i've an m9 but what about all the years of film?

[brill64]

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i have been given one month's notice to move out of my apartment. the landlord is going to totally redevelop half the street so i am fairly busy recording it with my m9 on a daily basis. all files neatly stored away on terrabytes of delicate external drives. at least they're relatively compact and light by comparison to the deep, looming bottom drawer which has silently been following me around like a shadow for roughly 15 years, the last 6 of which has mostly switched over to digital. it's full to overflowing of uncatalogued 35/mf/lf films, polaroids and prints, some published, some personal. the shock of having to go finds me sifting through it with a rising sense of panic to work out what's worth keeping and what's not and an awful lot isn't. a good time to do something, rather than dumping it in the trash my question is, what is an acceptable and safe (confidentially as well as environmentally) way to completely destroy what i don't want to keep, myself? cellulose is wonderful material but terribly flammable and toxic. suddenly throwing out stuff has become a slightly more complex issue.

 

i feel the need to balance this request and make it slightly more appropriate to the forum. not all members are so young that they don't have a similar, burgeoning drawer whilst using their digital m's. more recent converts will have experimented with a pinhole or lomo at some point. looking back through 15 years of film is a sobering experience, one that has in part made me reflect on my work. has it progressed? yes, in tiny steps. especially that with the m9? well, i consider myself very lucky to be able to own this amazing camera but it's a tool, like any camera and is only an extension of my emotion and way of seeing. the m8+the m9, yes, i have seen improvement in my results. what i am getting at is that it has made me question holding onto traditional values occasionally expressed here of what constitutes a great photograph, especially one falling within the true or cocieved spirit of the leica tradition. i am not formally trained as a photographer so this realisation strikes me that it's taken a long time to hit me so i'm now thinking about how to make that thing new? thoughts appreciated.

 

answers to the former appreciated slightly more urgently:eek:

[jaapv]

Seems to me you've got a lot of scanning to do... <looks with incresing panic at the boxes with slides,negatives and prints in his cupboard>

[luigi bertolotti]

Sorry, I'm not sure to understand well your question : is it a practical one (how to throw away film-related materials) or a question of principle (must one throw away...?).

 

As for the 1st issue... don't know the rules in HK, but in my town if one has to dispose of materials like old negs/dias, there are specific locations for such items (of course, the same for papers etc...) ; only issue can arise if one has old photo chemicals.

 

As for the 2nd question : to throw away, selectively, part (even a great) of our photo heritage can be displeasing... but simply is a thing to do : if you do not select, you can be sure that, very probably, someone else will make it in the future, with less attention: at home, I have pictures of 4 generations : mine, parents', grandfather's (women seldom took pics in the '20s...), and some from my daughters (few prints from the hundreds of Lumix' files... ) : the parents' pics were selected during their lives... and are a consistent and significant value, for us; grandfather's ones werent's selected nor put in order... and a number was thrown away by various heirs, probably destroying something that, for some people, could mean something even today.

[SteveYork]

Either pay someone to scan all the negatives or get a coolscan 9000 at a good price and do it yourself. The coolscans will retain their value very well, but it takes a whole lot of time. And with a scanner in the house, you'll probably be tempted to shoot a little film too.

[tgray]

I wouldn't throw them out. It's a drawer. If you are moving a full apartment's worth of stuff, what's an extra drawer's worth of stuff? If it's 15 years of your photos, I'd keep them.

 

I organize my negatives as I shoot.

[jerryharwood]

One thing I have learnt, and that is this; no matter how carefully you scan, and place digital files on disc, or whatever you place them on- in a few years, they will all be useless, whereas if you store your negs/ trannies, you will have them for the foreseable future. I used to put everything on disc, but after trying to view images which I had put on disc a few years ago, and finding them unreadable due to the march of progress, I now keep everything on film, and store it properly. I can look at images taken 50 years ago, and they are as good as the day I took them. Do not throw your images away !!

[lct]

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...Do not throw your images away !!

And if it's not too late scan your Ektachromes that will fade soon or late.

[NZDavid]

It's true! Digital media probably won't last as long as film! A friend has Kodachromes from the 40s, my parents' date from the 60s, and my slides are from the 80s till now. By contrast, a CD of a few years ago proved unreadable. Archiving is going to be a real issue in the future.

 

The real bugbear is sorting through all those slides, but it has to be done -- and you will feel very pleased to have had a thorough clear out. You could either sort them by date or by subject. Date is probably easiest. Edit and purge! Be ruthless! Just keep the best. You have several storage options. Plastic slide trays ready for the projector is efficient. Otherwise, plastic sleeves. And keep a notebook so you can easily find them. Good luck!

[giordano]

Any shredder that can crunch a CD will be able to crunch film.

 

BTW, I'd be extremely surprised if your drawer is a fire hazard. Cellulose nitrate is "terribly flammable", but it was superseded as a film base by cellulose acetate from the 1920s onwards, and hasn't been used in film manufacture since 1951. Acetate in turn began to be superseded in the 70s by polyester, initially for sheet film. Neither acetate nor polyester burn at all readily - though I wouldn't want to inhale the vapouts.