Throwing away your negs?

I wouldn't throw them away in case there was better scanner due to come out or my process was going to improve in the future . I have realized few times i have scanned them incorrectly and had to re do it few times.
 
Over the past 50+ years, I've lost far more negatives (as a percentage of the total numbers of exposures made) through negative degradation, simple loss, damage in processing, etc etc, than I've ever lost digital images.

In fact, for a good deal of my negative exposures, the only reason I still have them is that I scanned them back in the early 1990s. The negs themselves died.

Digital archiving requires maintenance, but is FAR more effective than any kind of archival media.
 
Godfrey said:
Over the past 50+ years, I've lost far more negatives (as a percentage of the total numbers of exposures made) through negative degradation, simple loss, damage in processing, etc etc, than I've ever lost digital images.

In fact, for a good deal of my negative exposures, the only reason I still have them is that I scanned them back in the early 1990s. The negs themselves died.

Digital archiving requires maintenance, but it FAR more effective than any kind of archival media.
Click to expand...

Godfrey,

Please elaborate on your process/system for archiving. I am an old analog guy who is new to digital (MM coming shortly). Your insights would be helpful because I'm basically clueless.

Cal
 
Gosh, I've got negatives all the way back to my Grandmother's when she started about 1917. Think I'll keep them. Now, what my kids do with them may be another story.
 
Godfrey said:
Over the past 50+ years, I've lost far more negatives (as a percentage of the total numbers of exposures made) through negative degradation, simple loss, damage in processing, etc etc, than I've ever lost digital images.

In fact, for a good deal of my negative exposures, the only reason I still have them is that I scanned them back in the early 1990s. The negs themselves died.

Digital archiving requires maintenance, but is FAR more effective than any kind of archival media.
Click to expand...

This is plain weird Godrey you say you have lost a 'good' amount of negatives and the only reason you have them is because they are scanned.
That's not the same as I shred all my negs-which is plain daft.

I have every single neg and slide I have ever shot archived, all colour shots are pretty much as good as the day they were shot, they don't seem to degrade much.
I'm puzzled when people say negs degrade so fast, unless you are a cheap film freak there is no way they should degrade.
If the file and forget negative system is beyond you then how are you going to deal with the rigour and discipline of regular transfer and redundant media polices that are digital archiving?
 
I never throw away a negative , not even a bad one , sometimes it's interesting to see how you build up to come to a fine shot . I mostly take 3 or more shots of the same scene ... and have only one best shot .
 
Calzone said:
Please elaborate on your process/system for archiving. I am an old analog guy who is new to digital (MM coming shortly). Your insights would be helpful because I'm basically clueless.
Click to expand...

Trying to describe the specifics of my system in detail is a bit over the top for the time I have at hand. But I'll give you the basis of the system:

Digital archiving is based upon three primary notions:
- duplication
- media migration
- policy

Unlike film and analog processes, you can precisely copy, with bit for bit verification, any image file an infinite number of times. That's a baseline fact that you can just accept as an assumption.

As storage devices and file systems are improved and expanded over time, you migrate digital image files from your current one to the next one that you adopt. Digital image formats are pretty stable now, I expect DNG, JPEG and TIFF will be with us for many many years to come, so there's little format translation needed anymore as a part of migration. In general, I've found that buying enough of a current storage solution to handle three years worth of data is a good saddle point on costs vs risks. When you've filled that storage solution, you can usually buy the next one with twice the capacity at the same or lower price as the old one.

So it then comes down to policy. I maintain a working copy of my image files along with two identical and independent backup copies, locally, and one off-site copy. The likelihood that all three local repositories are going to go unrecoverable simultaneously is very low.

Upon arriving at my image processing workstation with new work, the new work is organized and imported into the system according to my pre-defined schema and then the backup program is run so it is replicated to the two archive repositories. The same applies whenever I do a rendering session: after the rendering session, I immediately fire off the backup system and all the changes are duplicated into the archives. Once a month, I swap one of the archives with a duplicated archive stored off-site, and the one I bring back is updated to reflect the current state of the data.

Everything else is an implementation detail. The key thing is to remember that digital archiving is an active process of duplication and migration with policy, not a matter of how long media will survive. Analog archiving is entirely concerned with media permanence and catalog maintenance, by comparison.

G
 
Over the past 50+ years, I've lost far more negatives (as a percentage of the total numbers of exposures made) through negative degradation, simple loss, damage in processing, etc etc, than I've ever lost digital images.
Click to expand...

