Negative Experience

After shooting a couple of rolls and really getting into the swing of film photography, there was one thing that was begining to become a problem … what to do with all my negatives

Storing your negatives

However I quickly discovered after a little bit of surfing, that you can buy negative strip pages, which are designed to sit in a standard ring-binder. These pages are usually made of a light, semi-transparent paper, and contain 6-7 horizontal panels to store cut negative strips.

Tips for using these

After a little bit of trial-and-error, I found that it was best to have the strips containing 5-7 frames, for ease of inserting the negatives. In addition the golden rule was to let gravity assist the negatives sliding into the panels.

Labelling your negatives

When labelling, I found the following was important to note for each roll of film I stored in the pages (no rocket-science here, just common sense 😇):

  • The date the roll was developed (simply because a roll can sit in a camera for a few weeks)
  • What film & film speed it is
  • What camera the roll was used in
  • Highlights of what images were taken on the roll and/or location

Crystal ball …

What’s important to consider here is that sometime in the future you might require these negatives again … these are the highest quality originals of your images … your analogue RAW files. I say this because I’m guilty of not having a single negative from my days of using film 20 years ago 😮

While my photography skills have certainly advanced since then, there are definitely images for which having a higher resolution copy now would be wonderful.

Looking to the future, maybe somebody will manufacture an amazing, do-it-all, 24mp negative scanner that’s inexpensive and produces 14-bit RAW files straight to a micro-SD card (not some of the cheap ‘n nasty jpeg scanners you get on Wish and AliExpress)

Update: there ARE some great scanners that produce high-res jpeg & tiff files (e.g. Pacific Image Prime Film XAs super edition, and the Plustek OpticFilm 8100, etc.)

Look after your negatives

Alternatively, who knows, I might even decide to invest in my own DIY digital negative scanning set-up, with a macro lens & smart lighting, and put my Sony & Nikon full-frames to an alternative line of work 😉

Until my next post, get archiving your negatives ! Paul

💻 Instagram: @irishanalogadventures

Published by Paul

I am an IT professional based in Ireland, with a passion for photography, mountain hiking, while playing the guitar, dabbling in water colours, and walking frequently.