Vintage cameras
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Found Film Friday: Santa Fe Porsche Show
This week’s roll of found film came to me from “Mike” – a collector of old slides who was giving up on a “found film” hobby, he sent me a half dozen or so rolls and acknowledged there was a small chance one of the rolls might be his own. Up until now, none had,…
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“Found Film Friday” on a Sunday
Since around May, 2013, I have been posting “found film” finds pretty regularly – and for the last 8 months, it has been every Friday like clockwork. This weekend is the first time I missed a Friday, thanks to an outage by my internet provider. We get great high-speed internet, but sometimes are surprised by…
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Found Film: 1949 Chevy
This week’s roll of “found film” comes from a Kodak Six-16 Brownie Junior, made between 1934 and 1942. From a technology standpoint, it’s virtually indistinguishable from a Brownie Target Six-16, made between 1946 and 1951. Given the pace of technology these days, it’s odd to think that a camera would have one so many years…
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Testing the Kodak Brownie No. 0 Model A
It seems that camera naming conventions have never been simple. The Kodak Brownie No. 0 Model A was manufactured between 1914 and 1935. It was a small cardboard/wood and box camera with a rotary shutter and two reflecting finders. It sold for $1.25 and is said to take remarkably sharp 6 by 4 cm exposures, “if…
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Found Film Friday: New Year’s Road Trip 1994
…and just like that, we go from “class”…to a little bit crass. After weeks of posting historically meaningful post-war photos that were rescued from oblivion, we have a roll of pictures that looks like it was snapped on a three-day college drinkfest that involved a bus, a bar, and what looks like a bunch of…
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Found Film: Korea, 1946, roll 4 (Homecoming)
This is the fourth and final installment in a series of posts about four rolls of film that were found among items acquired in an estate sale in rural Washington state. To recap what I think I can safely assume from the content in these photos, they appear to have been taken by a U.S.…
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Found Film: Korea, 1946 – Part 3
This is the third installment (in what will eventually be 4) in a series of posts about a fascinating project I have been working on. Rather than the usual “found film” which I find undeveloped, this is a set of four rolls of already-developed photographs I have scanned and gradually restored over the past weeks.…
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Indian Portraits from the 1950s and 1960s
Between Chennai and Pondicherry is an area with an especially high proliferation of “junk stores. I suppose the owners would prefer we’d call them antique shops – but there actually aren’t that many actual antiques, just lots of oddities and strange treasures, many of which are made to look old. In the back of one…
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Found Film: Korea, 1946 – part 2
Last week I posted about the first of four rolls of already-developed film I had come across via a seller on eBay, and have been scanning and restoring one by one. This is the second roll, which provides a whole new set of clues as to the photographer and their living conditions in Korea, just…
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Found Film: Korea, 1946
A few months ago I came across a post on eBay where someone was selling four rolls of already-developed film. The seller professed being unsure about wanting to get rid of the film, so I offered to buy them and scan them, and restore them as much as I could, so they would be available…
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Found Film Friday: Yellowstone Part 4
This is the last of four posts on a big pile of found film I got recently – 13 rolls of Ektachrome slide film requiring processing using E2 and E3 chemical processes, neither of which have been available since the early 1970s. The photos were mostly in and around Yellowstone National Park; a few rolls…
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Make Your Own 3-D Camera!
I was checking out the latest copy of Photo-Era Magazine (the latest I own, anyway) – dated April, 1929 – here’s the cover: It’s chock full of interesting articles on photography – and ads for the latest cameras, including this ad for an unfortunately named Voigtlander. One of the articles that caught my attention was…
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Found Film Friday: Yellowstone part 3
This is the third week I’ve been posting from this set of 13 rolls of film, from in and near Yellowstone National Park….but 13 rolls is a lot of pictures! I know not everyone is particularly enamored with these photos – after all, anyone who has ever been to the park probably has a lot…
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Found Film Friday: Yellowstone Part 2
Last week I posted the first installment in a series of posts in which I share images from a collection of 14 rolls of Ektachrome slide film requiring an outdated chemical process, but which I decided to develop with black and white chemicals. In this set of pictures, we see the photographer’s continued photographic journey…
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Shooting with a 115-year-old Camera
That DSLR you bought a couple months ago – do you think it will still work in the year 2130? Sounds ridiculous? That’s basically the equivalent of taking photos with a Cycle Poco No. 3, manufactured by the Rochester Camera Company between 1893 and 1905. This one is from after 1897, because the finder on…
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Found Film Friday: Yellowstone, Part 1
I’d say “everybody has pictures from a trip to Yellowstone,” if I had ever been myself. But I have previously posted a “found film” roll that featured shots from that national park. A few weeks ago, I received 14 rolls of film I had bought – for a pretty good price, if they ended up…
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Found Film Friday: Two Dim Color Rolls
With old film, conventional wisdom says it’s best to develop it in black and white chemicals, regardless whether the film was originally color film or black and white. Apparently the different colored dyes not only break down more quickly than black and white chemicals, but also at different rates. I decided to try anyway with…
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Found Film Friday: Year Round
This week’s “found film” is the last of four rolls that were found in a storage unit in Worcester, Massachusetts. There’s not a whole lot to say about this week’s roll, other than it makes me think of how we used to take pictures, compared to how we take pictures now. This 24-picture roll…
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Found Film Friday: Hannah’s Tenth Birthday
This week is the second of three “found film” Friday posts in which I’m sharing film that was found (by someone else) in a storage unit in Worcester, Massachusetts. The first post, last week, was a 110 cartridge from what appeared to be a young girl’s first camera. I decided her name was “Hannah”, although…
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Vintage: Testing the Houghton Folding Ensign 3 1/4A
If you’re at all interested in my occasional posts about trying to make old cameras work, read on – this one is the oldest one yet. The Houghton Folding Ensign 3 1/4A was manufactured in London around 1912, and is gigantic by modern standards, at about a foot tall, 4 1/2 inches wide, and a…
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Found Film: Hannah and her Sister
This week we have one of three rolls found (by someone else) in a storage unit in Worcester, Massachusetts. This set of film rolls is interesting in that they are all different types of film, and thus came from different cameras. There is a fourth in the set, which I already posted a few weeks…
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Found Film Friday: Laguna Beach Photowalk
After last week’s “surfing” theme, I thought it would be fun to share another roll with a seaside theme. This one is not that old, and it came with the same batch of film as “Michelle’s” fisheye roll, and “Mike’s” roll. Like the other rolls, this one includes a “selfie.” After having seen this batch…
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Found Film: Everybody’s Gone Surfing
This week’s found film has a little bit of a story to it. It was found by someone in a storage unit in Worcester, Massachusetts. I wrote them back and asked for more details, but didn’t get any. But anyhow, the film was advertised as “4 exposed rolls and 2 unexposed rolls”. They were 35mm…
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Testing the Ansco Regent
Sometimes I’m not sure whether these posts I do on whether or not I’ve been able to make these vintage cameras work are more about the cameras, or about the content of the photos I’ve managed to snap. This is one of those posts, and explains why I’ll share more of the photos from the…
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Found Film: Seasons
This week, I thought I’d post TWO rolls of found film. One roll has suffered quite a bit from age, and the other only had a couple of usable photos on it. I’m titling this post based on the photos having been taken opposite times of year. There is no other relationship between the two…