Had the same problem with some 40 rolls of B&W negatives which I had processed myself and cut into sixes for storage over 30 years ago: fortunately, my scissors cut was individual enough to allow me to: Sort by film type (Ilford HP4, PlusX, PanatonicX, TriX, etc. Sub-sort by processed density - usually variable in my early days of home processing! Sort by frame number at the beginning of each strip. Match the shape of the cut at the end of the strip with the cut at the beginning of the strip from the same film type and the next frame number
Took a while, but in the end I had reconstructed about 80% of the set, which gave a reasonably chronological record of my early disasters - some of which I am still making! It also allowed me to find some shots which were historically significant to my family, which was really the whole point. John in Brisbane -----Original Message----- From: PDML <[email protected]> On Behalf Of John Sent: Monday, 7 January 2019 12:16 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: OT: Film scanning fun I've got all these old mixed up film strips & slides and sometimes it's really hard to figure out when & where. I screwed up several years ago and jumbled them all together. With negatives, it's difficult to even know what's on it until I scan it. VueScan requires a name before I can scan them. Current case in point: Five strips of negatives and a couple dozen mixed slides (1/3 Kodachrome & 2/3 E-6 most likely Ektrachrome, but possibly Fujichrome. The Kodachrome slides all have a processing date (3 letter month 2 digit year) & frame number and some of the older ones also have a stamp giving the machine # they were processed through. The Ektachrome/Fujichrome slides are all Pakon mounts or Plastimount mounts without frame numbers. From the edge markings the negatives turn out to be strips 1, 2, 3 & 5 from a roll of Ektar 100, but the 4th strip is an unnamed Fuji C-41 film. I'm trying to work out a procedure & naming convention that will allow me to easily rename them if I finally figure out where they're from and insert missing frames in sequence if they turn up later. This is slightly easier with the older Kodachromes & negative strips. Different machines used different color inks at different times, so all the No4 slides from Sep 99 have red ink and all the No9 slides from the same month have blue ink ... My current scheme (which I'm still refining): *Sort the images as best I can figure and group the ones that go together. *Create a folder YYYY-MM-DD-R00x using the current date. *Create a text file YYYY-MM-DD-R00x.txt in that folder. *Write down as much as I know about the film: Process date, Film type, frame numbers, image subjects, when & where I think I was while scanning. *Scan the images & Name them YYYY-MM-DD-R00x_001+.dng (skipping missing frame numbers when known) Repeat for as many "rolls" as it looks like I have to scan today. Eventually the image scans will be renamed YYYYMMDD-R00x-nnnn.dng for the date I figure I started the roll of film; placed into a folder YYYYMMDD_Identifier (place, subject, reminder ...) and saved as a sub-folder for the appropriate year. Why does any of this matter? Maybe if I can assemble a semi-chronological record of the photography I've done over the years, I can see what mistakes I made then and figure out if I'm still making the same mistakes today. But I don't need a reason, I just want to remember who I was, where I've been and what I was doing without it being so jumbled up and confusing. -- Science - Questions we may never find answers for. Religion - Answers we must never question. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
