1-hour photo labs will cut your 35mm negatives into strips of 4 and place them in flimsy protective sleeves that don’t make viewing the negatives very easy.

Most film scanners scan 5-6 frames at a time, and protective negative sleeves that you buy from a photo store to store negatives in and to make contact sheets with hold either 5 or 6 framers per row. (Making contact sheets is easier to do with 5 frames per row as that is the size of 8×10 paper.)

With this in mind, you might want to ask for your negatives back uncut, so that you can make the decision about how many frames per strip there are depending on your needs. If you plan to make contact sheets in a darkroom, then cut them into strips of 5. If you are planning on scanning and you know that your scanner can scan a strip of 6, choose 6.

To cut your negatives, it might be nice to have a lightbox of some nature, like my rectangular IKEA lamp, but it’s not necessary. Find a clean and dry, make sure it’s dry, surface to lay your negatives flat. Lay them on the side that gives a little space between the image and the surface. They tend to have a little arch to their shape and that will reduce the contact made with the surface. Handling them with gloves or by the edges, count off 5 or 6 images, and cut with a sharp pair of scissors along the margin of the image in a quick straight line. Sometimes it can be hard to see that margin if your negative has a lot of exposure to it and is mostly clear. Use another strip that you’ve cut to compare lengths and determine where it is in that way.