Why print film rebate?

[bsimison]

Sounds like there's an awful lot of "rule making" going on in this thread.

And we all know what to do with rules...

[Sirius Glass]

Nah, just poking fun at the use of the word "puritanical" when no one had taken a hard stand for or against cropping.

[Drew Wiley]

If it was good enough for Avedon, it should be flushed!

[Bill Burk]

I said I try to use the whole negative for consistency. I feel something special happens when I see everything a negative has to offer.

I have been searching for days for an article I recall but don't remember the details. The gist of it was this guy couldn't figure out what rule a particular photographer followed when he made a series of prints for exhibit. Prints were all different sizes. The exhibit was a famous one.

A passage I did find in _Frame It_ by Lista Duren, describes dry mounting as being the only way to get a photograph to lie flat. Then the author cautions, "Any original piece of artwork, including a photograph, will decrease in value if you mount it".

I plan to continue printing all the negative has. I think I will mount by taping and hinging. I'll crop by cutting the mat opening as needed to show the best of the print.

But each photographer is entitled to a goal that works for them. You can make a show with different size prints, or you can try to make every print the same size. You can show the rebate. You can crop extremely to bring out something that you didn't expect when you originally composed the shot but can't go back and reshoot.

[jp]

If we were shooting 35mm film or dslr, the argument against cropping would be for image quality first and foremost.

That's not a problem for us where we measure film in inches instead of millimeter. We have the luxury to argue either way and not be wrong and still have high quality prints with a little cropping.

So while we wait for the film to dry (or the paint to dry on our next project camera), we debate it as we are curious where people stand.

[Bill Burk]

That's not a problem for us.

That's right! We have so much headroom.

Gotta turn up the hot water tonight.

[Noah A]

Printing the film rebate is a creative choice just like any other choice involved in making a photograph. I tend to prefer not to do it, but I've seen examples where it works effectively.

Some photographers may think that it helps show the process with which the photograph was made.

As a general rule I don't crop my negatives. I prefer to make my composition on the groundglass (or in the RF window). Whenever I crop the results tend to look cropped in some way. Perhaps because I generally only work with one or two lenses and I know those focal lengths well, the cropped photos never look natural to me. I also have shot quite a bit of 35mm and small-format digital in my past, so with those formats cropping can degrade image quality. But my old habits are sticking around even with medium and large format photos.

Having said that, If I have a negative that can benefit from a slight crop, I'll crop when needed. Again, just another creative choice.

Speaking of film rebates, I saw some advertising photos at shopping center recently. They were a strange format, I think longer than 35mm but not quite panoramic. The funny thing was that they had large-format style film edges, even though I'm sure they don't correspond to any sheet-film format. And the best part was that they had frame numbers!

[Bill Burk]

Thanks Noah, that's a good explanation, I share all your feelings.

I am looking to file my Omega D2 negative holder though, because I am not satisfied with one of my prints where the holder forced me to crop.

I thought I remembered it showing rebates tastefully, so I looked through James Balog _Tree_. The shots cover a variety of formats including 4x5, and although it appears like there are rebates outlining many prints, they are plain black outlines.

I found the passage I was looking for. It was Fred Picker in _The Fine Print_ describing Paul Strand's method of "making a group of prints of graduated size from a negative before deciding on the dimensions of the final exhibition print", contrasted to Edward Weston who always made 8x10 contact prints.

[bsimison]

Speaking of film rebates, I saw some advertising photos at shopping center recently. They were a strange format, I think longer than 35mm but not quite panoramic. The funny thing was that they had large-format style film edges, even though I'm sure they don't correspond to any sheet-film format. And the best part was that they had frame numbers!

You might be talking about the same fake film borders I saw, discussed briefly in this thread. Pretty funny stuff for film nerds like us.

The first time I did a LF portrait shoot for a client, I left the borders out and the designer concocted fake Fuji Provia borders to flank my TMax 400 image. She thought it looked better. I now include the film borders with my all of my scanned images.

[Ben Syverson]

If you do include borders, be sure to alert whomever does your printing. Recently I got some big prints back, and the film borders were gone. The printer had "helpfully" cropped out the borders, and even complained about having to do it.