Lightroom Organization for Film / Hybrid Shooters

leicaboss · Jan 31, 2022

Hi all,

I predominantly shoot film and more recently decided to finally invest more time and energy into the "digital" side of things, by trying to catalog my scanned rolls (I have a mixture of Pakon F135+, Epson V750, and lab scans). I'm curious to hear about how you all are mentally framing and subsequently digitally cataloging them in Lightroom? For example, do you organize by subject or year, really any tips you all have picked up would be helpful to me!

Note: For a bulk of my scans, I am getting a 16-bit raw output, converting them to TIFF, then using NLP (Negative Lab Pro) to handle the rest.

bdial · Feb 1, 2022

I am only starting out with digitizing and working with lightroom.
I took a short online class on Lightroom, and the instructor stressed using keyword tags with less emphasis on things like dates. He also recommended building just one Lightroom catalog. For me, most of what I will be digitizing will be slides, and for the majority, I have no idea as to the year. For my digital photography, I have been organizing stuff by year on my computer.

MattKing · Feb 1, 2022

With film, you need a system that makes it easy to locate the physical slides/negatives as well as a way of locating needed images.
For that reason, I use dates as part of the information, and file my film in date order.

dabsond · Feb 1, 2022

I use the following format for my file names: Date Developed_Roll Number_Film Type_Format_Exposure.

My latest roll would work out to:. 20220130_01_E6_135_001.

All my files are saved in folders by date processed.

Negatives sleeves/print file are labeled with the same info.

4season · Feb 1, 2022

My system of film naming is similar to dabsond's:
YYYYMMDD <Country> <City> <More location specifics>-0001.tif -0002.tif -0003.tif and so on.
I want that basic info as part of the file name because while I currently use Adobe Lightroom, and can take advantage of features like keyword search, tomorrow, I may be using some other asset managment software which cannot read Adobe's database. I also switch between Mac, Windows and Linux systems and need file naming conventions which are compatible with all popular filesystems.

I have my image folders arranged by year, and located on a networked RAID volume.

Alan Edward Klein · Feb 2, 2022

I put them in folders named by the description of the shot such as Craig Farm 4x5. I may give the individual shots keywords like Craig, 4x5, tmax100, etc. I don't understand how filing by date will help you in the future unless you're a wedding pro and filing by date of contract or work. Who remembers what and where they were shooting by a date?

Frank53 · Feb 2, 2022

Alan Edward Klein said:
I put them in folders named by the description of the shot such as Craig Farm 4x5. I may give the individual shots keywords like Craig, 4x5, tmax100, etc. I don't understand how filing by date will help you in the future unless you're a wedding pro and filing by date of contract or work. Who remembers what and where they were shooting by a date?

That’s exactly what I thought about filing on date.
I give the negative sheets a number (started at 1 and both mf and 35mm are now in 600).
The scans are also numbered, starting with the sheetnumber en then the negativenumber (1 to 36 for 35mm).
Each serie of scans from the same film is than filed on subject.
So if I want to print negatives I shot in Andalusia a few years ago, I look in Lightroom, open the Andalusia folder, choose the negatives I want to print, and find the corresponding sheetnumber within a few moments.

PerTulip · Feb 6, 2022

MattKing said:
With film, you need a system that makes it easy to locate the physical slides/negatives as well as a way of locating needed images.
For that reason, I use dates as part of the information, and file my film in date order.

- My negatives are stored in sheets and each one has a number.
- I use AnalogEXIF to add camera/lens information to the scans
- In Lightroom: I add location and time to the scans.
- From there: same process as with digital files (keywording, naming, sorting, storing, backup,...)

plummerl · Feb 6, 2022

I'm also using PrintFile sheets. I have four formats (35, 6x6, 645 & 4x5). Each sheet is numbered, starting with the format/sheet number, i.e. 35_nnnnn). The scanned sheet uses a file name of 35_nnnnn-x, x being the negative/positive roll number. Within Lightroom, I'm using keywords for rolls/images. It's worked great so far, for over 26K images.

wiltw · Feb 6, 2022

For my digital photographs, each year I have a folder for that year's photos...there are subfolders that state event/location (e.g. 'WashingtonDC', 'Greg bday', 'Noah soccer game'), within each subfolder I separate subfolder for RAW vs derived JPG (although I do not have any JPG files tracked within the LR database. In essence, I have LR track my 'digital negs' but not my prints.).
For scanned film, I simply follow similar pattern, but as I have many negs and slides of unknown date of shooting, would have their master folder (e.g. 'Scanned') and subfolders (e.g. 'high school dance', 'crosscountry', 'Catalina'. Perhaps the folder names are based upon a numerical PhotoFile assigned number that you use. in place of 'Scanned' top folder name.