I find this rather interesting. I have negatives that are around 35 years old that were processed when I had no clue and they still look fine so unless you stored and/or processed them improperly, I'm rather surprised.

No offense intended.
 
I've kept my negatives, just shot B&W roll #6334 today, some 135 HP5+ at ISO 800. My films are in printfile pages in polypropylene binders, I keep a few recent negative books out, and right now some from a project I worked on last in 2006 that I'm back to at long last. The rest are in polypropylene boxes, sixteen binders per box. My slides are in metal boxes, I never kept any but the 'picks' and some close alternates. There are fifteen big metal slide boxes here, but two are my father's slides from the 60s and 70s. My color negative film lives in oversize negative pages in polyester sleeves, in archival boxes. Proofsheets too.

I don't scan film. I have a list of color negs & slides I'd like to have scanned sometime for nice final prints.

I've thrown out plenty of prints but rarely ever do I toss a film. I've got to screw up pretty good to dump one.
 
I trashed a bunch and regret it. The few that I found from back then I printed and people wanted copies. I wonder what I threw out...oh, yes, I have an idea.
 
I've been slipping in negs at the end of my printing sessions from my college days. I sent around a batch of proofsheets to a group of friends I reconnected with through FB and our reunion a few years ago. They made up a list of stuff they'd like to have, and I'm slowly getting there. Despite the endless comments to the contrary I really don't picture this happening from some hard-drive full of jpgs in twenty-five years...
 
What I keep is quite a lot, but in fact it doesn't take that much space - if I had to make space, other things would go out first. I have kept:
- my own negatives and slides from when I started at about 1976
- the inherited negatives of my late uncle who started b&w at about 1950
- all the negatives and about 2500 slides of my father.

Most of these are scanned, but not at big resolution. Only when family members ask for digital scans, and sometimes when I want to make a print or a photobook, I scan them again at large size. As for now I'll keep everything. Negs as well as slides are all well documented.
 
Anyone who has gone through old contact sheets and realized they picked the wrong "keeper" knows the value of keeping negatives.

Why would you not pick the best image the first time around? Because you are making your choices with the memory of shooting the event fresh in your head. Time and distance creates objectivity.

Of course A Adams trashed negs, but that was part of a distinct business plan.

Personally, I would never think of it, the idea appalls me. Perhaps because I do have unique images, of artistic and historical value, which WILL be of interest to others after I'm dead (as they are now...) I do my work for more than just my own enjoyment.

Imagine if Vivian Maier had trashed her negs. Well, that would have been her prerogative. Thankfully, she didn't.

In addition to my own work, I have been involved in archiving and creating repositories for several priceless archives. I have also rescued negatives from flea markets that have ended up on the pages of national media.

So this really touched a nerve.

If you don't care about your work, by all means, toss it.
 
Pablito said:
Anyone who has gone through old contact sheets and realized they picked the wrong "keeper" knows the value of keeping negatives.
...
Personally, I would never think of it, the idea appalls me. Perhaps because I do have unique images, of artistic and historical value, which WILL be of interest to others after I'm dead (as they are now...) I do my work for more than just my own enjoyment.
...
If you don't care about your work, by all means, toss it.
Click to expand...

I don't toss any of my exposures (except the truly worthless). I save all of them, redundantly. I just dispose of the unnecessary media ... I don't need a few bushels of aging bits of plastic and gelatin floating about my closets and cabinets any more.

There will be plenty of my work to keep some archivist busy and happy in the future as I try to make a nice print of every image that I finish and put it into a box. I have many boxes of finished prints in my archives and several terabytes of digital image archives. I just don't save the negatives.

But, quite frankly, once I'm dead I doubt I'll lose any sleep over whether my work has survived me. ;-)

G
 
I can think of a slide I threw out and always wished I hadn't. It was just a shot of a discarded 50 gallon drum, in the Nevada desert, rusty, but brightly painted on one end. It didn't seem worth saving at the time, but I've never forgotten it; and never found that same shot again, anywhere else.

So you never know how you may feel later.
 
While I think you should keep all your negatives/slides, I have thrown away a lot of mine. Sometimes you just need a clean cut from whatever fooling around you did back in the day. Now that I understand better how everything works; the triangle of film speed, aperture and shutter speed, I am more keen on keeping them. If anything, this is what you leave behind, a memory of you and what you saw.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top