So after ridding myself of the devious 35mm sleeves, I've moved on to polyester fold-lock storage for the 1st layer touching the negatives. How do you guys deal with taking the negatives in and out? It seems like I'm one slip away from the fold-lock edge snapping into the negative. One has to be very careful and smooth when they unlock the sleeves it seems. Also, there is no way I could get negatives in and out without gloves on - it feels like I'm guaranteed to touch the base side with my fingers. Am I the only one?
They're just your typical polyester sleeves with the single fold at the top that overlaps the sleeve.
One more question on them, how are the individual pieces stored after you load the strip? Is there a separate, special binder and these slip in like typical 35mm binders? I was never really happy with the standard sleeves, possible scratching sliding in/out, plus sliding them in and out creates a good deal of static elec. and attracted dust, particularly during the winter months.
I use fold lock sleeves for all formats. I use gloves. Otherwise, very often my fingers touch the negative other than at the edges in the same way that you experience. I store 35mm negatives in the sleeves and slide both of them into special negative pages sold by Light Impressions. These are large enough to accept the sleeve with the negative enclosed. (These pages only handle strips of 5 35mm negatives so you have to trim the length of the fold-lock sleeves to fit.) The pages fit in a standard 3 ring binder. I use binders made of polypropylene - not yinyl.
I use the Printfile Ultima sleeves. My entire point of using the polyester single strip sleeves is to prevent sliding film against anything. Additionally if I want to convert over to single-strip envelopes to contain the poly-sleeves it's an easy thing to do. If you use bare film within slide-in/out sleeves - dump those immediately. Bob, I've noticed that it's much easier to use latex gloves rather than cotton gloves when handling 35mm film in the poly-sleeves. The reason being that it grips better and I feel less risk of the fold-lock snapping against things. Once the negs are in and out there is no issue - it's just the insertion/removal I get careful about and was wondering if anyone else felt the same.
Thanks, I will look into all this. I've been using Print File Negative preserver pages, I find them quite tight for 35mm strips. Starting the strip in was a pain as the corner of the strip snagged the sleeve material. I learned to "nip" the tiniest piece off each corner to solve that problem, but it's just one more tedious task.
Just in case it is not known. Light Impressions sells negative preservers that are advertised as holding the fold lock sleeves. Mybe they are the Ultima's. Also, to fill this out. I use fold locks also for 4X5 and 5X7 negatives also. But it is necessary to trim them to the negative size with a Rotatrim paper trimmer in order to slide them into the Print File sleeves for the respective formats. This trimming removes the fold-lock feature but this is ok. Is it possible that extra thickness from the fold lock will damage the negative over time since it would put a little extra pressure on that area of the negative?
I've heard rumours that LI sleeves are actually made for them by PF. I pretty much doubt it. The lock portion is at rest when it's perfectly parallel with the rest of the strip so it's not really pulling into the negative - only trying to retain it's original alignment. Even within a sleeve I don't expect it to cause an issue; the Ultima sleeves are not a super tight fit I've found - only reasonable.
