Film Negatives

My father loved taking photos of us as a family from when my brother and I were tiny little people till when we were in college, in his trusty Canon SLR camera... don't ask me about the model, I have no idea. We accumulated a number of film negatives from these photo ops, and since he was a hoarder and my mother, a sometime sentimentalist, they were able to keep these negatives in one place.

About 20 years ago, I found them stacked along with other documents and asked my mother if I could keep them. I stashed them in a box filled with silica gel and didn't do anything about it. A month ago, I saw them again and thought to myself, I should buy the film negative binders they sell online. Unfortunately, shipping is so prohibitive that I decided to think of something else to store them.

I read online that these negatives can be stored in either polyethylene or polypropylene containers. So, when I found these clearbooks with polypropylene pockets, I got a few and decided to use them instead. I divided each pocket into seven and made running stitches bothways to secure each strip compartment, and voila! I keep them in a pouch filled with silica gel again to help with moisture control.

I'm going through these film negatives, selecting the strips to print so I can give them to my mother so she can enjoy reminiscing clearer and bigger copies. The old photos are now faded and yellowed. I'm looking forward to a film negative scanner so I can have these preserved digitally. I hope I can find a good one.