Writing on contact sheets

I have almost completed a multi-year (off and on) task of organizing my negatives chronological into binders. I thought that I might start with the first roll as #0001 and number them roll by roll, thus giving myself an easy system of finding individual negatives.

I want to write a big number at the top of each contact sheet, in white, what is the best option for this? Will a standard white sharpie work or do I need to go with paint pen or some other choice? I know a grease pencil isn't going to do the trick.

Parker...you gotta go old school and use a red or white grease pencil...aka "China Marker".

I came up with the simplest alternative I could think of :- put the contact-sheets in the binder 'back to front' and write the date-code (or whatever system you use) in black, top right on the plain white back of each sheet. If you put them the right (wrong) way up you can also simply turn over the binder and open up to see the picture side of the sheets in reverse filing order.

I also tried having all the contacts grouped together in sorted order, then an archival card spacer-page, then the neg sheets in the same order - but this ended up not having enough room for complete projects/time-periods in the skinny binders I had then. In turn, that led to me storing everything (still sorted of course) in archival filing boxes stacked horizontally with search details recorded on a label on the outside of each box. No more space problems, and no more distorted pages from being vertical in binders

Edit: The boxes are the ones made for use in document depositories. Archival carton with stainless metal fittings (no glue),

China marker is great if one wants a removable marking, like crop marks, but I long ago went the Sharpie route for markings intended to be permanent, like neg numbers and dates and notes, with great success.

I use a Sanford Sharpie permanent marker. You can get them in black or several other colors and in several tip thicknesses. I usually us a fine tip. They are permanent and can only be removed with alcohol or similar solvent. I encode my sheets with numbers of the form YYMMDD-L where Y,M,D are the two digit year, month, If more than one roll is shot on a particular day then L would be the roll number. This way ONE number puts them in sequence and also provides the date information. two birds, one ... Also helpful is to note the film, EI, developer and development time.

Gerald C Koch said:

I encode my sheets with numbers of the form YYMMDD-L where Y,M,D are the two digit year, month, If more than one roll is shot on a particular day then L would be the roll number. This way ONE number puts them in sequence and also provides the date information. two birds, one ... Also helpful is to note the film, EI, developer and development time.

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Thanks Gerald, I thought about doing it like that but I'm not too obsessive about the date. Sometimes I'll shoot half a roll somewhere and then leave the camera untouched for two weeks so it would be a bit problematic for me anyway.

I was reading Arbus' "Revelations" and noticed she just started with 0001 at some point and numbered from there. Sounded easy enough. I'll probably never roll over 9999, and if I do I'll wonder why I didn't just invest $50,000 in the stock market.

My numbering scheme is similar: YYYY-MM-nnn

My numbering system is "001/2015" "002/2015" on the top left of the CS. On the top right I write the date of the shooting.

I write the date and roll/sheet information on the Printfile sleeve in red sharpie. Then I make contact sheets in the Printfile sleeve on 8.5x11 paper so there is room for the writing to appear. So my contact sheet and negative sleeve have the exact same information on them.

I use China markers to edit/select frames to print from the contact sheets.

My numbering is YYYY-RR [Roll number]

Mine is w/ a permanent marker at the top showing date, camera and lens, film, developer (including dilution, agitation scheme, temps and times), and what filter, if any, that was used on the camera. This has proven invaluable, and makes it very easy to go back and get a look that I want. There's a similar scheme for prints too. It's a lot different than painting!

Good Afternoon, Parker,

If you put your data on the film with India ink, the information will show up as white on a contact sheet. A Sharpie would be much handier, but it doesn't give adequate opacity. Blocking the light for a half-inch strip at the top of the contact sheet makes writing there with a Sharpie a practical solution. ( I contact on 8½ × 11 inch paper, so there's generally enough space for a blank strip at least ½ inch wide.)
One other possibility: Sheets of mailing labels have about ½ inch at the top and bottom, outside the label area, which can be used to print plenty of data. I don't know how easy or difficult it would be to do this a typical word processing program, but I use Microsoft Publisher to prepare my mailing labels. It's just a matter of putting a long, narrow Text box immediately above or below the labels area. That approach, incidentally, also works great for making small-font return-address labels for postal use. A 6 font allows for three lines (name, street address, city/state/zip.); I normally get six such labels in a strip at the top and don't bother trying to use the space at the bottom.
I use a laser printer and sometimes use transparent labels for putting data in one of the between-exposure blank areas of 120 film; usually a sans-serif 11 or 12 font works well on the typical 1 × 2 5/8 label.

Konical