Contact prints.

Here's a negative I acquired somewhere that was in my file un-proofed. Tyler from the air in the late 1950s or early 60s. The old Courthouse is gone and the new one built. Looking North along Fannin Street.

I've got a couple of pretty good original negatives in the files of historic Tyler.

I'll never get my negatives even contacted. The 4X5s are in boxes from the now-defunct Light Impressions numbering up into the 1500s. 5X7s are generally grouped in LI boxes by subject. All the 5X7 are contacted as I go along, so that's done. In the darkroom for an hour and a half this morning working on contacts of downtown Tyler, both old and new.

Copies of old photographs are usually bad. Copy negatives and even digital scans can't ever have any more information than the prints has, so each generation gets worse. Original prints from the original negative are the best way to go. Digitally, I would say scans from the negative are by far the best.