How to organize negatives

[pmu]

OP, if you have a digital camera, you might want to consider using digital contact sheet archive. I started to use this method in 2014. This is how I do it:

1. After cutting the strips I give them into see through sleeves and shoot the whole thing against lightbox/computer screen with white background.
2. Invert in photoshop, make contrast adjustments. It's easy to adjust individually too dark and/or too bright images.
3. Name the file same way like the contact sheet is named. Eg. "2014 #45" or something like that. The sleeves go into 2014 folder, contacts go into "contact sheets 2014" -digital folder.
4. When selecting files, I open the contact sheet in photoshop, zoom in, mark it with red pen - just like with normal contact sheets.

The digital contact sheets are so big that I can easily see potentially good images. IMO as good as normal contact sheets, but little bit more practical, easier and economical.

 

[mklw1954]

I put the 5 or 6-negative strips in Printfile sleeves and put them in the 4" binders. For each roll, I put a Post-it note on top of the Printfile page to identify the Roll No. (1, 2, 3, etc.); camera and film used; month/year developed; and sometimes the date the roll or parts of the roll were shot if it's an event for which I might want to have the date.

No Post-it notes have fallen off in doing this about 8 years. So when recording printing data, a negative is identified, for example, as 1/13 for Roll 1/negative number 13 on the roll. Contact sheets are marked with the Roll No.

I look at each negative sheet on a light box or the contact sheet and keep a separate list of negatives to print. Of course I go back to reconsider what negatives to print every once in a while because what doesn't look good now can look good years later.