How I cut, organise & archive film negatives
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- Опубликовано: 9 июн 2024
- I had a 2-year backlog of film to archive! So I created this video to share my current process, and some tips I've learned over the years
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►Recommended Items
35mm sleeves I use - bhpho.to/47gAXyw
120 sleeves (reg) - bhpho.to/4731fEh
120 sleeves (6x7) - bhpho.to/41uOz7I
Binder I use - bhpho.to/3v93RmD
Binder (Amazon) - amzn.to/3Naxzhs
Albox Archival - www.albox.com.au/
A4 Light Pad - amzn.to/3T6H0lw
Gloves (12 pack) - amzn.to/3RqqxYl
Air blower (manual) - amzn.to/47UHgYY
Air blower (electric) - amzn.to/3R7lTgp
Air purifier - amzn.to/3sXAyTr
►WHAT I USE FOR HOME DEVELOPING AND SCANNING:
The Essential Film Holder - bit.ly/47nuFOg
Canon EF 100mm Macro - bhpho.to/3NDO05X
Negative Supply Riser - bit.ly/48564xU
L116T LED light - amzn.to/3GMzKUE
Paterson developing tank - amzn.to/3TwrFek
Rocket air blower - amzn.to/2G0pZpN
Negative Lab Pro for converting scans - Get a free trial at bit.ly/41WQYab
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►CHAPTER MARKERS
00:00 - Intro
01:19 - First steps & interim storage
02:35 - Sleeve options & differences
04:03 - Cutting
04:33 - The Film Killer
06:29 - Labelling
07:34 - Storage binders
12:00 - Backing up scans
13:06 - Conclusion
#filmphotography #35mmfilm 
Хобби
I love this type of stuff! As photographers and especially film photographers everyone must do this but I don’t feel like it’s talked about enough considering how important it is! Thanks again Hashem
If you are still into chemicals, a nice thing to add to the workflow , is making a positive contact-sheet on glossy photographic paper and slip them in between the negative sheets for easy search-trough and critical priority before time-consuming scans. If you have a flatbed scanner a software solution will do the same thing I guess. An app like - wait a minute - DIAPOSheet will do the trick.
When you look at the cost of creating the negative; the price of film, developing, scanning etc in addition to the cost of travel, hospitality and those costs incurred in taking the photos it is crazy not to take care of the resulting negatives.
Agreed!
Physical back up, Hard drive, and cloud storage, you can't lose. I work in the music industry and that's how I do it for my clients. Thanks for the binder link will be buying a few once they are back in stock since Im starting my project in June Ill have everything I need.
One thing I've been doing is tag the photos in lightroom with keywords such as what film, whether it was pushed, camera, lens so that I can go back and compare things.
Hello Hashem, first of all thank you for your very professional videos - without hip jokes and annoying background music. You stand out very pleasantly from the crowd of conventional RUclipsrs - stay on this path!
Hashem, I'm thinking of storing my developed and scanned 120 black and white negative films individually and uncut in black film canisters instead of negative sleeves. What do you think of this idea - could this type of permanent storage damage the negatives? Should I also store them in a long plastic sleeve? Thank you very much for your assessment of my idea! Best regards from Germany, Lutz
Hey, thanks for the feedback! I think that might be okay, but will cause a really heavy "curl" in the film over time. Its better to store them flat if you want to access them later. I'm not sure if it would deterioration in the very long term, depending on the plastic material.
this is great dude! I need to do a video about this as well!! Appreciate the tips for everything!
I have very similar system when storing negatives. Thanks for the recommendation on storage boxes, I’ll be looking into it.
I must admit I often leave my film strips hanging for several days before I scan, cut them and put away. Thankfully my environment is not dusty so it’s been going ok 😅
Haha yeah I admit I've done that before. Using photoflo also helps prevent dust from adhering to the film after it dries.
I found your information very helpful, I have all kinds of negatives from size 110 to 4x5, and lots of mounted slides, dont laugh I have used old gift boxes, and new bakery boxes, and found a lot of cardboard gift boxes in the dollar store. I was so sad my dad had thousands of 4x5 negatives he had in boxes in the basement I had trash all stuck together molded ect could not save them I had a local photographer try and help me But some were able to be saved. I have lots of negatives from when I worked on the high school newspaper stored in those glass line sleeves. I have not decided if to buy the expensive scanner or use a digital camera. l with a film holder. I have watched all your digital cameras, and negative scanning was helpful as well.
