Any suggestions for cheap negative storeage

sirch

sirch

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The other Chris
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Most of my photos are mediocre at best however I like to keep the negs for nostalgia if nothing else. I find the normal negative sleeves to be a bit pricey (or am I just being tight) and there is certainly no need for archival grade soreage so I was wondering if anyone had an economical suggestions for neg storage, they are getting out of hand at the moment.
 
Well, I don't agree with the first premise Chris, your photos (at least as seen on here) are consistently good. I've been worrying about this off and on for years. I have had some book boxes full of old film "envelopes", ie those returned from labs. Since about 2014 when I started to get a bit more serious I've bought folders from Firstcall, and a bunch of different format negative sleeves. Those I dev myself go into sleeves; those from Filmdev or Peak are already in fileable sleeves and can go straight in. I'm now trying to go through the old book boxes to file or re-sleeve the older films, back to the 70s.

At the moment my output back to around 2012 doesn't quite fill 3 of the Firstcall binders, and I've got a spare for the older stuff. One thing I noticed recently is that the opaque (glassine?) sleeves seem to be thicker than the clear (acetate?) ones... so you get less in a binder.

In my case each sheet is labelled and filed in order; the labels match the names of folders in Aperture/Capture One, so if I want to rescan something I can. Has this ever happened? Yes, it has! Often? Hell no... :(

I don't know of a cheaper way... I guess you could get those A4 sleeves that kids use for school projects, and just pop the negatives in there. That might have the advantage you could get them in a normal binder... but there would be nothing stopping the negatives moving when you took the binder out to add more sleeves, so there's the potential for damage?
 
I have tried cheap neg sleves, but they stick are too flexible and not really up to the job.

In the end I just paid the money and bought Kenro clear sleaves and binders and stored by date.

I should have just bought Kenro and binders from the begining. It's just so much easier.
 
ChrisR said:
Well, I don't agree with the first premise Chris, your photos (at least as seen on here) are consistently good
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It's very good of you to say so but my hit rate is fairly low.

I do sleeve the sets of negs that contain things posted online for example but a lot of the others are just clipped together with a note to indicate date and camera and partly this thread is motivated by me running out of my current batch of sleeves and partly because the unsleeved negs are becoming a pain, may be I should bin them but they don't take up much space. I had wondered if folding them in silicon baking paper and putting them in envelopes would be an option.
 
This is probably bad advice and I'll probably take some heat for it, but ...

Back when I was shooting for newspapers, we'd go through dozens of rolls of film a week, and we'd just cut them and throw them in ordinary letter envelopes. Stored the envelopes in empty 100-sheet paper boxes.

Archival? Hardly. But I carried a few of those boxes around with me for 25 years. (I finally threw them away about a year ago.) If the film had been properly fixed when developed, images were fine. Never had any problems with storage.
 
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Sleeves are as much about organizing as protection.
If you're not bothered about either just chuck them all in a shoe box...:)
 
THESE seem pretty cheap (~20p/sheet) and will do the job. Can't vouch for their neutrality etc. just the price (and ease of availability...) NB, 35mm!!!
 
Nod said:
THESE seem pretty cheap (~20p/sheet) and will do the job. Can't vouch for their neutrality etc. just the price (and ease of availability...) NB, 35mm!!!
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That is a pretty good price, those sleeves normally seem to be around £7 for 25 so it's probably worth buying bulk
 
If your photography is like mine sometimes is, then I find the swing bin in the kitchen is the best place to 'store' the negatives!
 
Nod said:
THESE seem pretty cheap (~20p/sheet) and will do the job. Can't vouch for their neutrality etc. just the price (and ease of availability...) NB, 35mm!!!
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Still glassine though; a bit bulkier in the folder, and you can't get a contact sheet from them... Having said that, I think I could only find one supplier of the acetate ones.
 
Mr Badger said:
If your photography is like mine sometimes is, then I find the swing bin in the kitchen is the best place to 'store' the negatives!
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Well I'm almost at that point I just keep them as a reminder of where I an been, I'm no Garry Winogrand :)
 
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ChrisR said:
Still glassine though; a bit bulkier in the folder, and you can't get a contact sheet from them... Having said that, I think I could only find one supplier of the acetate ones.
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Very true but the acetate ones seem to start at about 20 quid for a pack of 25.
 
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shapeshifter said:
Be careful they are not the plastic ones that when you put the negs in they are very,very difficult to get out.They do not slide in and out like Kenro. I bought some plastic ones and had to replace them with Kenro.
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Good to know
 
Amazon uk have glassine sheets.
£16.95 for 100 sheets !!!

Sleeve the negs and store in a shoe box.....cheap and simple.
 
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