Organizing Your Negatives

[mc_vancouver]

This is my bugbear, the anchor around my neck, the albatross, the...

I would like YOUR advice on how to organize negatives and their contact sheets. Currently, mine are a jumble, negs in one place, in those archival three-hole pages or they are in the glassine sleeves they come in from the lab; the contact sheets are in another binder or just loose... (and Yes, I know how stupid and ill-conceived that is); I have no system, and what I want is a SIMPLE SYSTEM.

 

[rover]

Me too, negs in pages with some notes on them but no other organization other than to say they are in a binder.

 

[rogue_designer]

simple:
Large binders with teh Clear-File pages that hold both negs and contact sheets. Organize by date shot. Use sticker edge tabs to indicate sleeves that have portfolio/client prints

 

[FrankS]

I thought I was bad. At least my contact sheets are with the plastic archival neg sleeve sheets in binders. They are roughly in chronological order, but I should be dating the neg sleeve sheets or contact sheets.

 

[dcsang]

I've had this issue on my plate for a while as well.

I can tell you that I sleeve them; rarely if ever print contacts but do scan the negs based on what's "good" on the roll; the negs are sleeved and numbered (sleeves) with a date code as best as I can keep up.

My concern is the date code is suspect - do I use the date I began shooting the roll; the date I finished shooting the roll or the date the roll was processed?

I still have to create a database/spreadsheet to ensure that information is kept up to date.


Yes.. it's a big project.

I've also got a whack (probably around 2,000+) slides that my dad has just handed me to catalogue from his collection. Mostly family photos but again; where to start and how to catalogue something that has little or no reference information.... I would not say "anchor" but instead definitely a yoke that will be carried for many years to come...

Dave

 

[rogue_designer]

My concern is the date code is suspect - do I use the date I began shooting the roll; the date I finished shooting the roll or the date the roll was processed?

For records keeping purposes, I'd say the date you processed - at least it's easy to keep track of consistently. You can note event, image dates where applicable in a database, but keep the negs sheets organized by processing.

 

[sbug]

Oh boy, I am horrible at this. I have a lab do my scans so I keep my negatives in the envelope with the cd. That is the extent of my organization. I should get sheets and put them in a binder but I've found that once I have them scanned, I don't go back to access the neg's all that much. It sure is a pain in the ass when I do though.

 

[Ash]

I have no idea what order my negs should be in. I roughly know what came first, so chronologically they're 'ok'.

I use the sleeves bought from jessops or similar, let them all lay in a box-file, with misc prints and all sorts on top. That's ordered enough for me, as long as they're all in the same place. I rarely if ever print contact sheets.

 

[Pherdinand]

I keep them all in two huge drawers.
They are not really worthy of being organized, anyway. I don't even know why i keep them.

 

[Ash]

Never throw anything away.

I've been tidying up the past few days and found a print or two from last year that I really like. I can't see myself ever throwing that stuff away, even the really shoddy ones. Same goes for negs. No matter how bad, you'll regret it soon as you throw them away.

 

[methinks]

I organise my negatives in a large ring binder using Clearfile negative sheets. 120 goes first (being slightly smaller in width) with the oldest at the back, newest at the front. Behind that go the 35mm sleeves, again running oldest at the back to newest at the front.
I don't mark the sheets themselves but when I inevitably scan & save them I put them in folders yyyy-mm-dd on a seperate drive and then import them into Picasa which puts them chronologically in scan-by date anyway... I just use Picasa as a digital version of a collection of contact sheets!

 

[lubitel]

I am a mess. Once a couple of drawers were full with prints and negs, I started thinking about organizing. that was 2 years ago. Now I have a couple of shoe boxes one basket and 3 ringbinders full of negs and so on. Any kind of numbering system has failed after 2 weeks.

 

[JimG]

Never throw anything away.

I've been tidying up the past few days and found a print or two from last year that I really like. I can't see myself ever throwing that stuff away, even the really shoddy ones. Same goes for negs. No matter how bad, you'll regret it soon as you throw them away.

Ash is right. I have my father's old negatives (mid-1920's to 1960) and even a few of my grandfather's. If nothing else their a record of how people lived as well as what the world looked like. JIm

 

[Pherdinand]

Yeah, true, But one or two are enough for that. You don't need a whole damn room full of it!

 

[oscroft]

When I'm being good, as soon as I have my negs or trannies I scan them, one computer folder per film (with a file naming system that identifies year, film and frame), then file them in ClearFile 3-ring pages. I don't do contacts, because I can just look at a thumbnail view of the scans. And I scan and keep everything.

My problem is that I haven't always been good, so there are huge gaps where my negs/trannies are still sitting in the envelopes/boxes they came in. But the good news is that these days I'm good more than I'm bad, and the gaps of unscanned and unfiled pics are slowly being filled - and I am managing to scan and file all my new ones at the same rate I'm getting them.

 

[Dougg]

Wow, I'm a bit surprised to hear a relatively low level of organization! :O I just really hate having a hard time finding something specific that I know is there somewhere... I hate it so much I'm willing to put in some effort to make finding stuff later easier. 🙂

I use the YY-MM-DD coding plus "CN" or "CT" or "BW" for differnt film types, and add A, B, C etc for additional rolls *ending* the same day. What messes this up somewhat is that back 40 years ago I started with a sequential numbering system that started with CN1 and BW1 etc and got up to BW404 before I switched to date-based numbering.

Can't really go back and change the old numbers, I think, as there are negative files, contact sheets, lab prints, and enlargements all numbered according to that original system. Too confusing and too much work to re-number it all now.

I don't get lab prints with the processing any more, but do get scans. So I renumber all the scans in the roll, once copied off the CD, to correspond with the roll number... for example neg number 14 in roll 061024 would have the matching scan file named 061024-14. Makes it easy for me later when I want to dig out a particular original scan again.

Oh, and i'm sorry to report all the info is in a computer database file too; camera, lenses, filters, exposure and subject notes, scan notes, printing notes, film and processing data... Too obsessive? 😀

 

[ClaremontPhoto]

Scan all negs HISRES to CD.

Write date on CD (and on cover) and on negs storage. Needs a special pen.

Upload CD to iPhoto for easy reference.

If more than one film on a date then suffix A, B, C...

 

[rxmd]

I keep them in folders in clear negative sheets (I hear pergamine ones are supposed to be better for archival purposes, but I like contact printing through the sheets).

I keep the sheets organised with a per-year coding system. Basically it's 2006 XY ZZZ, with XY two letters signifying negative format (A = 35mm, B = 6x6, C = 6x9, and I don't shoot anything else yet) and film type (A = colour negative, B = B/W, C = B/W slide; D = microfilm; I don't shoot colour slides). ZZZ is a simple numbering. Then I keep a very simple database on my computer which camera the film was shot with and what's on it. I keep the negatives in separate files for each film format, which is why I started encoding the format along with the number.

I don't want to go down to individual days, because it happens that I have a film in a rarely-used camera for three months or so, and in that case it makes no sense to code the film by the day. If I need the information precisely down to the day, I put it in the database.

Philipp

 

[lubitel]

now thats organization, philipp!

 

[pesphoto]

Mine are in a big portfolio box. Most of them are sleeved.