Filing negatives.

How do you find the negative you need?

If someone asked you for a print from a negative that you shot years ago, would you be able to find it?

Do you have a filing system for your negatives?

I have been shooting for 47 years, and from the beginning I filed my negatives in the order that they were shot, even if they were processed at different times. This was to help my scatter brain to locate particular negatives. It would be a simple matter to go into the neg file, open it at a random point and then remember whether that was before or after the particular image I was looking for. At that time I was keeping my contact sheets with the negative pages, but now I have them in separate files so that when hunting through contact sheets there is less chance of any damage to the negatives.

When I began taking photography seriously, I realised pretty quickly that it wouldn’t take long before I would have a confusing number of negative pages, and that finding things would be problematic. I decided there and then to number all of the pages I had in my file, so I set about numbering the pages of the first folder of negative pages and contact sheets. I also decided to keep them in separate folders at this point. This worked much better and I continued with that system for about twenty years.

The folders look a bit scruffy and have been repurposed a few times, but who cares?

As life got busier with marriage and children, I found that I wasn’t able to keep up with my processing and at one point had around 80 unprocessed films. There were different types, there were different speed ratings and I hadn’t written on them what the dates were. When I did get into the darkroom I pretty quickly got my sequence muddled up. It had been convenient to process types of film in batches, even though they were shot months apart. Life was so hectic back then that films were processed, contact printed and filed away and I couldn’t number them until I had them in chronological order. That would have been about 27 years ago and I still haven’t got the latter part of my numbering system sorted out. With so much time having elapsed since the films were done, I can’t remember in what order they were shot now and the prospect of getting it sorted is rather daunting.

Apart from the page number, I needed to identify each row and then the individual negative. So this then became the system; I had page one, and then the rows of negatives were ABC, C, D, EF , and then the individual negative had a number underneath. So for instance, one of my night shots is 10 E, 3A, and I can immediately find that negative if I need to (and any other from the first 20 years).

Contact sheet files for films 1,601 to 2,200, each in a plastic ring binder sleeve.

I also kept a little drawing of each favourite shot, along with its page number, I found that this system helped me find things in a way that suited my visual brain.

The examples here (1064-1244) span the years 1992 to 1995.

On this page of illustrations you can see a sketch of trees and foliage on page 1454.

This is the actual contact sheet showing the image on the fifth frame;

Each favourite frame is marked with a fine liner gold pen. I know that the traditional way to mark up sheets is with a red chinagraph pencil, but I find this a crude method. The main reason for using a gold pen is that I can easily see the reflective ink under red safe light.

The negatives are placed in the negative filing pages in exactly the same order as they are shown on the contact sheet, so that I am not wasting time pulling out the wrong row of negatives.

Should I be telling you how to organise yourselves?

So here I am, suggesting that you have a good filing system and revealing that mine has become disorganised. I think that I am suggesting that you keep up with your system and don’t get yourselves in the mess that I have, but I am also writing this as a way of shaming myself into getting it sorted. I need to get those pages in an order that isn’t too far from their actual chronology, without getting too obsessive about it, then I can go forward from that point with the numbering system. It will be interesting to discover how many films I have shot and processed!

I also have another cataloguing problem though……

I have been shooting 5x7 film since 1984, then a couple of years after that I added quarter plate, and Polaroid negative film in medium format. By 1987 I was shooting Polaroid Type 55, 5x4, 5x7 and 10x8 film formats, as well as a whole load of paper negatives. I never had a numbering system for these, though the dates are written on many of the negative bags.

Instead of having any kind of chronology with these, I simply put my favourites in boxes together.

There isn’t a ring binder solution to this problem. In the past I did manage to find negative storage pages that held four 5x4 sheets, but I never located any for other formats, so I abandoned that system (this is long before internet searches were a thing). It’s too late for me to do anything about these now, and I will have to live with it. Keeping a contact print with each negative is very helpful, but making contact sheets can be quite time consuming.

Even though it takes up quite a lot of darkroom time making contact sheets, I think it is essential. The information they provide at a glance is really valuable.

I can judge a good negative at a glance, but I can’t tell if the image will work as a final print without seeing it as a positive.

Have you got a system that works for you? Tell me all about it. I did have an idea to photograph all of my contact sheets and load them onto an iPad, then I could swipe through the pages until I found the correct set of images. It sounds like a good idea, but it involves a lot of time getting them out of the individual sleeves, shooting them, and then trying to get them back in again. I probably won’t get round to it.

Please feel free to tell me what you think.

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Thank you for reading, please let me know your thoughts.

Andrew Sanderson May 2025.