Tossing Negatives After They've Been Scanned

[DREW WILEY]

I've done a fair amount of restoration work with really old negatives and prints. Now it's even a lot easier to do that kind of work through scanning and digital restoration. Lots of old cellulose nitrate-bass negatives were deliberately destroyed due to being a fire hazard. Damp humid spaces are bad for all kinds of materials. The mildew and mold risk alone is a significant factor. Dry climates are a lot more favorable to old negatives.

Color negatives have improved quite a bit in recent decades in terms of being usable awhile, but otherwise, can be a weak link in the chain, particularly any so-so processed amateur film examples. I'm not having any problem reprinting 20 or 30 year old sheet film negatives professionally processed; but I store them carefully.

Unless someone has their own drum scanner, it would be awfully expensive to digitally record a large number of chromes or negatives without lossy issues. Then who is going to preserve all those files themselves? When I was a college student, information was stored on punch cards. What happened to all of those? A half century from now, every form of cyber storage we're currently doing might be equally obsolete.

 

[gbroadbridge]

Unless someone has their own drum scanner, it would be awfully expensive to digitally record a large number of chromes or negatives without lossy issues.

I would suggest that 100 years from now, a digital archaeologist would be happy with any scan when given a choice of that or a mouldy piece of decaying film.

Given that most of what is photographed is recognised as junk by the photographer themselves, who would make the call as to what justifies the time and effort to make a drum scan?

And I think that resolution loss is vastly overstated, not technically, but in terms of importance of preserving the image at all.

A half century from now, every form of cyber storage we're currently doing might be equally obsolete.

It'll exist in some form, and there will always be someone converting stuff from old to new.
If it's important anyway.

I think prints hold the longevity record.

Print away.

 

[DREW WILEY]

But converting it to new form has to be a conscious decision. It won't happen automatically. The sheer almost unbelievable quantity of digital imagery floating out there somewhere in cyberspace or on jillions of dics and thumbdrives is going to mostly miss that boat. Maybe it should.

You ask, who should make the judgment call to drum scan (as if drum scanners themselves aren't already an endangered species). The same could be said about a judgment call to preserve select images at all.
Not everyone is the Library of Congress.

But in my case, the print IS the whole point. A mere negative or transparency doesn't fully represent my own intent. I sure wouldn't want anyone else printing my negatives.

 

[David Brown]

But barring fire, flood, or critters, my negatives will be around to annoy the executors of my estate!

As will my entire darkroom and camera inventory!

 

[Old_Dick]

But they don't.

They can deteriorate quite rapidly given the right conditions. Especially colour negatives.

A scan may be the only image showing it's true colours 30 years down the track.

Most folks here I expect would be a bit more careful about storing them, but 99% of negs are tossed in their original wrapping into a shoebox in the bottom of a wardrobe, or in a storage carton in a garage.
And they rot.

The right conditions are key. Obsolete technologies, the blink of an eye.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Make a photo album. Everyone can immediately enjoy it. No obsolescence. Or a Blurb photo book from scans. I also scanned my cousin's 1940s parents photo album onto a video slide show memory card for TV display. Editing the scan improved the album's photos.

 

[Kino]

It'll exist in some form, and there will always be someone converting stuff from old to new.
If it's important anyway.

This is a popular fallacy; the old "some undefined, massively funded archive out there is chugging away, preserving everything possible, migrating digital media with an endless, replenished budget, all for the sake of Humanity.

It could not be farther from the truth.

Fact is, in this current World society, if it is not immediately able to be "monetized" it is marginalized and eventually discarded. Even currently "valuable" data that is wildly profitable will eventually be deprecated and discarded for the very fact it is no longer profitable.

Having spent 25 years in an archive, I saw this first hand happen over and over again.

The percentage of "important" work that eventually survives would be lucky to reach even 1% of the total output and THAT depends on current trends and fashion. What was important 30 years ago can hit the bin in a flash when either it is deemed improper to prevailing mores OR space is needed for more modern "important" work.

I now think "archival" really means, it lasts as long as you do.

Oh and let me add; just because an archive acquires a collection or an item, it doesn't mean it will be preserved, stored properly or even cataloged. The very idea makes me laugh...

 

[Truzi]

But they don't.

They can deteriorate quite rapidly given the right conditions. Especially colour negatives.

A scan may be the only image showing it's true colours 30 years down the track.

