Minilab 2 · Sleeving Bench

Roz, sleeving, talking anyway

Okay — hi — grab that side of the envelope, would you, no, don't, I've got it. Order #3319. Thirty-six exposures, everything printed once, gloss, no border. Customer's in the food court, said fifteen minutes, that was twenty-two minutes ago, so I'm not panicking but I am moving.

You're looking at the backs because that's the side that's up when they come off the dryer belt. That's it. That's the whole reason. Nobody stacks them face-up, you'd scuff the emulsion on the cut edge of the one under it.

The stripe. Everybody asks about the stripe. That grey repeating text all down the back — that's back-printing, and it's laid on the paper at the factory, before the paper ever gets near me. It's the paper's own name, said over and over: type, surface, emulsion batch. It's there so when a print comes back to a counter three states over and somebody says this one's gone yellow, we can read the stripe and know exactly which paper and which coating it was. It's inventory. It's not decoration. It just happens to look like decoration.

Hang on — no. That one's a redo. Look at it, the whole frame's swimming in magenta, that's a chemistry drift on the last batch, not the negative. Ringed it in pencil. It goes back through.

The frame number along the edge — the little 7A, 18, whatever — that's machine-inked at the trim, right at the cutter, and it's read straight off the rebate of the negative. So it's the film's own count, not mine. If the roll got loaded a hair long you get a bonus frame at the head and that's your 0 or your 00, which drives people wild but it's just film being generous.

Order code sits bottom-left. 3319-01 is the original run. If they come back Thursday wanting five more of frame 22, that reprint doesn't get -01, it gets -R1, then -R2, and so on. Different code because it's a different print job — different day, different chemistry, possibly different operator, possibly a density correction I dialed in by hand. Two prints of the same negative are not the same print, and the code is how we admit that.

— MARISOL! Are you dropping the replenisher on tank two or am I? … Okay, you. Thank you. It's running four points warm.

Now the magenta grease pencil. That's mine. It's wax, it sits on top of the resin coat, it wipes off with a thumb and a bit of breath, and it doesn't sink into the paper — that's the entire point of writing on an RC back instead of a paper back, it won't feather and it won't come through. REDO — MAG means the print's running magenta, take it down some, run it again. +2Y is add yellow, two clicks on the head. 2 UP is print two of that frame, customer asked. A surname just means this one belongs in the Kettleman envelope, not the Sandoval envelope, because I had two 36s on the belt at once and I'm not a magician.

And the flash frames. When somebody's flash blows out the whole foreground and the background is a black wall — I ring the face, write BURN BG, and it goes back through with a hold on the background so it isn't just a floating white forehead. Doesn't always save it. Saves it more than people think.

Last thing, and I say this eleven times a day, so forgive the speed: the date stamp on the back is the date I printed it. Not the day you took it. The machine stamps when the paper goes through, that's all it knows, it has no idea you were at the lake in August. Roll sat in your glovebox since spring? Back says today. Sir. Ma'am. It says today because today is when it got printed. If you want the shooting date you want the date-back on the camera, that's the orange numbers in the corner of the picture, and that's a battery in your camera, not a machine in my back room. — Anyway. I lose that argument about twice a week and I have never once been wrong.

Right. Envelope, negatives sleeved in six strips of six, index slip stapled, and this goes in the pickup bin under K. Keep flipping if you want. It'll go around forever, the stack doesn't care.