Good morning! 👋 

I hope you had a great weekend and were able to take some photos. I still haven’t gotten out 🫢 maybe I’m in a rut. More on that later.

Here’s what we got for today:

1. 🎞️ CineStill’s 400D 4×5 film is back!

2. 👨‍🏭 LR negatives workflow.

3. 🦥 How to bust a rut.

🎞️ CineStill’s 400D 4×5 is back!

A few years ago, CineStill launched their 400Dynamic film in 35mm and 120. It’s a great film—fine grain, daylight balanced, very versatile. They managed to also make the film in 4×5. It sold out pretty quickly as it’s not regularly produced. But it’s back!

You can go to CineStill’s website and pick some up. It’s a little pricy, $120. Although it comes with 25 sheets. For comparison, a pack of Kodak Portra 400 (with 10 sheets) is $85.

If you shoot 4×5 and are interested, I’d recommend picking some up soon. I imagine it will sell out pretty quickly.

👨‍🏭 LR negatives workflow.

Scanning film at home can be tedious, but it’s a great way to save money and have more control. But it does mean that you have to deal with and organize the negatives in Lightroom. Here is the workflow that I use, it’s worked well and may help you stay organized with your negatives.

I’m not going to cover the actual scanning process. That’s a whole other topic for a future newsletter. So for this workflow, I’m starting from having digital negatives.

Step 1 - Import negatives into Lightroom

The first thing I do when I open up Lightroom (I use Lightroom Classic) is to create a new folder for the negatives I’ve just scanned. I name this folder the date I scanned the negatives and it goes inside a “Negatives” folder that is grouped by year.

Step 2 - Flip, rotate and crop

Often I don’t bother to make sure that I have the emulsion side up when scanning, so this means I may need to flip the image. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if the image is reversed or not. The easiest way is to look at any text in the image.

I also rotate any images that were taken in a portrait orientation.

And then the tedious fun part, cropping the images. There is no real fast way of doing this. You just have to go one by one and crop the image. Keyboard shortcuts are your friend. R to crop. Hold Option to size both sides at once (left/right or top/bottom). 

Step 3 - Turn the negative into a positive

Now the big moment. Converting the negative into a positive. This will be the first time that you really see how your images turned out. There are different software you can use to do this process. I use Negative Lab Pro, it’s a popular one that’s easy to use. Plus there is a Lightroom plugin so you don’t have to leave Lightroom.

In the develop module, with all of the images from the same roll selected, press Control+N. This will bring up the Negative Lab Pro menu.

Press convert, and NLP will do its thing. Once converted you can cycle through each image and make adjustments. I don’t make any major adjustments here, just maybe some minor contrast adjustments. I do however select the ToneProfile. Usually, I stick to LAB - Standard but sometimes I like the look of CINEMATIC - Rich (particularly for B&W) or LINEAR - Gamma. Play around with different ones and see what looks best for each image.

From here, I press “Apply”. The nice thing is that the conversion is non-destructive. You can always reset the develop settings and start over.

Step 4 - Export as a Tiff

I always export the positives as a Tiff file. NLP has a export preset called: NLP - Positive Copy - TIFF. Why do this? A few reasons:

• It bakes the conversion. Any adjustment I make to the Tiff, I can reset without going back to it being a negative.

• I can organize the image how I would any other. I can treat it the same as if it was a digital photo or a scan I got back from a lab.

Step 5 - Reset the negative

Finally, the very last thing I do is reset the raw file (not the exported Tiff) back to it’s un-cropped negative. You can do this by selecting the images, right click > Develop Settings > Reset. Why do this? This way it is clear what the negative is and it’s easy to reprocess. For instance, if I want to crop it differently or use a different ToneProfile.

That’s it! You now have organized negatives and clean Tiff files to work with.

🦥 How to bust a rut.

I haven’t been getting out and taking photos lately. 😢 Even when I have gotten out, it’s been a little half hearted. I’m in a bit of a rut, which is normal and something every photographer experiences.

It’s winter 🌨️ and cold 🥶 here in NYC. The daylight is short and there is a lot of grey. It certainly makes getting motivated to bundle up and go out and take pictures that much more difficult.

I find that when I feel this way, I gotta change things up. Adding some novelty helps me get motivated to pick up the camera.

So here are some ideas of things I want to try:

• Take photos inside with a strobe. Or better yet, take some photos with some funky color lighting. Either with gels or a color LED panel.

• Get really close up. I don’t have a macro lens for any of my film cameras, but it would be interesting to try and get close up. I can raid my fridge for fruits and veggies, they have interesting textures.

• Try some of the weird developing processes. Believe it or not, you can develop with coffee, and even beer. 🤯 

• Shoot digital. 😱 I know, I know—but It can remove some friction to picking up a camera.

What are some things you do to get out of a rut?

Alright, that’s going to do it for today.

If you have any questions on the LR workflow, don’t hesitate to ask.

I’ll see you next week 🫡 

Ben Henschel

📷️ Mamiya RB67 / 🎞️ Haven’t decided yet.