what do you do with scanned negatives, etc
 

What do you do with your scanned negatives, slides and photos??

I save my negatives & slides in sleeves in binders. This is probably about 1/3-1/2 of all the negatives & slides we have. There are a lot that haven't been put into the sleeves yet.

https://i.imgur.com/NrI1Foz.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/eSR8Wft.jpg

A few years ago, I had scanned a ton of old negatives using a negative scanner that I bought on Amazon. It wasn't the cheapest, but not the most expensive, either. It went fairly quickly, and I was able to scan 110 film, 35mm, and Advantix film. I used my flatbed scanner for the medium/large format negatives that I have (those scans are decent).

As I started scrapping with those scans, I noticed that they were TERRIBLE! They are pixelated, have a lot of digital noise, and terrible (basically unfixable) color. Absolutely unscrappable! Serves me right for not checking them on the computer before scanning a butt load. LOL!

Fast forward, and my youngest is into film photography. He has learned how to develop him own film, too. He started using my flatbed scanner. He was not happy with the quality of his scans.
So, he and I bought an older (90s, I think? Maybe early 2000s?) film scanner. This WAS pretty expensive. The scans are night & day! So crisp and clear.

Now I'm getting ready to re-scan all of the old negatives and slides that I thought I was done with. We're talking all of my grandparent's, mom's, hubby's family's and ours starting in the mid-80s. I am very glad I kept them after the first scanning!

I pitched mine once I looked at the scans and was OK with how they looked.

I had sent negatives out to be scanned 8 years ago. First set was good so sent a 2nd set... same company but got crap scans (all green tint, no color correction at all). So I sent those same negatives to a different company. No green tint and pretty good scans only some of the negatives were scanned twice and some weren't scanned at all.

Fast forward several years and after I retired I got a negative scanner off Amazon. I have now gone through all those negatives to find the ones that were not scanned then scanned them myself. I have also scanned the negatives that I had not sent out to be scanned yet. I transferred the scans from the card to the computer daily and then looked at the scans while getting them organized.

I also scanned some of the negatives that had been scanned by both companies... essentially the same with color correction being the only difference. Honestly, the quality of the negative is what matters. Mine were all from the 60's/70's/80's and the quality of processing in those days may not have been the best. But my scans are good enough to remind me of the memories associated with the photos.

After all was done, out the went since the whole purpose of scanning them was to reduce the clutter in the house.

I use sleeves and binders for all of my negatives, as well. I have been scanning and scanning and scanning for the past year it seems! I use an Epson flatbed scanner, and it has done pretty well, at least for my purposes of scrapping. I've had some pages printed using these older images, and I've been pleased with the quality. Even the images from the 110 film (those are SO TINY!) have come out well. I want to have them all scanned, organized, and backed-up. I am planning to keep the physical copies, though, because I know that crazy things can happen and I don't want to put all my eggs in one basket. It has been a slow, tedious process, but scrapping these older memories has been such a valuable, rewarding, healing experience for me. I have some more to go, yet, and then I want to tackle some slides from my husband's childhood that my FIL gave me. He lost most of the photos and other memorabilia in a fire a few years ago, so the ones he gave me to scan are pretty darn precious.

Tammy -

When you are done using the scanner, you should sell it to me :thumbup: My husband's entire childhood is in slides which we have inherited. I had some of them professionally scanned by someone here in town (that I think is no longer in business) and they are pretty bad - very noisy/bad color/some just scanned improperly. I really need to try to do something with them again.

I also have my physical photos. They are organized and stored in several bins. If I had all the negatives from over the years I might have kept them but many were already gone.

I also scanned slides that I had been given of my mother's childhood. Her parents had their film developed as slides and we had slide shows every holiday gathering. Just wish my uncle hadn't pitched a lot of them 25 years ago. He at least pulled out slides that had each of the kids in them but all the vacations... all gone. And, some of those were of places that no longer look the same. Historical societies would love to have them.

When I scanned my negatives I actually found some photos that I knew had been taken but could never find the physical copy when I sorted and organized them. I was so darn happy when I found them since they were from high school.