That's a shame about the 4x5's! I find that a camera works better for digitising 35mm film, but if you're mostly doing 4x5 and 120, a flatbed could be ideal.
Very much appreciate these style videos. I always feel like my system is disorganized, but some of your points really helped. I think for me what's worked best, as I've moved to the same binders you mentioned (Vue-All brand) and the printfile negative holders, is running an excel file as a filing system. I still include a little bit of paper with the pertinent details on the final archive sleeve as a redundancy. But I find having a searchable excel file quite helpful as well.
Nice! a spreadsheet sounds like the next upgrade to the system. I also still need to go back and redo some of my older stuff from before I started this process! 😅
Super recommend an easy log/table in your phone with anything you’d write in the binder. Lifesaver when the rolls are stacking up
That's a good one! Seems to be a popular next step in organisation.
Nice surprise - the "Filmkiller" is a German product (at least designed here)! And this explains the "only Europe" free shipping (would be much too expensive otherwise). Just in time, I thought about searching for such a device, as using scissors is not ideal (often enough not straight, not exactly between frames, really hard with very small gutters due to uneven film transport etc.).
Really like that neg cutter, will have to check it out.
Years ago when I first started shooting film I took a shot on an old crusty Salyut-C 6x6 camera, and for the life of me I can't find that negative to make a darkroom print. It's one of my favourite images on B&W too!
Watching this as I scan my own film, thanks for tips.
No problem!
Would love to see a video dedicated about your camera collection. I know, I know, standard RUclips stuff, but I love these kinda videos and seeing your shelf, man I just wanna see what YOU got! Anyway, cool video as always!
Haha yes, I've yet to do that, and it's been on my list for a while!
I've always tried to be consistent with maintaining the filing of my negatives as it's one of my main reasons to shoot film. But, at the moment, I'm trying to catch up on about 10 rolls of undeveloped film - it never ends. As for digital storage, a highly reccomended solution is a NAS (Network Attached Storage, which is basically a shared network drive to store all of your scans (or digital video for your RUclips channel). Importantly, you can have automated daily backups made to a second drive. The other benefir of a NAS is that you can have access to all your photos from any machine, TV or phone. Whilst you can go for a pre-built solution from companies such as Synology which work well, if you're semi-technical, you can fairly easily build one yourself for pretty cheap. I've used a small Lenovo micro PC bought for about £50 and used external drives + Open Media Vault software to manage everything. It's a simple setup, but you can go pretty deep with redundant drive setups. This has really been a game changer where I only keep basic data on my main PC and move everything to the NAS, safe in the knowlege that it's backed up constantly.
Funny you uploaded this, I'm going through this same process but with 4x6, 5x6, & 5x5 prints. Trying to get print file sheets that hold them in the right orientation and binders to fit them. I'm hole-punching some sheets now to make em work, haha. Thanks for the upload.
That does sound tricky given those sizes! No probs, thanks for watching.
Interesting video. I do much the same, storing negatives and slides in sleeves in binders.
Some comments:
- I prefer binders with four metal rings (and the appropriate sleeves). I find that particularly sleeves for mounted slides get heavy and the more rings to hold them in place the better. Never tried a three ring binder as shown in the video but that also seem much better than plain two ring binders.
- I (also) prefer plastic sleeves as it's much easier to make "contact copies" of a film
- I like to make a digital contact copy of each film which I store with the scans of the images. Makes it easy to find the sequence of the images which at least for me is important some of the time.
- In case someone forgets - There are no exif data that will give time of exposure or camera settings with scanned images. I try to make a small text document for each film with some basic info like film type, date, possibly scan settings and preferably some comments about the images. Store the file with the scans. Also write some info on the sleeves or a PostIt attached to the sleeves.
- Just scanned 40 films from the nineties. It's much easier to use five or ten minutes when you get the film back to make some "meta data" notes than trying to remember and doing it 30 years later...
