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Print film negatives.


Paul J

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Not sure if this is the right place but I have a question.  I am in process of scanning hundreds of colour and monochrome negatives to my laptop. All aircraft taken from late 1960s to early noughties. The thing I would like to know is  is it worth keeping the negs after or should I just bin them or find a wanting home for them???

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Personally, I think it is sacrilege to throw out any negatives. My ex-wife decided to throw out my whole collection of negatives and hundreds of photos although that wasn't the only reason why I dumped her!

 

I lost so much of my life as recorded in photos and even now I miss them. Not only did I lose the obligatory photos of children but many ship photos from my Royal Navy career. Very few of them had been scanned and those that were are almost useless due to their low resolution. If they don't take up too much space then keep them. If they do, then give them to a good home but please don't throw them away.

 

Another reason for keeping negatives is that they come from a time before selfies!

 

Dave

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Hello Paul,

 

I would scan all of them and keep the originals. If you need (for example) to check for colours later, then the best way is to examine the originals. Playing with monochrome negatives and Photoshop is useless. On the other hand it is nice to scale up the photos on computer screen, when looking for details.

 

Cheers,

Antti

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thanks for the in put chaps..  @er indoors insists I bin them once they are scanned. She says that when they are stored electronically and saved to a separate hard disk I have got them to look up when I please.  BUT... I am going to refuse the binning idea.  Too much of my history with being an aeroplane nut recorded!  I have binned some though and only those of flying shots at airshows that merely show up as pin pricks for aircraft!!

 

I still look forward to more opinions though.

Thanks again.

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As I'm sure you're aware, negatives have a bit of a habit of sticking together, if they are left pressed together for a long period. Not a major issue, certainly, but something to be aware of.

 

Chris.  

 

PS: Or you can use negative bags ( can you still buy those?).

Edited by spruecutter96
Amending some information.
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  • 2 weeks later...

I scanned loads of negatives a few years ago, but quite a few of them show dust/blemishes/other artefacts. I would seriously consider rescanning them if I can find a good deal on a newer scanner with better dust removal tools built in. Another issue is that an image where the exposure is slightly off might have blown areas on the scan. Stuff like that might be worth rescanning at a later stage too.

 

Technology advances and the limits of your current scanner may well mean that you don't get the full image information from these scans, but at a future date another scanner might be better at this. I would never throw out a negative, it is the original of that particular image and as others have mentioned, a small glitch in a storage system might wipe out all your scans.

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