Laljit S. Sidhu |
|
Filing system for slide and negatives
I need advise on devising a decent filing system for organizing slides and negatives. I would like a system that is easy to use, efficient, and will grow as my image library grows.What systems do you all use? Thanks.
August 17, 2002
|
|
|
Jeff S. Kennedy |
|
Well, I used to just pile them on my desk. Then I bought a file cabinet and put it next to my work table. So then I started piling them on my work table next to the filing cabinet. That started to look too messy so I moved the table and cabinet to a different room. Now they are still piled on the table but they are out of sight so I feel a lot less stress and guilt about my filing system.
Hope this was helpful. ;-)))
August 18, 2002
|
|
|
Kerry Drager |
|
Hi Laljit: I shoot with 35mm slide film, and for my slide-filing system, I use file cabinets.
I keep all my images in slide-storage pages that hold 20 slides per page. The current brand of pages I use is the Vue-All "Slide Saver" brand: heavyweight, archival, top-loading. Since my cabinets don't include a hanging-file system, the "heavyweight" style is very important.
As for organizing slides, this is very personal ... depending on what types of subjects you shoot. I photograph mostly California travel subjects, so geography is how most of my photos are organized. You might want to divide up yours according to subjects (say, various wildlife categories), or you may want a combination of places and subjects (i.e., California sea life).
Many photographers also use some sort of a personal numerical/letter system to further categorize each and every slide - making it easy for the photographer or someone else to locate a particular slide. For myself, I don't have a photo assistant, so my memory is also part of my categorization system! Thus few of my slides have stock numbers.
A good filing system should be easy to expand. For instance, in the beginning, I started out with a single "San Francisco" category. Since then, I've divided that up into "Golden Gate Bridge," "S.F. Waterfront," etc.
I use cardboard index/file pages to note each category of pages.
And now, in case Jeff is wondering: Yes, more than a few of my recent slides are piled up high next to my light box!
Good luck, Laljit,
Kerry
August 18, 2002
|
|
|
|
Log in to respond or ask your own question.
|