Thanks! Interesting point regarding the rings, is there a particular brand/binder you'd recommend? Judging by your following points, you have an extremely efficient system! Definitely some good pointers to take away from.
Making a digital "contact copy" is something I've only done the last couple of years, but wish I started doing earlier. I work on scanning a backlog of old films and it can be months or more between scanning and doing something with the images. Having a contact sheet let me check the frame numbers and film type without digging out the sleeve with the film again. An extra step but doesn't take that long when I do a batch of sleeves in one go.
Can't recommend a specific brand for binders unfortunately. They get harder and harder to find and I basically buy what's available locally, but seem very similar - maybe they all come from the same factory somewhere. The last two have been from "Kaiser", but they are fairly expensive. Haven't seen the brands you mentioned in the video here and we don't have a "local" Amazon so freight cost and (sometimes) customs handling fees (even if there isn't a toll) eat up the price the advantage of Amazon.
One problem now is the weight and size of old slides. Doesn't take many films to fill a binder. I've been considering removing the frames after scanning, at least the ones in old GePe plastic frames - up to 3mm thick. It's really time consuming though - have you ever seen a tool for unmounting slides?
Good Video. When i do shoot digital (rarely) my back up is pick the best photos, get the lowest ASA film and copy to film. That way i have a physical copy thatll theoretically last forever. Dont trust computers or hard drives...
I have a very similar system. 2 tips for you: make an Index for the folders so you dont even have to flip through to find frames. My index has the basic infos of all the sleeves and a number. Secondly for digital backup, I use the software freefilesync and I just connect my harddrive every week. It scans for changes and additional files in specified folders and just backups it. Really simple one click solution.
Good tips! I'm going to download that software and give it a try. Thanks
I’m definitely guilty of all of the bad habits you listed 😅
Start early, don't let it accumulate like I did. I still have my first years worth of stuff in shambles 😁
I use a system similar to yours. However I establish a code Camera_YYYYMMDDnnn. Then I enter this into a spread sheet with a subset of the info on the sleeve. One of those is a general topic. So, I can search by code or topic. I should do a proof sheet scan identified by code but I don't do that yet.
I'm one of the bad reviews on the Matin. I've had two, and both haven't been sharp enough to properly cut my film. Every once in a while, they slip and damage the negative.
I have some Japanese branded folders and inserts and the most annoying thing is in Japan theirs so many types and sizes of these inserts and binders, often they get mis matched and it's a nightmare. I really prefer the printfile standard ones from the U.S but the shipping and price makes me have to stay with the Japanese headache.
Tell me about it! It's getting harder to find that US branded stuff for a decent price here, so sometimes I have to wait to justify a big B&H order to stock up on things (helps to go in on an order with friends in the same city 😁)
Thank you for that information. That was very useful. If you do scan your negatives, what resolution do you scan to, e.g. 9600 dpi? Then, when you have one of your negatives made into a print, do you use the actual negative or the scanned image of the negative? Thank you.
Glad it helped! I use a 30MP DSLR to "scan", or get them done by a lab. I do tinker with darkroom printing, but generally print from digital scans.
@@pushingfilm , thanks a lot.
Whats the status of film availability (BW Tri X or even better Fomapan) in Melbourne now? Last time I was there I found nothing...nada. Even the Leica store had little and none to sell to me openly. I am wondering if I should just to stick to digital Olympus gear as I am hearing some news about the new CT scanners at airports and how they do effect film now. ... Thanks for a response. J
It's not too bad! I've never not been able to find a film that I need, since I usually buy online. But, I do remember people complaining about severe shortages for a while, especially if they mainly wanted Portra, etc.
That cutter looks a lot like the Macin. I have the Macin and the blade is just not sharp. You really have to whack it down forcefully to make the cut.
What brand light panel are you using? I have an old=school lightbox that's the size of a piece of luggage and it's an undertaking to pull it out set it up etc, as I don't have dedicated workspace.
Your content is excellent. Keep up the good work.
Hey, for this purpose I use the basic A4 Huion tracing pad that I've linked in the description. It's ideal for things like cutting, viewing negs, slides, etc. Thanks for the kind feedback!
Do you throw away your negative that you think is NG?
Any word on when this cutter is coming out?
I think they're planning to ship later this month. There should be more details on the website.