Lightroom permits a folder/subfolder structure just like the original folder organization, and it also permits you to add Keywords for individual photos. So, for example, there can be IMG0001 with keyword 'Capitol', and IMG0002 with keyword 'Supreme Court' uniquely and IMG0003 with 'Arlington' and IMG0004 with 'Arlington' and 'Unknown Soldier' keywords, and you can later use LR relational database to do keyword search to find all photos with 'Arlington' and it finds two photos.

leicaboss · Feb 6, 2022

Love the discussion here; I also have my negatives sleeved into PrintFile sheets and I've gotten quite a bit of inspiration from you all. Taking the time right now to re-label everything with a unique name to help match the organization I will be doing in Lightroom.

Moose22 · Feb 6, 2022

leicaboss said:
. Taking the time right now to re-label everything with a unique name to help match the organization I will be doing in Lightroom.

You're a better man than I, taking that time.

I have a stack of lab-scanned negatives behind me dying to be cataloged and stored, and have also been saying I'll go through my old digital files to organize everything for 18 months. I started, at least deleted some duplicate files when I set up a new NAS to provide backups and storage, and got everything in one place and then backed up, but mostly my files are a mess. I desperately need to cull about half or more of my digital files. There are some great ones there, but I don't need 5 copies of the same great image, nor do I need any less-than-great ones I'll never use again.

When I first started using the F6, I attached all the exif data to my scans and was pretty meticulous, but wasn't quite sure about filing my negatives yet, and hadn't decided to use the binder of plastic sheets. Took me a while to get there, and that created a backlog so I have many boxes of unpaged negatives waiting to be trimmed and filed. I just never want to go through it and get them filed, so the pile only shrinks slowly.

Scanning at home now. I try to label by date, film type, and exposure as I scan them, and I immediately either file the negs in a printfile sleeve in my binder, or throw the negatives away if they're trash. Which I have to admit happens plenty. That way they're sortable by date, and i can find the negs if I want to revisit a file I have scanned.

One big deal was to toss those negatives I won't revisit. Sometimes I literally shoot a roll as an experiment, or just don't do anything interesting at all, and will NEVER rescan the negs or use them to print or for any other purpose. Now I keep marginal or good negatives, but a bad roll isn't worth the plastic sleeve. Trying to stop the error I made in not culling crap digital photos for 15 years, leaving countless files that do nothing but make it harder to find the winners.

My biggest goal now is to get the negative filing done, right away, as soon as I've scanned, else the backlog will grow rather than slowly shrink. Don't do it immediately, every time, and you end up with a mess like mine that you have to waste time reorganizing.

Alan Edward Klein · Feb 7, 2022

I got a little OCD too.

leicaboss · Feb 16, 2022

Moose22 said:
You're a better man than I, taking that time.

I have a stack of lab-scanned negatives behind me dying to be cataloged and stored, and have also been saying I'll go through my old digital files to organize everything for 18 months. I started, at least deleted some duplicate files when I set up a new NAS to provide backups and storage, and got everything in one place and then backed up, but mostly my files are a mess. I desperately need to cull about half or more of my digital files. There are some great ones there, but I don't need 5 copies of the same great image, nor do I need any less-than-great ones I'll never use again.

When I first started using the F6, I attached all the exif data to my scans and was pretty meticulous, but wasn't quite sure about filing my negatives yet, and hadn't decided to use the binder of plastic sheets. Took me a while to get there, and that created a backlog so I have many boxes of unpaged negatives waiting to be trimmed and filed. I just never want to go through it and get them filed, so the pile only shrinks slowly.

Scanning at home now. I try to label by date, film type, and exposure as I scan them, and I immediately either file the negs in a printfile sleeve in my binder, or throw the negatives away if they're trash. Which I have to admit happens plenty. That way they're sortable by date, and i can find the negs if I want to revisit a file I have scanned.

One big deal was to toss those negatives I won't revisit. Sometimes I literally shoot a roll as an experiment, or just don't do anything interesting at all, and will NEVER rescan the negs or use them to print or for any other purpose. Now I keep marginal or good negatives, but a bad roll isn't worth the plastic sleeve. Trying to stop the error I made in not culling crap digital photos for 15 years, leaving countless files that do nothing but make it harder to find the winners.

My biggest goal now is to get the negative filing done, right away, as soon as I've scanned, else the backlog will grow rather than slowly shrink. Don't do it immediately, every time, and you end up with a mess like mine that you have to waste time reorganizing.

It's taking so long to redo, but it certainly feels cathartic. I've managed to turn my workstation in such a way that I can still try to make my fiancee feel like I'm still involved with our TV nights while I'm furiously organizing and re-scanning things, haha.

Lightroom Organization for Film / Hybrid Shooters

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