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 seems they were not that good about getting them developed. The film came from Colorado, but the Smiths may or may not have lived there.
As a result, I acquired nine rolls of Kodacolor-X film, 127 size. This film was manufactured between 1963 and 1972 and was often used in relatively cheap plastic cameras that predated the instamatics. This film uses a process called C-22, which has been obsolete for many years, having been replaced by C-41 in the early 1970s. As the name implies, Kodacolor-X is color film. And yet you are looking at black and white? There are people who talk online about having had success developing C-22 using C-41 chemicals at room temperature, but it’s completely hit or miss. One of my rolls got this treatment, and the result was “miss.” The other 8 were developed using a standard black-and-white process. This produced very dim negatives, which I lit from behind and photographed, and then enhanced using various photo editing programs. The result is a photo that’s kind of muddy and blurry – but this could equally be the quality of photos produced by the cameras of this era, which often used inexpensive plastic lenses.
So the Smiths appear to be a relatively well-to-do family (judging from the size of the Christmas loot) in the 1960s, with three daughters and a son. Lots of formal posed photos, and the son is always wearing a bowtie. Check out the tractor and the fireman’s hat he got!
The trees in the background look like two different trees, so I suppose this roll includes both pictures at home and a trip to grandma’s and grandpa’s. Below, it’s not clear what they are holding, but I’m thinking it may be the “umbrella” that is normally mounted over the tractor.
Mom and Dad below, I’m guessing, along with Grandma and the kids. Grandpa must be snapping the picture. I don’t think it was his camera though.
I can’t tell what the boy got, but the girls all seem pretty happy with their dolls.
This was the first of what will end up being several posts as we follow the “Smiths” through the holidays and a few trips and vacations. Stay tuned!
