So - how do you file your negatives? In order to answer this you need to have at least 10,000 negatives. My own system is giving me headaches. I pull anything that is for sale (at least I usually do) - and put that 35mm strip in an sleeve. I label the sleeve with the title. I have little folders that I slip these strips into alphabetically, i.e. all the "A" title strips are in their own holder.
Everything else goes into boxes of 6 x 6 sheets by year. I know - right there I have a problem. What does the year really tell me when I'm looking for something? Also, sometimes there are two images on a strip - so I file those in a catchall folder called "More Than One Image"
Then there is another box that has things in it that I need to look at or scan. And still another box with Bronx shots. Another box with things I did for theater. Another box with shots from Paris... oh it goes on. But generally there's no rhyme or reason to what is on a particular roll of film. In other words, they put the words: Assignment on the holder but I don't have an assignment.
It may be that my system is fine and that I'm flawed. For example - yesterday I had an order for a print of "Steps of Met." This is an old neg. that has been filed away under "S" forever. But when I went to look for it this morning - it was missing. I could remember that it was in one of the older glassine type envelopes. The reason that I was looking for it was that I had never done a good scan of it. So now I'm stumped. I won't make a long story of it but eventually it was found in the "negatives to scan" box. Which in a way is where it should have been.
Well anyway - maybe you have some ideas that could help me as well as the rest of the miniscule number of people shooting film.
This is one area where I guess that digital capture has it all over film.
I'm off now to join my local Filing Anonymous.
4 comments:
Richard - that is a great system. I don't know if I have the discipline to flatbed scan all my negs. But maybe going forward I'll do that.
All I can say is, "you guys are good."
Obviously the reason I have trouble finding negatives is because I'm disorganized about some things (like filing).
Maybe this will be my new years resolution.
My system is pretty basic and it seems to work thus far (granted I only have about 2000 images).
Most of what I have are color slides which seems to be the easiest to archive. I assign each slide a 6 digital number with the letter "S" before it. For example, S000-014. The S = slides. I try to sort the slides in numberical order when I put them away so its easy to find it. For color and b/w negatives I use the letter "N". Digital files use the letter "D".
The problem I have with negatives is I may have more than one image on a 6 frame strip. If there is only one image I want to keep on that 6 frame strip, then its easy. Anyway, what I do is label the plastic sleeves holding the neg with the corresponding number(s). Then I use iView Media Pro to help me archive the negatives, slides, and digital files. The negative records' comments within iVMP will tell me which frame number N000-014 corresponds to.
Hopefully, this simple system works well into haivng 5000 or even 10000 images.
Hello Dave,
I've hit on a system (or maybe sub-system) for making true contact sheets digitally.
First I use Vuescan to scan each negative strip, rebates and all, on my flatbed scanner in transparency mode. Vuescan has several features that enable me to do this efficiently. It allows me to specify "no film holder" and manually select the entire needed area. It also has an auto-file-number incrementing system, so it saves and names each strip (e.g. 042-CSheet1, 042-CSheet2, etc) as it scans. I only need to switch strips and click "Scan". I don't use a negative holder (remember negs are protected with acetate sleeving), so I've gotten this down to a mindless routine in between emails etc.
After scanning each strip, the next step is to assemble a contact sheet efficiently. For this, I use a custom created template in QImage printing software (which is quirky but powerful). I drop the files into the template, and print twice, first to an e-file, then to a b&w inkjet print.
Granted, it's not a complete System with capital S (I'm getting there slowly) but it gives me true contact sheets, which is much, much better than nothing. It also bypasses the hassle (and wear-and-tear on my true film scanner) of scanning every single image individually.
I also have iMatch, which is very nice, but I'm way behind in keeping that up to date, especially since I've started shooting mostly b&w film.
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