I inherited dozens and dozens of very old negatives of all sizes of my family. I could love to develop them and forturnately have a daughter who knows a little about photography. Should I just buy the cheapest black & white developing equipment and let her try her hand or should I spend the big bucks to have them developed. (I have been quoted $5.00 a negative!!!)

-- Hope in San Antonio (danielpm@stic.net), January 17, 2000

Answers

why don't you get some contact sheets made, then only pay for prints of the negatives you want? that'd be cheaper than doing $5.00 per negative just so you know what's on them.

i don't really think buying cheapo equipment is a good idea. at the very least, check around and see what kinds of prices you get.

-- brad daly (bwdaly@scott.net), January 17, 2000.

I assume that you are talking about printing negatives, not developing them, since the quote you have is for contact prints, get a 60 watt soft white bulb and wrap it in some tissue paper and hang it about 2.5 feet above your table and contact print the negs yourself. You will have to experiment with grades of paper depending on the density of the negative, or you can buy a cheap enlarger and use VC papers and the filters that go with them. Good Luck! Pat

-- pat j. krentz (krentz@cci-29palms.com), January 17, 2000.

Supposing (like most of the other replies did, either implicitly or expressly) that you have developed negatives and are now looking for a chance to get prints, I would vote for assigning the task to your daughter, if she wants to do it. That way, she will learn something (about photography and maybe about your family history), and perhaps she gets to like the work. A first set of darkroom equipment need not be too expensive, particularly if bought second hand.

If there are really undeveloped films: I have never had such a thing before, and I wonder if there is any chance of saving them.

-- Thomas Wollstein (thomas_wollstein@web.de), January 18, 2000.

Someone will have to help me out here because this is one of those areas in which my memory is a little fuzzy. If these negatives are really old, isn't there a chance that they could be highly flammable if exposed to heat like that in an enlarger? Someone as old as me should know the answer.

-- Joe Miller (jmmiller@poka.com), January 18, 2000.

Probably nobody is checking this question now, but what I was trying to think of in the above response was the possibility of the negatives being nitrate negatives. I understand that these are very flammable.

A possible alternative might be to borrow, buy or rent a scanner with a transparency tray to see which negatives might be of interest.

-- Joe Miller (jmmiller@poka.com), January 21, 2000.