cutting and storing negatives. (methodes)

[Mongo]

Dear Mongo,

Clear File also sells a slightly oversized page that holds 7 strips of 6 frames. This is the size I use.

Neal Wydra

Neal-

Will those fit on an 8x10 for contact printing?

Thanks,
Dave

[Woolliscroft]

David, if I had a 100,000 of anything, it would take me 20 years to find any one of it despite best efforts! You are a better man than I can hope to be - kudos! Jokes aside, I find that the plastic sleeves work great (although I can't say my experience is anywhere near that of some of the people who contributed here!), but a word of caution: the negatives have to be absolutely, completely 100% DRY. Even the slightest dampness will make them stick and potentially damage the negative!

You are absolutely right about getting things really dry. Dry to the touch is not good enough. I usually leave films for 24 hours hanging in a room with two dust filters running.

As for my cataloguing, it is just part of archaeological ethics. If you can't find the pictures you might as well not have them and, as most of my work is done at the tax payers' expense I need them, or their representatives, to know they are getting something for the money. It is not really that hard if you stay on top of it.

David.

[Magnus W]

I use the Hama sleeves. As for scissors; buy a really good sharp pair, and never ever use it for other cutting than film. Cutting paper takes the edge off in no time at all.

-- MW

[gnashings]

It is not really that hard if you stay on top of it.
David.

He hehee, therein lies the culprit - the relationship of yours truly and the whole "staying on top of things" concept - but I am working on it!

Magnus- as a long time model builder (I used to make model airplanes out of paper kits when I was younger, I think its a dead art in today's world!), I cannot stress enough the truth of what you say - paper kills scissors! It looks soft, and innocent enough, but it just murders the edge - it is, after all, made of wood - nature's composite material!

[thefizz]

I have been reading through this thread and want to ask if negs should be stored at a particular temperature?

Peter

[Woolliscroft]

Not really, although fairly cool is good and keeping the temperature fairly constant also helps. It is important that they should be dry and in the dark (especially colour). That said, my old university had a wonderful collection of 19th century glass negs which they kept in the boiler room and they seem to have survived.

David.

[thefizz]

I have just found the following site which has some good informaton on preserving negs.

http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/pres...er/messier.htm

[AllanD]

I use A4 ring-binder files and polythene neg storage pages. One thing I found was never to store contact sheets in the same file as negatives. This reduces the wear and tear on the negative storage pages. The contact sheets in one file are cross indexed to the negative sheets in the other.

[Gerald Koch]

Let me add my agreement that one should never discard a negative. I too have discovered negatives decades old that I thought were worthless at the time they were taken.