Do photo processors keep copies of negatives?

<p>Let's say you have photos from YEARS ago...But no negatives. Is there any way to track down, so to speak, the negative or a copy of the negative?<br>

I ask because for example, let's say we have a set of photos from 1973 that were likely taken with 110 film. The negative was thrown out at some point. Let's say 7 photos were taken with that set but 1 or 2 were lost, with no copy. Would there be any way to track down a copy of the negative and in doing so, recover the lost photo and have the complete set?</p>

<p>Not likely.<br>

If you have an old print, that could be copied to make a new negative.</p>

<p>Even if the print were more recent, say, mid 90s?</p>

<p>There are no copies to your negatives. Your film is a one off.</p>

<p>Jackie-why not just scan the photo and then print it (or have it scanned/printed)? cb :-)</p>

<p>What I'm saying is:<br>

We had a roll of film. One of the exposures/photos from that roll has been lost, permanently. The negatives were also thrown away at some point.</p>

<p>ok-didn't realize that you had lost both the photo and the negative.</p>

<p>No, not from years ago. In the past, all prints were done optically from the negatives. There were no "copies" of anything to be saved. When you were sent the prints and negatives, THAT WAS IT. Lose either of them, and there is no way to get it back. Now, today, things are different. Only very few labs make prints optically. The film is scanned and prints are made from the resulting digital scans. If you purchase a CD, (or perhaps even in you do not purchase a CD), the lab does have a record of the film scans. I know the lab I use, North Coast Photographic Services does save the scans they make, but I always purchase a CD of scans at time of film processing. I do not know how long they keep the scans, but at least if anything happens to the film in the mail the lab still has the initial scans. But this is not how it was done in the past, so there are no copies of anything.</p>

<p>The photograph that was lost was special too--It was my grandfather with both my (then infant) sisters, taken sometime around the summer or fall of 1973. There is only one other photo in existence of him with any of his grandchildren, and there are very few photos of the man between 1949 and 1972--Most are Driver License photos and ID card photos, as such, no real candid, face on photos of him exist in high quality--which is what this picture was according to my mother's recollection. This photo was to be, to my knowledge, the last color photograph taken of him (or at least, the last that would've existed), the last candid photograph taken of him, and, seeing other photos from that same day, was probably a high quality photo. He died in 1975, a little over two years later, and the only other photos of him between 1973 and 1975 are a few grainy photos from August of 1973, and a black and white Driver License photo from May of 1975. <br>

The photo was lost behind wood paneling on the lower half of a wall in an old apartment my family lived in, sometime between 1990 and 1993. It fell behind the wood paneling and no one thought to try and retrieve it or have the paneling taken apart. It was left there when we left and a few years after we left, the room in which the paneling was had a severe fire--destroying the photo for good.<br>

The only hope I have of recovering the photo in any sense is to examine our home movies and photographs from the period when we lived there, see if I can spot the photograph before it fell, and try to zoom in on it, get it clarified in more detail and have it recreated as a drawing or painting.</p>

<p>You cannot expect to get an answer about all "photo-processors" out there.<br />Find out who was processing your photos, and go there and ask.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Frank's advice if good. At my own photo lab we very recently had a customer who a sent film to us over 5 years ago. Even though the job was unpaid for and never collected we still had the film. We have all unpicked up order and the negatives from order where customers took downloads and never picked up or requested their negatives, from when we opened in 1999.</p>

<p>You should check with your photo finisher.</p>

<p>There is really very little if any possibility that a lab might have a copy of these negs somewhere . The film was processed in 1973, if I read your post correctly later the film was lost, I presume by a family member so the negs are long gone. Best bet would to see if a family member may have had an extra print made at some time while the negatives were still around or maybe those lost negs are sat in a shoe box somewhere under a family members bed..</p>

<p>Sadly, I fear that Stuart Moxham is correct. If you are really sure that the negs have been destroyed, your only hope is that there might just be an extra print hidden and forgotten somewhere.<br>

Even if the original lab were still in business now, films processed in 1973 were <em>many</em> years before digital photography or printing was even thought of, so no form of copy would need to be made by a lab in dealing with a simple "developing and printing" order. A roll (or 110 cartridge) of film would be first processed into a negative, then optically printed onto the photo paper. Negatives and prints would then both be returned to the customer, and, unless the negs were reprinted later, these would be the <em>only </em>copy of the pictures.</p>

<p>Yeah - 1973 was way before digital and there's no way a lab would have on their own made a copy of the negatives for safe keeping - if they are even still around. </p>

<p>The only glimmer of hope may be if the lab actually kept the negatives as opposed to returning them to the customer. Most consumer labs in the 70's gave the customer both prints and negatives. Most, not all. </p>

<p>Today with everything being computerized many labs might have copies of recent work - but something so old is probably long gone. </p>

<p>Dave</p>

 

<p>What about more recent stuff--photos printed in 1995 or 1996?<br>

See my parents NEVER kept negatives. They aren't at all photo experts or that into photography outside of casual family photography, so to them, keeping negatives was redundant.<br>

Which is a shame, because between 1989 and 1996 alone they took about 4,000 or 5,000 pictures.<br>

And they didn't organize most of the albums--The photos were left in a drawer in our basement. I rescued them and set them into album books. I meticulously, over about a decade, organized every photo I could find into albums (300 pix per album), put in each album by year. With many photos from 1995 to 1996 this was VERY hard to do, as very few of our pix from '95 or '96, as well as '97 to a lesser extent, have dates on them. So I had to cross reference many undated photos from say, 1995, with photos from that year that DID have dates and check for certain things which would place it in the same year/time frame--hair styles, clothing, etc. <br>

As it stands now, I have about a dozen or so 300 page books spanning from 1989 to 2001 on a shelf in my room. I haven't even started organizing any pictures post 2002 outside of organizing them in sandwich baggies for later album set up. <br>

And while I've scanned 4000 photos from 1989-1998, a good deal of 1996 remains undone, 1995 has other photos not in the album but in shoeboxes that I need to scan, 1997 is only halfway or so done, 1998 is just barely scanned and 1999 was scanned by my niece for me but she didn't set the DPI high so it needs to be redone.<br>

So I have my work cut out for me. </p>

<p>All the labs I worked for would have charged you more for making a single copy neg than it would cost to process and print several rolls of film. So unless the person dropping off the film requested a copy neg and never picked it up there would not be a copy of any of the negs at the lab.</p>

<p> </p>