Do I need to keep my photo negatives from old photos?

Question

I have negatives from the last 25 years of marriage and family photos. We now use a digital camera. Do we need to keep the old negatives? I am nervous about throwing them away.

Answer 1

why? you already have the pictures!!
you might want to transpose them into a disk...or scan the pictures on line and throw away the negatives!
they are useless these days..and a waste of space!!

Answer 2

I would not throw them away. I always put all of my photos on disk, then I take the negative and put it in a fire safe box or the safety deposit box. That way just in case some thing happens, you will always have a copy. Even if you do use a digital, make Cd's of the photos also, and put those in there as well. What if something happened and you lost everything in a fire or flood, or some other disaster, you will still have them in the Safety deposit box.

Answer 3

Keep them in a safe place such as safe or safety deposit at bank. If something were to happen to the pics or the digital ones you can always have new ones made. If you get rid of the negs and have a fire at home, you lose any chance to make new ones.

Answer 4

I kept mine and am glad I did. I decided to put some of our photos that were improperly stored in photo alumns that we're acid free into ones that were. We also wanted to put some scanned into our computer. Photos had degenerated, faded and yellowed due to the improper storage. I'm lucky I had the negs and could duplicate them. Priceless photos of my Papa (now deceased) and other relatives and friends who are no longer with us are remembered in full living color, now properly stored and scanned. We now do everything digitally too. But the old technology of early color photo printing also deterioriates over time, so I'm keeping mine.

Answer 5

the negatives are only useful if you want to reorder those pictures. maybe keep those from the last few years, but not from 25 years ago. you do have the original picture, so you could always make a copy of it if you need to. no need to store extra things around the house.

Answer 6

Negatives are used to develop pictures from. If you lose the old pictures you can get new ones made from those negatives. I wouldn't throw them away but if you want to get rid of them I recommend a shredder.

Answer 7

I would because if you make a duplicate from the original negative the result is much clearer. Maybe just keep negatives from imortant photos.

Answer 8

If you want to make quality reproductions and enlargements, it's a good idea. Most people never use their old snapshot negatives, however, and lose track of them.

You can make reproductions and enlargements from prints, but your ability to manipulate the image is limited.

Answer 9

Keep them.