Most folks here I expect would be a bit more careful about storing them, but 99% of negs are tossed in their original wrapping into a shoebox in the bottom of a wardrobe, or in a storage carton in a garage.
And they rot.

I've not had a chance to scrutinize the shoeboxes of slides and negatives that were in my late grandfathers closet, but I'm glad they didn't simply have a slip of paper with a now non-existent URI and no username/password.

 

[BobUK]

From the late sixties I have perfectly usable black and white negatives, home processed, then stored in glassine negative bags.
Colour was just a dream for me then.
Some of my earliest prints have changed over time, bad processing on my part, but the negatives are in good condition, even if a little boring. So happily re-printable.

Some time ago The British Museum ran into digital problems.
A lot of their material was recorded onto ten inch floppy discs.
A big project that employed a lot of people, archiving information for the future.
Good while it lasted, but the machines didn't last.
A maintenance contract was difficult to find, as spares were no longer produced.
I don't know what the outcome was in the end.

A bit ironic that the actual negatives and pictures, possibly stored on the discs are in good condition , and still functional today.
While the computing system set up as the life boat is sinking.

 

[chuckroast]

From the late sixties I have perfectly usable black and white negatives, home processed, then stored in glassine negative bags.
Colour was just a dream for me then.
Some of my earliest prints have changed over time, bad processing on my part, but the negatives are in good condition, even if a little boring. So happily re-printable.

Some time ago The British Museum ran into digital problems.
A lot of their material was recorded onto ten inch floppy discs.
A big project that employed a lot of people, archiving information for the future.
Good while it lasted, but the machines didn't last.
A maintenance contract was difficult to find, as spares were no longer produced.
I don't know what the outcome was in the end.

A bit ironic that the actual negatives and pictures, possibly stored on the discs are in good condition , and still functional today.
While the computing system set up as the life boat is sinking.

Digital media are "reliable" only to the extent that they are replicated. Even then, the rate of change of technology almost guarantees the content will be unreadable with time.

For example, do you still have 8", 5", or 3" "floppy" discs? What OS was used to create them? Do you have the machinery and operating systems to read them (assuming they are still readable)? If you do, have you a way to move the contents to something newer?

Small desktop computing for the masses began in the mid-1970s (Altair), the commercialized internet/web in the early 1990s (Berners-Lee and the web). So in something like 50-ish years we have significant data obsolescence and bit rot. This will not improve with time.

Meanwhile, the oldest surviving negative is Talbot's window picture from 1835. 50,000+ year old cave paintings persist.

Perhaps the answer is to encode the digital content as bar codes painted on cave walls...

 

[Carnie Bob]

This practice started a very long time ago, I find it crazy but then upon reflection I realize too many lousy photographs are out there , so this culling is actually a good thing

 

[chuckroast]

This practice started a very long time ago, I find it crazy but then upon reflection I realize too many lousy photographs are out there , so this culling is actually a good thing

Yes, but there can be uses for "bad" negatives. When I want to make a change of developer, time, dilution, agitation technique, etc. I often look back at my "failures" to see what did not work and why.

Negatives are not just for display.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Digital media are "reliable" only to the extent that they are replicated. Even then, the rate of change of technology almost guarantees the content will be unreadable with time.

For example, do you still have 8", 5", or 3" "floppy" discs? What OS was used to create them? Do you have the machinery and operating systems to read them (assuming they are still readable)? If you do, have you a way to move the contents to something newer?

Small desktop computing for the masses began in the mid-1970s (Altair), the commercialized internet/web in the early 1990s (Berners-Lee and the web). So in something like 50-ish years we have significant data obsolescence and bit rot. This will not improve with time.

Meanwhile, the oldest surviving negative is Talbot's window picture from 1835. 50,000+ year old cave paintings persist.

Perhaps the answer is to encode the digital content as bar codes painted on cave walls...

We all want to live forever and be memorialized to infinity. That's why the caveman painted on cave walls and we back up our pictures. His old way was more reliable.

 

[koraks]

His old way was more reliable.

Well, only to the extent the results have survived (to date). Many fine mud drawings and wood carvings are surely lost.

 

[BobUK]

Sadly not all known cave paintings have survived.
I remember reading about the French Scouts removing graffiti from cave walls, then whooops!

Cave of Mayrières supérieure - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org