Sleeves, boxes and a pencil: keeping negatives
A properly fixed and washed black-and-white negative lasts longer than any way of copying it invented so far. What destroys negatives in practice is not chemistry. It is damp, and not being able to find the right strip.
What to keep them in
| Material | Good | Bad |
|---|---|---|
| Polypropylene or polyester pages | Inert, clear, contact-print through them | Hold static, attract dust when new |
| Glassine envelopes | Cheap, breathe | Not clear; can stick in real damp |
| Unbuffered paper folders | Breathe best, last longest | Every look means handling the film |
| PVC pages | None | Give off plasticiser, fog and stick over years |
If a page smells of a new shower curtain, it is PVC and should not be near film. The pages go in a box, not a ring binder standing open on a shelf; a box keeps out light and slows down every change in the air around the film.
Damp is the enemy near the sea
Above about sixty per cent humidity gelatin becomes food for mould, and mould etches a pattern into the emulsion that no washing removes. A house near the water sits above that figure for much of the winter.
- Keep the boxes in a lived-in room, not in the cellar, the loft or the room where the chemicals are.
- Put a bag of silica gel in each box and dry it out in a low oven twice a year.
- Do not seal film that is not completely dry. A sealed box keeps damp in as well as it keeps it out.
- Look through one box every spring. Mould starts at the edges, as fine grey threads.
Being able to find it
Every roll gets a number made of the year and a running count: 26-041 is the forty-first roll of 2026. The number goes on the page in soft pencil, on the back of every print, and into the name of every scan. A notebook holds one line per roll.
| Roll | Date | Film, rated at | Developer, time | Where |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26-039 | 02.08 | FP4 Plus, 125 | Powder 1+1, 11 min | North groynes, ebb |
| 26-040 | 09.08 | HP5 Plus, 400 | Powder 1+1, 13 min | Harbour wall, fog |
| 26-041 | 17.08 | HP5 Plus, 1600 | Powder stock, 12 min 30 s | Breakwater before nine |
Ten years on, the notebook is the most useful thing in the darkroom. It answers the only two questions that ever come up: what did I do last time, and where is that picture.
Contact sheets
A whole roll printed by contact on one sheet, through the clear page, with the roll number written in the margin, is the index to the box. A phone photograph of the page on a light panel, inverted, does the same job in a minute and is better than no index at all.