I’d thought this through as part of planning on how to complete this archive scanning project: how would I incorporate my new film scans into this archive and keep everything well organized.

It was actually pretty easy. Remember the twin-check numbering system I was using to keep track of all of my negatives? Since I’d presorted all of my negatives by type I knew exactly how many negative sheets of each type I had and could assign number ranges of twin-check labels to each category.

~300 rolls of 35mm black and white: reserved 000-499
~150 rolls of 120 6×7 black and white: reserved 500-699

…and on and on. And remember the number is only part of the tagging scheme so you can repeat or overlap number ranges with different film formats without issue.

I assigned a final number range to “new” rolls that would more than last me through the remainder of the calendar year I was doing all of this (2020).

Then starting on January 1, 2021 I had a fresh start with roll number 000 and wouldn’t organize by format type, or color vs. black and white any longer. I would just develop and scan things in the order I used them. So starting then I’ve continued to simply organize my scanned images incrementally by date.

The best thing about processing and then scanning is that you get to scan 1 continuous roll of film instead of several strips. It’s easy to scan an entire roll of 120 film in about a minute, and a roll of 36exp 35mm film in just 2-3 minutes. This is one of the many advantages of camera scanning

Now after about 4 years of only scanning new material I don’t have to think about any of this too much. I open my current binder and check the number of the last roll of film I scanned, pull out the roll of numbered labels, and just pick up where I left off. Everything fits into the digital and physical catalogs very easily which of course was the goal all along.

This ended up working really well since I was now confident I wasn’t adding to the mess. Over the pandemic I’d find the occasional deal on an old camera I’d been curious about was able to easily scan and organize the images in my storage binders and also on the computer. It was making things fun again, and causing me to be a bit too regular on eBay.