How do you store negatives?

[jlbruyelle]

are those 50 year old negatives black and white negatives?
I wonder if color negatives would last that long in any archival method.

It is perfectly possible, although some films are more durable than others. You may want to read Henry Wilhelm's book "The Permanence and Care of the Color Photographs: Traditional and Digital Color Prints, Color Negatives, Slides, and Motion Pictures", which the author has kindly made available on his web site (Dead Link Removed). The data you are looking for is on tables 5.8a through 5.17, starting on page 189 - although the whole book is full of captivating information, well worth reading if you have the time to ingest 761 pages.

 

[jlbruyelle]

Concerning these strenghthening rings, I use them for printed materials for far more then 30 years, I have not seen lateral glue diffusion, not even to the backside.
Likely archivists will protest against those rings, but they have to protest against those binders anyway...

That would be good information if you said what exact reference you use: by blindly buying just any rings you cannot know whether they will behave well like yours, or make a mess like mine. I haven't found any reference of strengthening rings claiming durability and, considering I'll probably be the one who has to clean up the mess should something go wrong, I choose to only use things that are reasonably assured not to go wrong. I wish my father had thought about it when he filed those 45,000 pictures, I wouldn't have had to learn this the hard way.

In fact my main point was: why bother adding solutions to perfectly predictable problems that you can so easily avoid in the first place? - and apparently save big money in the process, considering the price of storage systems that I've seen advised here.

My final advice: pick your priorities first (use of space, long-term preservation, convenience, indexing capabilities, etc.), and only then select the storage solutions. Don't do it the other way round. As a general rule I'd advise the following:

• Protect your negatives from dust, light, heat and humidity. For instance, hole-free clamshell binders keep their contents dust-free, while open-ended binders don't .
  
• Protect them from the nasty chemicals often found in office stuff. In short, make sure your glassine sheets and boxes/binders have passed the Photographic Activity Test - they are not necessarily more expensive than others.
  
• Don't store them in furniture that smells: smelling means outgassing, and outgassing means potential for harmful chemical reactions. Used metal office furniture is fine, and can easily be found for cheap.
  
• Put them in a way that will not crush or warp them. Those aligned vertical Leitz binders are a perfect example of what not to do.
  
• Following all these simple rules is neither more expensive nor more complicated, and doesn't (necessarily) take more space. It may take more time to think over, find and secure the stuff you need - are you really in a rush?
  
• None of the storage stuff needs to be pretty. Being pretty is expensive, and doesn't contribute to protection. Most museum-grade storage containers are made of grey cardboard, and are not overly expensive.
  
• Shoeboxes in cupboards are dirt cheap and don't work all that bad - after all they do protect from dust, light, heat and humidity I would definitely advise them over vertically aligned open-ended binders.

I hope all this can help.

 

[juan]

are those 50 year old negatives black and white negatives?
I wonder if color negatives would last that long in any archival method.

Most are black and white. A few are color - Kodak but I don't remember what kind. The images are still there, though the color has faded. I am able to scan them and easily restore the color with Capture One. I have 35-year old Kodachrome slides that are still perfect. Ecktachromes are generally still good, Agfachrome slides are badly faded.