Storing slides, negatives and photos: I’m sure we’ve all asked ourselves at times, how we should store our old photo media so that they don’t lose quality.
The bad news right away: unfortunately, it is impossible to preserve the original quality of slides, negatives and photo prints over time – no matter how you store them. Colour casts, fading or physical damage such as tears, scratches or even mould will not spare any old picture. Digitising your pictures is the only way to save them for the future.
Storing photos
Storing old photos properly is not an easy task. Two factors are your photos biggest enemies: Time and moisture. Over the years, your old photos will start to fade and get colour casts. Sadly, there is nothing you can do about this kind of decay, and eventually they will destroy every photo.
Moisture, which is often present in storage rooms such as basements, also damages your old photos enormously. They first curl and get stained, then mould can start to develop, which can make your old memories almost unrecognisable.
Storing Negatives
When it comes to storing negatives, again time and humidity are your biggest threats. No matter how you store your negatives – at some point they will begin to fade and show colour casts.
The main problem is that the orange tint on negatives makes it difficult to view the negatives without the help of equipment. It is therefore not possible to see whether colour casts or colour fading has already occurred.
Storing slides
For slides – just as for negatives and photo prints – there are many different ways of storing them: The “classic” is in magazines that can be slid into boxes. But there are also slides that are stored loosely.
There are also unframed slides that are stored in strips. Here, too, moisture be rough on your old memories and destroy them irrevocably. Unfortunately, colour fading and colour casts do not stop at slides either.
With glass slides, so-called Newton rings can occur between the layers of glass. These are coloured interference rings that meet due to overlapping waves.
Mould can form on loose and glass slides.
Saving memories with MEDIAFIX
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