Jack BatyJun 29, 2024

I'm making brand-new silver gelatin prints from century-old negatives and it's making me giddy. I had always planned to make a custom holder and dig out the 4x5 enlarger, but it occurred to me that these negatives are big enough for simple contact prints, so that's what I'm doing.

Also, never throw away your negatives! 100 years from now, someone might want to make new prints from them.

#FilmPhotography

Show threadJon Bosak
@jbaty +1 to saving negs, especially b&w. I'm in the process of scanning and posting my own photos from almost 60 years ago, and the early ones have held up amazingly well despite being stored rather badly and kept under some pretty bad conditions. If kept correctly (which means kept dry and away from sulphur), silver is forever. Kodak once estimated the potential life of a silver print at 500+ years, and I suspect that b&w negs will last about that long, too.
Jun 29, 2024 at 5:17pmWeb
Show threadJon BosakJun 29, 2024
@jbaty What I mean by "silver is forever": this silver vase belonged to Entemena, king of Lagesh. It's over four thousand years old.