Backing up negatives

[Ed Richards]

This is another spin off from some work my wife is doing on a disaster survival guide. For film photographers, negatives are critical. It is pretty easy to protect them from flooding in Pelican cases or ammo boxes - stored in climate controlled spaces. Fire is a lot harder - as someone pointed out, fire safes are intended for paper, and media safes are dramatically bigger and more expensive.

Does this argue for even anti-digital folks to scan their negatives and put away copies in an off site location? While a good scan from a consumer scanner like a 9950 is not nearly as good a drum scan, it would be a lot better than an handful of ashes. This was not an option until recently, so it is not part of the usual workflow. While there is a lot of complaining about the changes in media formats, I have been managing digital data for 25 years now and it is not a big deal. You just have to shift to the new formats about every 5 years. This might mean no more than a day spent reburning disks. It is worth doing anyway to avoid deterioration of the media. You might not want to scan it all because of time, and you might want drum scans of the money shots.

[Oren Grad]

It depends why you're making the negatives in the first place. If an important part of the intention is documentary, and either achieving a particular print character is secondary or you're already committed to scanning and inkjet printing because you like it, that seems like a very good idea.

But I don't see much point in scanning my own big negatives. Most of them are of generic rocks 'n' trees stuff and have no particular documentary value. And for now, at least, I'm primarily interested in contact prints for their own sake, and there's nothing you can do with data from a scan that will replicate the look and feel that I want in my prints.

[Brian C. Miller]

You could contact print your negatives to make a duplicate negative. There's info on the Ilford site about the process, but its a bit involved.

[Oren Grad]

You could, but it would be huge hassle and you'd still pay a price in loss of quality. If I didn't mind that, I could get by with a scan, which would be much easier.

[John_4185]

For all the trouble and expense of having your own fireproof, theft-fire-flood-wind proof archive in your home or studio, you can rent a safety deposit box.

Digital scans just open up another pandora's box of liabilities. You know that digital maniacs are beginning to discuss film copies of their precious bits, right?

Sheesh. Why not take it a step further and discuss nuclear bomb-shelters?

[Eric Rose]

Anything that I feel might turn out to be "important" I take two photos of. One neg is stored at the darkroom, the other offsite.

[Ed Richards]

> you can rent a safety deposit box.

In the basement of a bank no doubt.:-)

> You know that digital maniacs are beginning to discuss film copies of their precious bits, right?

That is really about the same - I have the film copy, now I want a digital.

What I am thinking about is being able to have access to one's negatives to be able to work with them, while have some useful backup in case of disaster. Using them is the first priority, otherwise why bother?

As for Eric's commment - I am not good enough yet to know what is important, I just keep shooting.

[paulr]

Face it, this is all just about immortality. My personal cryogenics lab said they'll be willing to throw my negatives into the pod with my corpse for just a few more $million a millenium. Is that too much? What other gift can you give yourself that's guaranteed to last forever (or your money back ... )

[jantman]

There is a reason why I shoot 8x10 when I do, and why I contact print.

If I scanned the negs, that would be pointless. The reason why I bother with 8x10 in the first place is that for many things, I want, I need, the look of 8x10. If scanning would achieve the same result, I'd do that in the first place.

While it would be horribly depressing to lose negatives, I hope I will be able to continue to make good images.

You could store them in a safe deposit box, or a giant media safe. I had a whole stack of negs sitting on a shelf waiting to be printed when a pipe burst in my basement. Water all over the darkroom floor. And, due to travelling across the beams, all over my pile of negs. Some were able to be washed and are fine, some were lost. Oh well. I'll just have to pick up the camera, go out, and make new ones.

[Mark_3632]

Honestly, If I were in a disaster situation the last things I would worry about would be my negs. Family, animals, and nourishment are all I would be worried about. The rest is just a material object and in the grand scheme of things utterly meaningless.

Those few negs I like the most have a backup (a second exposed and developed neg) a couple hundred miles from where I live, so I guess those would not be lost.