Why Should you Keep your Film Negatives?
At Nice we have several options for storing your film negatives. We offer cut sleeving and uncut sleeving with a 60 day storage policy. We’ve found that there seems to be a pretty big difference in the value people assign to film negatives. For film shooters either the negatives are one of the most important parts of the shooting process or they become a nonchalant afterthought, with many people not even knowing what they are. So what makes film negatives indispensable for some and recycling material for others? The first step in finding value in negatives is knowing exactly what they are. Sometimes people who are new to film don’t want to opt to pay an extra cost because that don’t know what the word “negative” is referring to and they feel embarrassed to ask. Let’s start with some context.
What are Film Negatives?
Film photography negatives are strips or sheets of film that contain photographic images in a reversed form. They are created when light-sensitive silver halide particles on the film surface react to the light that passes through the camera lens during exposure. The film is later developed in a darkroom or a professional lab where the exposed silver halide particles are chemically processed to create a visible image.
Negatives come in different sizes, such as 35mm, medium format, and large format, and film types, such as color negative, black and white negative, and slide/transparency film. They are the original source of film photographs and are essential for creating prints or digital scans. In simpler terms, your negatives are the film inside your canister containing all your photos. They are developed, hung, and then scanned as a positive image.
How to store film negatives?
Film negatives should be stored in a cool, dry, and dark place. Exposure to light, heat, and humidity can damage the negatives over time. It's recommended to store them in archival-quality sleeves or containers to protect them from scratches and dust. Keeping negatives in plastic prevents them getting bent, torn, or warped. It's important to handle them with clean hands, or better yet, gloves, to avoid leaving fingerprints or oils on the negatives.
Why to save your negatives?
Printing
One of the benefits of saving your film negatives is to turn them into darkroom prints. In the darkroom, the negative is placed in an enlarger via a film carrier and projected onto light-sensitive paper for a select amount of time to make an image. One of the benefits of having your negatives cut is that it is much easier to fit them into the film carrier to then place into the enlarger. It’s extremely cumbersome and highly uncommon to use uncut negatives in a darkroom. The paper is then moved from developer to stabilizer, to fixer, in a series of baths in order to make a final image. These prints are then washed and dried for preservation. Darkroom prints have rich tones and textures that many feel are irreplaceable in digital printing. Darkroom prints have the capacity to last for 20-30 years depending on the conditions they are kept it. Prints made entirely by hand are an extremely valuable photographic form that can only be created from a negative. Where digital prints are made from digital image files, darkroom prints are made right from the source. For many, especially in fine art, an 8x10 fiber-based print is high enough quality to exist in a professional archive and should be the quality serious photographers strive for.
Contact Sheets
Another benefit of keeping your film negatives is that you are able to make contact sheets with them. A contact sheet is a single print containing all the images from a roll of film, arranged in a grid format. Contact sheets are printed by placing the negatives directly onto light-sensitive paper and exposing the paper to light. They serve as a quick way to view all the images on a roll and make selections for further printing or enlarging. Nowadays, contact sheets are used less for this kind of viewing and selection because digital scanning is so prominent. Most people will go into the darkroom having already viewed their roll, knowing what they want to print. Today, contact sheets hold their own aesthetic value. The presentation of all the photos together on one sheet serves as its own form of photographic art. What was once a necessary tool for print selection now serves as a reminder of a practice that has been superseded by automatization. There is an undeniable beauty in a contact sheet that you are only able to make if you keep your film negatives.
Rescanning
One of the benefits of saving your film is you have the ability to have your film negatives rescanned by a lab or even yourself. When most people think of rescanning they think of getting terrible scans an needing to have the scans redone out of necessity. While unfortunately this is sometimes the case, one factor that is less considered is a change of style. Over time often both the kinds of photos you take and how you want those photos to look can change. You might find yourself developing a specific style of picture making. Having your negatives means you have the ability to rescan in order have a consistent look with your photos. Say for example when you first started shooting you liked your photos extremely flat, but now you like having more contrast in your work. Here is the same photo scanned two different ways.
You’ll notice just how drastically this changes the photo Although you can make these changes in post you can retain much more detail if this is work is done in the initial scan. This is because when you make adjustments in the scanner, you’re changing the sensitivity of the light shining through the film to make your image. When editing in post you’re altering already built in information. Essentially, it is the difference between creating something from scratch and manipulating something already created. The former gives you more power of manipulation at a higher quality.
Learning about your Film
All the information about your shots is stored in the negative. From your film negative you can tell if the film was underexposed, overexposed, how it was developed, how that negative will translate as a positive, any issues with the film you used, and any issues you may be having with your camera. In an artistic practice with a massive learning curve and prone to a plethora of errors, this is an invaluable resource. You can use the film negative to track issues and progress as you continue to shoot film. In fact this is exactly what we use negatives for at Nice. Any time there is a question about someone’s scans, the film negative is our biggest resource in determining the root cause.
Memories
Film negatives are also just nice to have in and of themselves outside of any utilitarian purpose. Being able to sift through pages of negatives you’ve organized is a gratifying way to see just how much time and effort you’ve put into your film photography practice. Film negatives have a unique tactile value that may seem useless now but in the years ahead could serve as a really valuable reminder of how you’ve grown as a photographer. Organizing negatives by place or date is a great way to reflect back through memories and see just where your eye took you at a specific place and time in your life.
