What happend to the 1950s negatives?

[maile_lani]

<p>I was going through some really old family photo albums and I was wondering what happened to the negatives of the old Kodak square format black and white pictures? I don't think I've ever come across any, ever. I know that with the old brownie cameras you sent in the loaded camera with your exposed film and they sent back prints and new film, but I can't find anything about the negatives. I'd love to try and hunt down some of the originals if they are all in a warehouse someplace. Some of these prints are so tiny it's kind of sad if that is all that is left. Anyway, just wondering :)</p>

[dave_s]

<p>When I was a kid, I would bring the exposed film from my Brownie Fiesta to the processor, and they would give me back an envelope of prints, and also the negatives. Cost: $1.47. </p>

<p>The prints got put in albums, and the negatives got discarded in some move or some housecleaning purge. I think that was the fate of a lot of family negatives from 50 years ago, unless the owner was a packrat, or a serious photographer who might have wanted to print his/her own.</p>

<p>If your album contains contact prints, you may be able to make a decent scan with a flatbed scanner. I've done that with contact printed photos from 1920, and enlarged to 8 x 10 with acceptable results.</p>

<p>The era you describe, in which you sent in the entire Brownie camera for processing and reloading, was long before that. I think you're talking about the late 19th century there.</p>

[john_a5]

<p>My parents had drawers full of negatives, but many were also tossed. I think most saw the snapshot prints as what they were after and threw away the negs. I recently did come across some negs from about 1950, of me, and boy were they grainy!</p>

[michaelging]

<p>The negatives were sent back with the prints , but most people just tossed the negs and put the prints into books. I have shoeboxes of my parents negs , some I have scanned, but most are just being stored. </p>

[Alan Marcus]

<p>In the very early history of photography, the camera made a picture and there was no negative. This was sad because each picture was unique and copies and enlargements could only be made by taking a picture of that picture and this rarely was done. All this changed when negative film was introduced by Fox Talbot 1840. Soon negative film was king.</p>

<p>By early the 20th century people were buying cameras and film and usually they took the film to the drug store for processing printing. The drug store was a natural for this because film developing was a chemical process and the town druggist was familiar with chemicals.</p>

<p>As time went by the drug store photofinishing business became the place to take your film. You dropped off your roll and a few days later came back and picked up your pictures. You got an envelope with prints on paper and inside was a second envelope with the negative.<br>

For the most part people paid little attention to the negative. After all no one picked up a negative and said this auntie Sally, doesn’t she look pretty? So the negatives got stowed in a shoe box and put in the closet or the attic to mildew and get lost.</p>

<p>Lot's exist, go to a swap meet or see if your grandparents have any. </p>

[john_a5]

<p>Actually, I was thinking about this and I remember my father-in-law sending me some nitrate negs to print for him. They were so old that I would have been hesitant to stick them in my enlarger had it been a condenser type. Negs were always sent back!</p>

[richard_eaton1]

<p>Photofinishers and labs always sent the negs back with the processed prints (and still do, of course). But until the time digital took over, I'd guess that the majority of "family-snappers" just ignored or binned the negatives as irrelevent. In the past I've asked friends if they keep their negs (and even suggested that it was a good idea), and the general reaction has been "why?"....once their best pics are in an album, why keep the negs or failed prints? (TBH, I can see their point...I've hundreds of negs that I'll never have time to print, but that's another matter!)</p>

[richard_eaton1]

<p>Photofinishers and labs always sent the negs back with the processed prints (and still do, of course). But until the time digital took over, I'd guess that the majority of "family-snappers" just ignored or binned the negatives as irrelevent. In the past I've asked friends if they keep their negs (and even suggested that it was a good idea), and the general reaction has been "why?"....once their best pics are in an album, why keep the negs or failed prints. (TBH, I can see their point...I've hundreds of negs that I'll never get round to printing!)</p>

[photo5]

<p>Still have tons of negatives from my family going back to some 4x5 glass plate negatives from early in the 20th century. Those combined with my own photos are somewhat overwhelming. Thank goodness for digital photography and no more negatives to store!!</p>

[red_buckner]

<p>I found some old negatives I exposed in a Brownie Hawkeye in 1957. Most of them enlarged quite well to 8x10! BTW, this was the flash-model Hawkeye. It cost my grandparents (bless them for the gift) $12 in 1954. </p>

[Alan Marcus]

Fox W.H. Talbbot Catotype process (negative on silver iodide paper) 1840.</p>

[john_shriver]

<p>Only a few of the negatives from my grandmother's generation survived. My mother has kept hers, but she doesn't quite get that they are really more important than the prints.</p>

[marc_bergman1]

<p>Some still survived but I am afraid that most were tossed. My mother tended to save everything. Lucky for us that nothing happened to the large cardboard box they were in.</p>

<p>That is why it is important to be pro-active. Visit your relatives and start now to protect their images and their memories.</p>

<p>Here is a negative I scanned. This is one of about 600 I found. This is from 1951. It was our move from Iowa to California. My brother Rick must have called shotgun.</p><div></div>

[frank.schifano]

<p>I'll put my $.02 in here and agree with everyone who said that many just plain old got tossed. Up until digital became big, almost everyone else in my extended family never kept negatives. They got their prints, and tossed the negs. I've seen it happen, and when I made a fuss over it I was told in no uncertain terms that they were considered worthless. Granted, most of them sucked anyway so it's no great loss. These same people now shoot JPEGS with higher end DSLR's, make the prints, and delete the files. Go figure. Some things never change. Probably won't matter anyway. In 50 years, who will have a device to read the files?</p>

<p>But they weren't all bad. My father kept the negatives of the family snaps he made when we were kids. I'm the keeper of these now, but I have no idea who will care enough after I'm gone. Unfortunately, the negatives I wish he'd kept were the photos he made while he was serving in the US Navy, Pacific Fleet, during WW II. I have some old prints of him and the crew of the LST on which he served, and some of when he was part of the occupying forces in postwar Japan, but no negatives. I've also become the keeper of my great uncle Louie's (RIP Louie, I sure do miss you sometimes) negatives. He was a middling good photographer, but he had a passion for documenting all sorts of things in his neighborhood of Canarsie, Brooklyn. He's also the one who got me started in photography at the age of about 9. Some of his photographs back to the late 1930's, but most are from the 40's and onward until he quit due to ill health in the late 1970's. Canarsie was a wild and woolly place until the early 60's. Some of the main roads weren't even paved until after WW II, and the shops on Ave. L had wooden sidewalks. There were empty lots and salt marsh aplenty, and even a few small farms.</p>

[Ed_Ingold]

<p>My parents and grandparents put the negatives into a box somewhere, or the bottom of a drawer. Nobody ever ordered reprints. Everybody is gone now, and who knows where the negatives went when they moved from place to place. The prints themselves were dutifully mounted in little ears glued into a scrapbook and the pages labeled with good-old iron gallate ink (which will outlast the pyramids).</p>

<p>In all likelihood, CDs and DVDs will physically last as long as negatives, but there may not be a way to read them in twenty-five years (or less). We will still be able to see prints, and many of them will last too if done on a pigment-based inkjet.</p>

<p>In that not-too-distant future we may still have negatives in some protected place, B&W anyway because color negatives fade. It may be hard to find anyone to scan or print them in that time frame. Fortunately, if you mount a negative against black velvet, emulsion side facing you, and hold the light just so, you can see them as a positive. We will have come a long way since 1840.</p>

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