Do you save all negatives?

[Pete Suttner]

Do you save all your negatives or do you dump the dogs and maybe the maybes?

[Erik Larsen]

I turn the duds into supports for carbon tissue. I have no shortage of duds unfortunately.
Eeik

[Ed Richards]

All that are not clearly flawed or test negatives. The data about the shot goes on a paper envelope, and the negative goes in a Mylar sleve (three sides open) and into the envelope.

[Daniel Stone]

I keep all negatives/chrome for 1 year, unless they're clearly blown out or technically beyond "fixing". I then go through my film from the past 4-5 years 1x/year, and toss out the ones that are now coming up on 2yrs old(or older).

Has worked well for me thus far.

-Dan

[Vaughn]

I am now tossing out the obviously flawed negs (out of focus, severely damaged) as I develop them, but I still have many older flawed negs. it is tough for me to toss any! LOL!

Vaughn

[Oren Grad]

Yes, I save all my negatives. (But FWIW, I don't save all my digital captures.)

[photobymike]

Some of the negatives i was going to throw away years ago have became some of my most cherished possessions. Negatives have lasted longer than any scanned pictures. Pictures of my children seemed like extra baggage at the time but i kept them and wow do they bring back memories. I have pictures of 2 ex wives that seemed like they were just taking up space im notebooks. Even thru history pictures that were just snapshots are now really cherished and valuable. It really is about the memories... i know a photographer in clearwater in, he is in his 90s. He had a thriving portrait and wedding business. Most of his pictures are 4x5 negatives from the 40s and 50s weddings portraits and the history of his life. What a treasure it would be to print those pictures.... i sure would like a set of my parents wedding pictures 1944.... This photographer was in WWII as a photographer ..think of the history he saw thru his 4x5 graphic.... He has all the negatives lovingly filed away neatly that his studio ever did.... he says he had his wife of many years to thank for that. You should see the 2 rooms filled with the negs from long ago ... wow something to behold.... he does not understand the history of life that he has in those carefully filed away envelopes all dated and sequential from day one .... thousands and thousands of people from birth till death..... no no the older a negative gets the more valuable it is to somebody

[Marc B.]

Do you save all your negatives or do you dump the dogs and maybe the maybes?
Good question. And, I know you have posted this question, here, in the LFPF Forums,
but let me share a digital vs film capture story. The story is truly about 'archiving images.'

Remember the Pres. Bill Clinton - Monica Lewinsky scandal?
Read the attached story from Dirck Halstead, a Photojournalist for Time Magazine.

At a time when most photographers had already swapped to shooting digital,
Mr. Halstead was still shooting mostly film, and saving his negatives/slides.
The story takes us back to the mid 90's.

Excerpts (2) from Dirck Halstead's editorial:

....I KNEW I had seen that face with the President. I had no idea when, or where....
....If the photographers to the left and right of me on that stage, that night, were shooting digital, they probably erased the files ( Monica, who ?)

The full editorial By Dirck Halstead:
http://digitaljournalist.org/issue9807/editorial.htm

[Moopheus]

I still have negatives (and even some prints) I made as a kid at summer camp in the early 70s, so I tend to keep stuff. But I will toss things that are completely without salvation. Though with roll film, a bad negative can make a convenient handle to a strip.

[evan clarke]

I keep all negs and all my prints. I have space for them and it's amazing hiw having junk comes in handy...

[Jim Jones]

Sometimes the information recorded in negatives is valuable, even though the image is too poor in quality to be worth displaying. Broken or obsolete equipment can be used to repair or improvise newer gear. Even the eyeglasses I'm wearing at the moment have been repaired with parts (and duct tape) from otherwise useless glasses.

[Brian Ellis]

Short answer: No

Long answer: There's a theory (valid IMHO) that you can't really judge the merits of a photograph shortly after it was made because at that time you remember what you were looking for when you made the photograph. And if it doesn't accomplish what you wanted you figure it isn't a good photograph so you throw it away without seeing other possibilities in it. But if you look at the photograph years down the road you forget what you originally wanted and you can see possibilities with it that originally escaped you. Which is probably a good reason to keep all your negatives.

Unfortunately practical storage space/clutter considerations sometimes prevent that, in which case you have to strike a compromise between space/clutter and the desirability of keeping everything. For me the compromise is to scan all my negatives, store the scans digitally (in four different storage mechanisms), keep the negatives for a while (year or so) then throw most of them away. I keep only the ones that I exhibited or otherwise liked well enough to print. If I thought my heirs were going to care about my photographs I probably wouldn't trust them to digital storage systems. But I don't think they're going to care and I'm comfortable that during my lifetime there will always be a way to read the scans.

This all relates only to my "fine art" (heh heh) photographs. The family negatives I keep forever, I figure they might interest someone a long time from now, when there might be no way to retrieve the scans.

[Shootar401]

I save all the negatives, no exceptions. A bunch of negatives in sleeves in a 3-ring binder doesn't take up much space, nor does a small portable hard drive for my scans. They all fit nicely in my safe deposit box.

[Kirk Gittings]

I am much more liberal about flawed negatives I keep. I used to toss more and then scanning and PS came along. Many that I (now regretfully) previously tossed could have been repaired with current tools.

[Andrew O'Neill]

I turn the duds into supports for carbon tissue.

Me too. But before I got into carbon, I dumped them. Now I regret that.

[Ari]

I toss the blank ones, very faint ones, etc.
When I get down about my work, the percentage of tossed film goes way up. :)

[Ed Richards]

I also scan them all and create a high rez and a small JPG of each. I fill all the JPGs and organize them with Lightroom as an index to the negatives. I only keep the high rez scans of the best, but since I have the negative and the index file for all, I can go back and make a new scan if I decide I want to work with one I did not like at the time of original scanning.

[Jess C]

I tend to keep them all. Even the blank ones have a use for measuring base + fog. :)

[SpeedGraphicMan]

If a severely scratch an old one they make good focusing negs for making enlagements.

Especially since it is so dang hard to use a grain focusing aid with "grainless" large format.

[slackercruster]

No I didn't them all.

I kept the ones I liked and some maybes. No regrets. But I have lost lots of my work over 40 years. Lots of regrets for losing stuff. Crazy, but I've some some of my best stuff!! Do better than me.

[jzeairs]

for now i do. but i am young. so maybe i will get rid of some when the pile is too high.

[jk0592]

I do keep all of the negatives, neatly stored in "Print File". The bad prints I toss out...