Suggestion- Keep a Notebook!

I've always had a spiral notebook hanging from a hook on the darkroom wall. Every time I did a roll of film, I recorded the date, the film, the EI, the developer, dilution, quantity, time and agitation method. Then I recorded my general impression of the resulting negatives. Sometimes I'd go back and make even more notes after trying to print them.

 

You'd be surprised at how useful this is, since you can see trends and make corrections on future rolls.

 

Didn't make a lot of notes for prints, unless I was doing something unusual or something complicated where I thought I might want to repeat it. Reminds me of a time long ago when I did a composite of a barn plus a sky from another neg. It came out great. I sold a bunch. I was never able to repeat the result and had to refund the money. Notes might have helped.

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This is a good one!

I don't have the discipline to maintain a reliable filing system to correlate pages in a notebook and the negatives of a roll of film. My "quick 'n dirty" system is to write everything, subject, date, development details, camera and lens, directly on the negative sleeves with a fine point marking pen. The result sometimes looks untidy but the information can always be found right next to the negatives themselves. But yes, a well ordered notebook is more elegant.

I couldn't go back and connect any neg strip to the notebook because I don't label the strips. Think of it more as a process control chart. I tended to shoot a lot of one emulsion, say Ilford FP4 Plus, and by looking at the week to week results, could fine tune my shooting and process. If I picked it up again much later, those last results would still be a good starting point.

I keep my scanned negs in the computer using the file system of : 2k20 (year) - xxx (seq #s) - 3-7 letters telling me WHERE the film was exposed.

In this master film file is a small thumbnail file for notes. I also have another thumbnail picture of the camera used (I suffer with GAS for sure !). I start this "archive" file asap after arriving home, before developing. Notes as to chemistry are entered BEFORE developing. When negs are dry, I enter a few "visual" notes as to density, noted defects (if any). After scanning and during post work, notes are added on the fly. All negs are stored in Print File sleeves that have data written on them with fine pointed permanent markers. These are stored in large 3 ring binders. Each year has its own binder.

No paper stick-ums, notebooks to get lost or smudged. Stay safe & Aloha, Bill