going for now; so hopefully this weekend i will get some content uploaded.

  I have been getting very behind in writing up my darkroom records lately.  I normally just roughly jot everything i do down on a pad and then write it up later; but i spent about an hour over the weekend re-writing everything and frankly, it was time i could have used doing other things.  I decided to get myself organised and so in my free time at work i have created this template for you all to download.  Basically, its just a sheet for you to write down all your settings, processes and chemistry etc for each print you do.  Hopefully it will come in handy for some of you.

   I'm afraid i couldn't figure out how to get an image from excel to put into blogger so i have had to take a screenshot of it.  I'm not a member of any file hosting sites so if you want a copy of the spreadsheet just comment at the bottom of this blog with your email address and ill forward it to you.

Update: Ive managed to get it hosted on google docs so just get it from the link here.  Or you can still comment and ill send it you if you'd prefer.


  I should probably explain some of the sections on it.  First, film no and frame are just for how i personally store my negatives.  Each roll is cut up and put into dust sleeves, each sleeve is numbered as is each frame on the roll - so writing it on this sheet helps me sync up the print to the roll.  The process and chemistry section is just in case you are doing something other than standard black and white like lith printing; you'll be able to make a note of the chemicals used and the ratio of fresh developer to old brown etc.

  Anyway, hopefully some of you will find it to be of some use.  Once you have the excel file you can adapt it as you wish to fit your needs.

Changes

  As regular readers may have noticed by now i have changed my blog (again).  New logo, new layout and new pages.  I was unhappy with my previous logo and blog layout so i have had an overhaul and i'm really happy with how it looks now.  The main new feature is the pages section at the top of my blog.  This will link you to the about me, contact and (most importantly) the tutorial pages.  The about me page gives you a little background information about me which will hopefully compliment the articles i write.  The contact me page is pretty self explanatory; the tutorials page however is something different.  I have written quite a few tutorials since creating this blog and have every intention of carrying on doing so, so i thought it would be a good idea to collect these all together onto one page so people don't have to trawl through all my previous posts to find a how-to article.  I will keep this page updated as and when i write new how-to's.  That's about it for now - i'm still working on my scanner but rest assured as soon as it is working again ill be back updating (hopefully more often).  Bye for now.

Oh This Wretched Silence...

  Well there has been a lot going on lately, most notably i have been trying out lith developing. Unfortunately however my scanner has broken down.  I don’t know if its the scanner itself or just the power supply but whatever it is i feel somewhat crippled at the moment as i have now got a big pile of things i need to upload to flickr and this blog.  Hopefully ill get it sorted out soon and get back on track as im dying to upload these lith prints and ive got a pile of colour film to scan.  The curse of technology!