What do you do with your negs?

[arseniii]

The question is mainly about what and how you store it.
I recently noticed that I already have around 1000 films cut and sleeved into something like this

and only few of them I would want to print.

It's all fine but it makes it harder and harder to find the negative I desire.
In addition, I store 90% of the stuff I would never print.
So, my interest is what is your strategy when you get your film developed(scanned, printed).

Do you store the whole film or cut out the frames you like and store only those. What is your way of keeping track, any archiving techniques?

I noticed if I cut out "good" frames, I usually cut them with 3-4 other frames to make future printing/scanning easier. And if I combine cuts from several film rolls in one sleeve it makes it almost impossible to find something. Thus, I'm forced to store the whole roll which keeps pilling up...

 

[sepiareverb]

Every roll gets a number as it comes out of the camera. I proof everything, and store proofsheets and negs in binders (B&W). Color films are stored in a polyester sleeve with the proofsheet in boxes (My lab makes 10x12" proofsheets). When I print something it gets numbered on the back before the paper goes in the easel: roll # and frame # (ie: 5460.24A or C1046.8) and any scan of a print or neg gets numbered the same way. If I have a print in hand or am looking at a scan I can get the neg in a minute. If I have an image in my head but no print I'm still SOL.

I've just started archiving my digital files as proofsheets via Adobe Bridge-

and am thinking of making proofs of my edits of film images this way- so I can have a set of proofsheets in hand with all of the images I've printed over the last year- much faster than looking through the series of books of proofsheets of every roll from the last year. This is similar to the method I've read Lee Friedlander uses, but an analog/digital hybrid. He shoots even more than me and seems to manage with it. I've just ordered the first batch of these proofsheets from MPIX to see how they look, I'm hopeful.

Bonus for the digital work is the pdf format allows me to search the proofsheets by image number to see related images easily.

 

[Fawley]

Its a problem for sure and I haven't heard of or know of any one good way to handle it. Here's what I do, at least for B&W which I process and print myself: I store my negs in similiar sleeves to yours. I make a contact sheet of each full sheet and number them sequentially, useing a different sequence for each film format. To control the sheer volume of negs (at least a bit), I do vet the cut strips and have no problem tossing them if they have no photographic, historical or personal value. As as result I may have contact sheets with more than one roll, but I make notes on the contact sheet so this hasn't been a problem. I keep the numbered contact sheets in a separte binder and tab the sequenced neg files in groups of 10.
Not a great system to be sure but the best I could come up with.

 

[Argenticien]

But the key question is, if you keep all of the frames from every roll (rather than keeping the winners and binning the chaff), and you use those 35-frame PrintFile or Vue-All sleeves, how/where do you store the 36th (and sometimes 37th) frames?!
--Dave

 

[KenR]

I keep all of the negs in their file folders numbered by year 10-01, 10-02, etc. and make a contact sheets for each roll. I made up an Access database of all of the locations and subjects (in the days before Flickr and such) and have that available to search for a specific negative. Don't throw away anything - just because it seems worthless now, it may be the perfect picture 5 years from now when you're having a show or somebody asks for something specific.

 

[coelacanth]

I keep them in big plastic hard shell binders, occasionally sort out and move favorite frames to "Fav" sleeves. And when I'm bored, I take photo of neg on light box just for fun.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I sleeve mine in the plastic print file pages then number them. I keep notebooks with each roll number listed with dates film was shot, subjects, locations, developing info if its black and white.

The pages full of film go in archival acid free envelopes (5 rolls per envelope) and those go into archival acid free hanging folders in a file cabinet.

 

[Pickett Wilson]

I carefully filed mine in PrintFile sleeves along with contact sheets. And used a extensive filing system to access them all. Many thousands of rolls of film. Stored in filing cabinets with hanging files. Took up much of a room. Then a few years ago I burned them all. Felt like a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

Now I keep all raw files on large RAID arrays with multiple backups. Tens of thousands of exposures over the last 10 years. Not nearly as psychologically weighty. 🙂

Once you have a lot of negatives, any system becomes a pain to retrieve a specific negative. The main thing is that you have to do it consistently, and file every negative according to your system as soon as it is processed. Otherwise, it will quickly become too much of a hassle to tackle. And, you'll end up like Winogrand. 😱

 

[stompyq]

I get a index sheet everytime i get a roll processed. Then use archival methods single sleeves to sleeve everystrip. I organize each roll by using discarded 4x5 sleeves (that my 4x5's come in) and staple the index sheet in to the front of the 4x5 sleeve. These then go in to a shoe box type holding box. Each roll also gets scanned but i rarely keep the original scanned image and weed out the keepers which get the final PP.

 

[sepiareverb]

The extras (usually two frames for me) get placed in separate pages labelled 52x1, 52x2 etc. as needed per negative book. The roll they came from gets written on the page in sharpie should I need to access any of the info tied to the actual roll (developer/ISO/etc.). I proof those pages when they're full, and treat them the same way as the rest.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I carefully filed mine in PrintFile sleeves along with contact sheets. And used a extensive filing system to access them all. Many thousands of rolls of film. Stored in filing cabinets with hanging files. Took up much of a room. Then a few years ago I burned them all. Felt like a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

I would die inside if that happened to my negatives. They're really all I have to show for my life. I can't imagine burning them even if I had scanned every good image from them (and I have from most of my rolls, except my more recent work which I am still scanning).

When my son's mother and I split up years ago, she destroyed almost all of my prints that I had made in the darkroom. I got my negs out in time though. Losing those prints hurt because I cannot do darkroom prints anymore because of health problems, but I can print them other ways. Losing the negs would be game over....lost forever.

 

[drewbarb]

Ah, the perennial question. If, like me, you shoot several different film formats, it can get even trickier. Then, I have work shot for myself and work shot for clients, which I like to keep separate. Add to this the fact that- especially with 35mm- I might have a mix of subjects or themes on one roll; and those rolls end up being of varying lengths, especially the bulk loaded rolls. It gets complicated.

I tend to keep every frame I shoot- though I'm not too rigid about it. I will throw away or destroy obvious garbage. But basically, everything I shoot gets a date code which stays with the film and the contacts throughout my workflow. I store my film in glassine envelopes or plastic sleeves- I'm not too rigid about how the negatives are protected, as long as they are. The film then goes in order into uniform size boxes which are marked by the dates of the film they contain. I put 35mm in one group, 120/220 in another, and larger sheets in another group. Contact sheets are stored separately, also in uniform sized boxes, and also kept in order of date. When I want to find a given negative, I need to know roughly when it was shot. Anything I've printed has all the info. associated with that image in my print log notebooks, so I can most easily find information that way- though for some stuff, I have to rifle through the contact sheets to find images. Once I've found what I'm looking for, it's easy to go to the right box and pull the negatives.

Whatever system you settle on, be consistent with it. Don't let too much film go unorganized, or it will get really complicated really fast. Also -don't be too rigid with your system. I know this may sound like contradictory advice the consistency point, but what I mean is that if you get too locked into using one brand of sleeve, say, or one kind of box, invariably this will disappear from the market or become far too expensive to use. The system is the important thing. Take your time to devise a system that lets you organize your film and prints with as much transparency and simplicity as you can devise, and stick with it.