Should I keep my film negatives?
Many clients ask us what they should do with their original photos and how to handle their negatives. As photo organizers, we strongly recommend that you keep your negatives, even after they’ve been scanned. These are the top reasons we recommend keeping your film negatives:
- Photo prints are made by enlarging a negative onto photo paper, but the negative is the original capture and the best quality.
- When people contact us and proudly announce they’ve already discarded their “useless” negatives, we cringe inside. If you have a print and a negative of the same image, you can almost always get a better scan from the negative.
- If you keep and scan your film negatives you can make unlimited reprints and bigger enlargements of your favorite memories. You can still scan, reprint, and enlarge photo prints, but at small sizes and lower quality.
- Negatives take up 1/10 the space and weigh 1/10 as much as a typical photo print. If your motivation is downsizing, then discarding your negatives won’t save you much space. If anything, we’d recommend discarding the prints and keeping the corresponding film negatives.
As a lifelong photographer and professional photo organizer, I keep all my film negatives and recommend the same for our clients. If you have questions, need expert advice, or want a free estimate to get everything scanned please contact us today.
Interested in working with Chaos to Memories?
If you’re near Chicago and ready to get started, come visit our Wheaton Studio Monday – Friday, 10-5. Please bring your memories with you.
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