Category: Found Film
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Found Film Friday: Only Briefly Misplaced
Every week I post a roll of “found” film that has been forgotten in someone’s attic or inside a camera, often for half a century. You never know what you’re going to end up with though. With the old spools, it’s pretty clear that the pictures will be pretty old, and often yield a few…
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Found Film Friday: Cowboys and RVs
It’s been a slow week for photography and blogging. Last weekend we went to photograph and film the annual Ganesha Chathurti immersion of Ganesh idols in the sea. I got some great video, but unfortunately can’t locate the video card I recorded it on. So the only new post for this week is the weekly…
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Found Film Friday: Country Outing
This week’s roll of “found film” came to me from near Binghamton, New York, where the Ansco company was located from the mid-1800s to around 1980. The spool was covered in rust, and the backing paper was stuck to the film so badly that I was unable to remove large strips of paper. So I…
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Found Film Friday: Portraits with Grandma
This week’s found film was inside a camera – a Kodak Brownie Target Six-20, as seen below. This camera was manufactured between 1946 and 1952 and sold for three and a half bucks. It gets its name from the film it used – 620 film, a variant of 120 film, basically just on a thinner…
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Found Film Friday: Trip to Grandpa’s!
This is the final installment in a series of film rolls recovered from Colorado, and originally shot in the 1960s. We have met the “Smiths” and seen them at Christmas, Easter, birthdays and a trip to Florida and camping with the Airstream. In this final post from that set of film, the kids go to…
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Found Film: The Smith Family Goes to Florida
For the past few weeks, we’ve been looking at a batch of Kodacolor-X film from the 1960s, generally featuring a family’s special occasions, but for some reason never developed. This week we accompany them as they go to Florida (and we think they may be from Colorado). How do we know they went to Florida?…
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Found Film Friday: Good Times for the “Smith” Family
Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve gotten to know a family (dubbed “Smith” by me) via a pile of undeveloped film from the 1960s which ended up with me. The Smith family was primarily into photographing the kids, but also occasionally the grandparents turn up, during all of the major family events. Hence we…
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Found Film: The Smith Family Celebrates Easter
Last week we met the “Smith” family (as I’ve decided to name them), celebrating Christmas in a series of moments captured on Kodacolor-X film – manufactured between 1963 and 1972 – on an unknown camera. This week it appears they’ve moved on to Easter. This fellow seems to be the favorite of the photographer, as…
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Found Film: The Smith Family Celebrates Christmas
I have no idea who this family is, but now that I have developed a bunch of their pictures, I’ve gotten to know them a bit and it only seems appropriate to give them a name. I’m calling them the Smith Family. The Smiths were pretty good about photographing family events and trips, but it…
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Found Film Friday: Brownie Hawkeye
This week’s found film comes from the inside of a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye. The Brownie Hawkeye is a camera made in the 1950s. It takes 620 rollfilm, and this camera contained a roll like the one below, which uses a process called C-22, no longer used nowadays (modern film is developed using the C-41 process).…
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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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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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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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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…