Oh wow! You're so brave! I don't think I could do that.

I love seeing your layouts with your older photos, Ally!!
My childhood, our early married years, my daughter's early childhood, and even some of our boys' childhoods are all on film. It's A TON! But, I really want to get books done for the kids, so it's important to me to get these things scanned.
We don't have very many (mostly slides) from my hubby's childhood. I think his parents got rid of a lot of it when they divorced. So like you said, the ones we have are precious!

LOL! Stephanie, I don't think my son is going to want to let it go... I suppose he would if he decides film photography is too much work. I'll remember you if he decides to get rid of it!
He & I have talked about scanning as a business. We have our eye on a bigger (more expensive) negative scanner that will handle medium/large format sizes, too, but that's way down the line.
I'm sorry the scans you had done are so bad. It's frustrating enough that the ones I did myself are bad, I can't image having paid for it, and then have them turn out awful :(

It makes me so sad when people throw out old photos without at least keeping a digital copy!!

Well, you have realize those slides were thrown out before digital was even a thing. My cousin was upset when she heard about it. He never even asked any of us if we were interested in them. She taught school at the time and would have loved the opportunity to go through them to see if she could have used them in her classroom. I asked for them when he gave me the slides of my mother (she was deceased) and he told me he had thrown them out several months earlier. When I then asked why he didn't ask me if I wanted them, he shrugged his shoulders and said he didn't think I'd be interested. Sad to say this wasn't entirely out of character for him, he always thought about himself first and never considered his 2 older sisters or their children.

I understand. I know my mom did that with negatives at one point. It's so sad.

Seriously, it makes me sad when people throw out old photographs.

Right now I am in a bit of a quandary about some old photos I have and what to do with them. I've been custodian of all the family photos since my mom moved in with me almost 20 years ago. It has occurred to me that I have no idea what will happen to them all when I am gone -- I don't expect my son to hold on to them forever, so I need a better plan.

First I am thinking about getting a Forever storage account for them so that my entire family can access them and then I think I am going to go through all the individual folders, yes I have them filed by subject in folders, and weed out duplicates and such to give to those individuals and/or their children. I hadn't even thought about all the negatives until this post. Now I will have to figure that out as well! LOL

I have a mix of storage for negatives and slides -- some many are still in the original film lab envelopes from the 1970s and 1980! So, I really need to go through and at least organize them better. I love your sleeve system -- I have some more recent negatives in sleeves but not in any particular organized way.


I love film photography and as a 2020 project while stuck at home, I learned to develop my own film and bought an Epson V600 flatbed scanner. It does a pretty good job on negatives and slides. But, to be honest, I've actually spent more time just scanning old photos on it. I'm working on taking apart some bulky old magnetic-page photo albums, scanning the photos and putting them in 12x12 Shutterfly books instead. They take up much less space and are way easier to look through. I'll probably just keep the old photos in order in boxes.

The other scanner project I'm considering and one of the reasons I picked the V600 -- which has a pretty long scanner bed -- is that I am considering scanning my old paper scrapbook pages and converting them to digital books as well. While I love the old paper books, again, they are really bulky and I find 3 ring binders difficult to handle and to flip the pages. You would think I'd have made more progress on all this with the pandemic but somehow I didn't. :D

I'm on the same page with you, Lorie!! I don't know that any of my kids want to be the custodian of the photos when I'm gone.
My biggest goal right now is to get it all digitized and get the negatives & slides in sleeves. Maybe I'll get a "slip in" type album for any photos that don't have negatives? I just don't know :D

I have negatives going back to the 30s and slides back to the 50s that are still in their original envelopes! I need to get more sleeves! LOL! I also have a bunch of old magnetic albums from my grandparents that need to be taken apart. It is really a big project!
My flatbed is the Epson V600. It does a decent job. It's definitely better than the cheaper negative scanner, and a "feeder" scanner. I'm amazed that the new (old) negative/slide scanner that we got does an even better job!!
It sounds like you've really made a lot of progress during the pandemic! I'm sure if you keep plugging away, you'll get it all done :)