Analog workflow

- We're back this week with Derrick Story talking about shooting film. Derrick, I don't know how many courses there are in the library on digital photo workflow. There's gobs of them spread across lots of different pieces of software. Your workflow for shooting film is very interesting. You shoot film, you have it processes somewhere else, but you do all your post-production in the computer, just as you would with a digital photograph. That means that you're keeping track of analog stuff in the real world and digital stuff in your computer. How are you managing all this? - I do, each roll of film, when I shoot a roll of film, it has a film number.

This started out, long time ago, TFP, the film project. See as I go, the film project. And this happens to be from roll 131. - When you say it has a number, you mean you're assigning it a number. - I'm assigning it a number. Every time I put a roll of film in the camera, this one right here is 138, I believe, in here. The reason why I know that is I keep of track of everything on the phone. I use Day One, and I love Day One. I think it's a fabulous app.

- It's extraordinary, we've talked about Day One here before, I use it everyday. - And one of the things that it does is allows you to add tags. One of the tags is the film number, TFP131. If I take a shot with this camera right here, I took a shot of you earlier, then I'll also take an iPhone shot. That way I have that and guess what, it captures everything, weather, time of day, all that good stuff. I have all that metadata, I just add the tag, TFP131 and then it's all in here.

- You're building a digital copy of every analog image that you shoot and the phone is automatically applying, not exposure metadata, but real world metadata. - Everything else. Now I do make notes on the exposure data, too. I make notes on the camera, lens and all that kind of stuff. One of the things that I do when I first put a roll of film in, especially if I'm using a new camera, I just put on three by five card, I'll put the camera, the serial number, the lens, all that, first image on that roll of film is I take a picture of that. - Okay, that's great.

- Because I shoot with a lot of cameras 'cause I'm testing all the time for the film camera shop. I have all of that and then when the film comes back from the lab, we usually cut it and put it in these sheets here. And then you'll notice that I have the TFP on there. I have also a little information like camera and all that kind of stuff and the date. That's all I have on there. But, on any one of these shots right here, if I wanna know what happened with it, all I have to do is look up TFP131.

I just go right here, plug it in, and I go, oh yeah, I shot that on this day, I used this camera, the weather was 62 degrees and overcast. Like you said, I even know what music I was listening to at the time. I have all that information right here. - So far, you've got your phone serving as basically an incredibly detailed automatic notebook for the film that you've got. You don't have anything into the computer yet. - Nope. - Okay. This is your asset management system on the analog end.

What are you taking into the computer? - On the computer, I get the stuff scanned. I either off load it this way or online, if they do it online. Or, I can use my little scanner here. I use Capture One Pro for that. They all go in there, roll by roll and each roll gets an album name, and guess what it is, TFP131. And then maybe I'll put contacts or Pentax or whatever just so I know that.

And that all goes in there. There isn't really any metadata to speak of, but interesting, Day One also has a computer app also. Any time that I'm working in Capture One Pro and I wanna know more information about that image, I just hop over to Day One and look it up. If I really wanted to, if I was super meticulous which I'm only semi-meticulous, I would move that data into my asset manager, but I don't. - You scan every frame of every roll of film.

You don't do any editing ahead of time. - No, just everything goes in. - Just because it's quick enough to scan and it doesn't really matter? - Yeah and I'm having the lab scan it most of the time. If I want a higher resolution scan, then I'll do my own scan. But I'm having the lab do everything. Then I just pop it in there and then I do star ratings and all that kind of normal stuff that we do with it. For instance, I can filter out my best film shots just by, show me all the three star shots or whatever.

That's where the joy of digital asset management merges nicely with the analog world. We couldn't do all this before. In the film round one, I had no metadata unless I took notes, which is no good. Now all I have to do is take an iPhone shot and off to the races I go. - Once you've got everything in the computer, you've got your negatives in your notebook, do you ever really go back to the negatives once they're in the computer? - I will when I wanna do a special scan.

Let's say when I have kind of this low res scan in the computer that I'm working with, which is fine for doing postcards and things like that. But if I decide I wanna do a nice big print, then I will go back to that negative and I'll get a higher resolution scan of it and then do what I need to do there. - But for the most part, you're able to just kind of live in the computer once it's in there. - I do try to keep up with keeping things filed. And by the way, you can have these sent back from the lab sheeted for you.

If you don't wanna do that step, if you don't wanna do from this to this, they'll do that for you. Then all you have to do is just mark it with a sharpie. - You've got, for the most part, the same steps in your workflow that you have when you're working digitally. You've gotta get the stuff into the computer, which is a little bit more involved here, but completely reasonable. And then you just go through your ratings. - Absolutely, and I keep all the analog in a separate catalog or separate library.

I'm not mixing it with my other stuff. When I wanna enjoy analog and do that, I love just opening that catalog and everything in there was captured with these tools here. It's fun, it's fun, it's a different world. - For the user who's never worked with film before, how big a print can you expect to get out of a piece of 35 millimeter film before it starts to fall apart? - Well, easily, if you have any decent technique at all, what I mean by that, knowing how to focus your camera and stuff like that, easily 11 by 14 is not a problem.

And then bigger from that will depend on how good of an image that you have on film and so forth. - And the viewing distance that you're expecting. - Viewing distance, all that stuff, but 11 by 14, no problem at all. And probably a size up if you have a good negative. - Well this is great, you've got a really clever scheme going here. I've talked about Day One a lot here before. I think it's a fantastic application. It's available for iOS and Android, and on Mac. There's no Windows version right now.

- I know they need to do that. - They need to do that. It's weird, that's the only piece of software we're talking about here because the rest of this is analog. You're at roll 130? - I'm at 138 right now, this is 138 in here. Isn't this adorable? - Yeah, that's very nice. Do you have a target, is this just an open-ended project? - It's open-ended, I thought this project was going to end like a year and a half ago. I just committed to one year of doing this and then I was gonna write about it.

Now 2.5 years later, I have no end in sight. - That's great. - I can't see giving it up now. And one other byproduct, real quickly, a lot of my shots that go on Instagram right now, which I think is important for photographers to be active socially, a lot of those shots come from me recording a shot that I was out there doing because I wanted to take a film camera shot. Shooting film has really helped keep my Instagram account alive because I have all these digital shots that I did as part of this workflow.

- The film camera got you out the door to go shooting, but you're getting social media content. - Yeah because I shoot it with the iPhone. So even though its original purpose was for the Day One entry, I still have the shot. - You still have a good shot, that's great. Well this has been great and very fascinating. If you haven't watched the previous segments with Derrick, you should check it out. You should also check out his analog website 'cause you've been covering this all extensively online. Derrick, I can't thank you enough. This has been great. - Good, thanks Dan.