Printing Photos

My grandson Ethan has made good progress with his photography this year, his photos have been getting some very kind and encouraging comments from readers and I decided to take his education an important step forward and show him how to print his photos. I'm not talking about picking a file on my computer and select the print option, I'm talking about digitising his film, editing it before we print and finally framing one of his photos. Grab a drink and get comfy as there's a lot to get through.

Ethan knows I share his photos with you through this blog and my social media. He's happy for me to do that. He knows I am proud of him for his effort and, let's face it, he's annoyingly talented. I have been taking photos for half a century and I know he's blown my efforts into the dust recently with his horse photos. The speed at which he has picked up this wonderful art we share is a joy to behold. It was time to hang one on the wall.

I explained to Ethan how we can take our nicely developed film and "digitise" it. For social media I use my Ion Slides2PC 35mm scanner, which is basically a phone camera in a box with a light at the bottom. It's fine for snap shots and social media, as we all know, compresses the life out of a photo. The reason I store my photos on Flickr is so you can see them all in uncompressed full resolution, but even then they are a bit wanting courtesy of the little scanner I use. For this excerise I got my Nikon D700 out to play and showed Ethan how to digitise his negatives.

For this exercise I needed my Tripod, Nikon D700 DSLR (other digital cameras are also suitable) and my Tamron Adaptall 2 90mm f/2.5 macro lens with extension tube. I explained to Ethan that a macro lens allowed us to get closer to our subject to isolate a single frame of film. The extension tube allowed us to get even closer to fill the screen on the back of the camera. To help us we needed a light to shine through the film and a holder to keep the film nice and flat whilst we photographed it. My A5 led light pad and Pixl-Latr are just the job.

We took our time to get the shot nicely focused and exposed and also bracketed either side of the ideal exposure in case we missed some highlight or shadow detail. Ethan appreciated the care needed to make sure his photo looked its best. Then it was time to transfer the images from my DSLR to my PC so we could edit them using Affinity Photo 2. With Ethan's direction I inverted and adjusted the best negative shot to produce what turned out to be a very well balanced photo. Ethan was very happy with it and our attention turned to printing.

To see if we had our settings right I printed Ethan's photo on plain A4 using my HP Envy 4520 inkjet printer. This was Ethan's first chance to see what his photo would look like at it's full size and we gave it a thorough pixel peep to find any defects we may have missed. Paying attention to the details is very important. Once Ethan was happy, I loaded a couple of sheets of A4 size glossy photo paper and began to print.

The look on Ethan's face when his photo had finished printing was a picture on it's own. His grin was literally from ear to ear and we set about framing it. I showed Ethan how we can use a plain sheet of paper to make a border or "mount" for his photo. After making sure everything was clean we set the glass, mount, photo and backing board into our chosen frame. The moment of truth was upon us.

Ethan is very happy with his framed photo and I had to take a photo of him proudly holding it before he took it home to hang on his wall. This has been a very worthwhile project for both of us, not least for being able to spend quality time together during the summer holidays. Ethan has produced a great photo that he can look at for years to come with fond memories of time well spent with Grandad. Who knows what the future holds, but I hope he can relive this special summer with his Children and Grandchildren should he be lucky enough to become a Dad and Grandad. I might even live long enough to share it with him, wouldn't that be something to be proud of!