Ditto. I do my own scans so have to cut them along the way, and put in sleeves after scanning. For color films, the lan numbers them. I dev my b&w and just started numbering at 1.
Pro tip from an ex-lab student: touching your face with latex gloves on makes them contaminated with grease from your face, thus making them pointless. Gloves are only on for handling the subject, otherwise they are off. 🙂
FYI - there are standard 3-hole punchers available from business stores which will match your 3-hole binders. Will save you a bunch of time punching holes.
One downside of using a label maker, if you use the print files for printing a contact sheet in the darkroom you won’t have the notes of the label on the contact sheet.
The most satisfying thing to me when doing this is when you hear the click of the 3 ring binder after sliding the last negative and putting the full sleeve into the binder 😅 every page is a mini accomplishment!
The good news for me, although it too is time consuming, is I scan my negatives myself so I sleeve as I go. Otherwise, I can see how negatives could accumulate without sleeving. But what else are you gonna do when it's 115º outside?
When I started photography, 30-odd years ago, my local camera shop (remember those? They used to have them,) had a machine which grabbed the rolls as they came out of the processor, presented what it thought was the place to cut to the operator, who adjusted it so it cut properly, then cut and sleeved the negatives. Super easy, super quick. In later years I often kicked myself for not trying to get that when they retired and closed the store. *sigh* Doesn't matter now, of course: I've shot mostly large format for at least the past 15 years: no cutting, big negatives are easy to sleeve. I think I shot three or four rolls of 35mm last year. I feel for ya, kid! 😅
OMG So. Much. Work! I just took a minute to look at all my film archives and thank my past self doing all that grunt work when I was tired, sleepy, and just plain uninterested. Like I used to tell my students, if you can’t find it, it’s like you didn’t shoot it. Well done! 👏🏻
I definitely had to catch up on archiving my old rolls but I most definitely didn't have near as much as you. I separate 35 and 120 and within those two formats, separate color from black and white. Everything is in order chronologically across the archive.
A lot of work, but time well spent! You mentioned that all the film had been scanned. Are you planning to link the scans to the film location now that you've organized? I use Collection Sets in Lightroom for this: a Collection Set per binder, a collection within the set per page and the images from that page in that collection. Then it's easy to find the physical negative/positive for each digital image. I'm currently going through this process with 40 years worth of film, including camera scanning. I hope to be done before I die of old age. ;-)
Taylor, you just blew my mind. I've been archiving my film for years but i never thought to put the PrintFiles in the binder before putting the film in. Game changer.
Piker. I have fifty two years of negatives, near zero order to any of it. But then, there was never a reason to organize,. Almost no single person ever looks at my pictures and they don't care for a print of any one of them. This photography thing is just a hobby/obsession of mine. I can quit any time.
Wow. I bought a binder and sleeves a couple months ago, but haven’t gotten around to archiving yet… this really motivates me to get going. At least I only have a year and a half of negatives
Mostly have slide which are archived, but put off scanning for many years, so have a massive undertaking to do, commend you on getting your archiving done.
I would've gotten one of those hole punches that has a stop to center it on different paper sizes. Also, if I have doubts about a date of my negatives I always check the scanned files. 👍
IT seems like so much work to archival all of that film, however it looks like so much fun to have a nice couple of day to yourself. Like building a huge lego set. I have a C330 too thats not working! I think mine has a light leaking issue lol I also have a huge backlog of film I need to get developed T.T
Watching this video while ordering permanent marker, better cutting shears and eying The Pile [tm] in my room. Thanks for the organization inspiration!
No lie, while this was on in the background I started looking for stuff for this purpose (srsly felt seen, then attacked). I'm guessing you were using regular three-ring binders to put the film in compared to archival ones?
Love it. And what a coincidence. I have just organized, sorted, packed in the PrintFile (and scanned) almost 1000 35mm frames over past month coming from a lose storage, many mixed up. At 3:22 what is the name of the brand of this binder?
I started printing more and more of my photos - digital shooter. Out of curiosity, how do you organize your prints? The volumes of prints in my case are fairly low, but the backlog is starting to build.
I am also doing this this year and it is soooo rewarding. Ten years worth of film all cataloged chronologically, with labels indicating film stock and camera 🥸
I had to look twice what the blue things are you threw on the floor…… 🫣😳 PS: I would like to see what your post-production process is like. What happens after you shoot a film….
