Notion for Analog Photographers

Long are the days of pure analog photography, when the end goal was to simply produce a print in a darkroom. Nowadays, most analog photographers use a hybrid method, enjoying the simplicity of shooting film while relying on digital scanning for their prints and social media.

Bridging the gap between our physical and digital images can be a hassle since the negative strips don’t carry the EXIF information we have become so accustomed. After further consideration of this problem, I began exploring Notion’s capabilities to the fullest, taking full advantage of databases to sort all my analog adventures. Let me guide you through the process.

Camera database

I divided my “analog homepage” into different modules, pages of databases that interconnect with each other automatically. The first one, “camera database” is where I keep track of my equipment. Those who use multiple cameras or want to keep track of how many rolls each camera shot will find this table be very useful.

Film recipes

Over the years, I tried several types of film stocks, developers and recipes until I settled on my favourite combinations. Most times, I got the basic recipes from Massive Dev Chart or Film Dev, but over trial and error, I adjusted some of them to my liking. So, on this page, I keep track of all the recipes I used in the past, as well as my favourites for quick access.

On this module, I also included a temperature/time conversion and the famous Ilford inversion method to save water during film washing.

Film log

To identify and sort my negatives, I developed a coding system for my home-developed film: after I develop, I include a code on the negative sleeves that allows me to identify which camera I used, the sequential number and the year (for example, a film labelled as R0321 is the third roll I shot with my Rolleiflex in 2021). This code then carries on to the folder with the scanned negatives and each file number.

This method has served me well over the years, as it allows me to search for a photo in Lightroom and use the file name to search for the original negative if I need to rescan or make darkroom prints.

With the relational databases in Notion, this process becomes even more practical. For each roll, I can now select the corresponding camera and film recipe, add comments with the content and track their status on my “digital darkroom”, from developing to publication!

Prints

As Ansel Adams once put it, “The negative is the score, and the print is the performance”. The “prints” module is where all the previous preparation work comes to life. The layout is organised on a gallery view, allowing you to preview your previous prints and gather all the necessary information and print notes.

Get the template!

I found this workflow has really improved my film organisation and I wanted to share it with as many photographers as possible — to do so, I made it available as a template for you to customise and adapt to your workflow.