Long Story (Not so Short).
Long Story (Not so Short).
Ah, I love these threads. I am, despite a pronounced lazy streak, very excited about organizing things. I still have a problem with picking up socks, though.
It sounds like you're looking for a way to file proof (and larger) prints. My recommendation for you, based on my old system for filing prints, is to go with Printfile's
46-6P storage page and put it in their black "
Safe-T" closed, locking binders. Alternatively, you could go with their larger
48-8G proof pages, but you can pretty much only store them in Printfile's
ARC-G album binder, which isn't a locking model.
I personally haven't had negatives (or digital files) printed in a while - I'm more about on-line presentation and digital archiving. I must have several thousands of negatives in my archive, and even 2,000 or so prints from my earlier "snapshot" phases, so putting them away has been a bit of a chore. In fact, I'm constantly working at the problem from both ends - filing away old images and continuing to correctly archive newly created ones. In case it matters, I'm mainly (~75%) a film shooter.
If you're interested, read on below for my personal journey through the issue of archiving old images. You can find an earlier, much more obsessive post
here. where I describe the current archival process in exhausting detail. Several other folks in the thread had interesting ideas, too.
However, for me, the most important detail of filing proof prints and sleeved negatives has been the fact that I wanted to store them in "closed" (i.e., locking) three-ring binders. Herein lies the problem. As far as I know - and I have been looking, believe me -
there is no commercially available closed binder that can correctly fit the following items:
1. negative pages that can take 6-frame sleeved strips (6 rows, 36 total)
2. proof pages that fit 4 4x6 proofs on a side (8 prints total, both sides)*
Even the poular "Imagesafe" binder, the largest I've found, only fits 7 rows of 5-frame negative strips. Yes, this is only 35 images - which means I've got to stop shooting at frame 35. As for proofs, Print-File's answer to #2 above is the "G-Series" page insert, which is so big it needs its own binder - and the
ARC-G binder is not a closed one. Poop. Printfiles 46-6P pages will fit in closed binders, but I personally don't like the way the third print on the page has to sit horizontally. Call me weird.
*(One company, "Unikeep", sells a legal-sized closed binder that fits G-Series pages, but only about 15 pages or so. Not very cost-effective, and it took a lot of looking to find them. A it turns out, the pages foul on the ring mechanism and get all creased up, so that's not an ideal solution. See item #19500 on
this page.)
Oh, well. This is what you get for being obsessed. Sorry for the rant - enjoy your organizing.
Cheers,
--joe.
