....is it upside down?

Seriously, am I being stupid? I thought, possibly incorrectly, that as light passes through the lens it is flipped on it's head. Of course in an SLR the prism sorts that out in the viewfinder but does that mean the image on the negative is upside down?

I only as as I'm going to create a mask for one of my Lomo cameras with the work PHOTO or something and place it in front of the negative. I'm trying to get my head around which way up the word needs to be.

Ok, after tweets from forum users I'm thinking this is the way the mask will need to be aligned (the word "photo") so that when the film is developed it appears the right way up/around?



Thoughts?

Depends what the background to the photo is really doesn't it? If it's the mask to a plain background, you can just flip the print around and you don't need to worry about it.

Jon

Fix it in post.

Holding a negative in front of me, in the same orientation as it will be in the camera when the image is exposed, the emulsion side is away from me and the image is inverted. If you want a mask to produce a word on the emulsion side, it too has to be inverted. I think that's all you need to do.

I did think it also had to be mirrored, but now I have a physical sample in front of me, and have ingested some caffeine, I was mistaken.

I'd go with this.
I'm also interested in seeing the final result!

Sure? How are you holding the negative to look at it? My thoughts are that it will be inverted and mirrored. The lens is a circular thing and affects light rays in all directions, so if it is sending light from the top of the scene to the bottom of the negative, then it goes that stuff to the right will end up on the left of the negative. Unless the lens is magical in some fashion (and thusly expensive).

This is where experimentation will bear fruit.

Nope.

Right then, I've had another look at one of my developed negs and combining that with the power of wiki (!!) I feel pretty sure the word as it is in the image (2nd post) will come out the right way up. I'm going to make the mask today and if some sun comes out go out for a play!

If you are holding the negative the way it sits in the camera (i.e. emulsion away from you), you are correcting the horizontal mirroring by effectively looking at the image from behind.

All this does give headaches. You are inverting everything with a negative - the view, colours, etc..

Your best bet is to experiment - make a mask, run some film through, have it processed and see if it works. If not, try again with a different alignment. Remember way works before embarking on the project for real.

I think I might have a Kodak Gold 24exp in the fridge. I could run that through and see what happens.

Partial success!

I was right about the word. It had to be inverted both horizontally and vertically like my illustration further up in the thread. Once I'd done that the word came out the right way up/around on the photos.

I ran into a problem though. I wanted to print the word on acetate (as I'm useless with a pen) but realised it's not completely see through which would have affected the image. To avoid this I cut out the word but that in itself means every bad edge shows up. Also there is some light leakage through the black print.

My next challenge is to try the same but print on photo paper/card to block out more light and to try and get the cuts cleaner.

I prefer to rotate it through 180° about the normal

Have you considered using images rather than text?

Straight edges may not be as troublesome.

Yes but I fancied having a play with words. I just like to experiment with my film/lomo stuff.