I'm honestly surprised that film canisters are this light-tight. I would have expected some amount of light leakage over time to wash it out, but these prints look fine. I suppose if they're kept...
I'm honestly surprised that film canisters are this light-tight. I would have expected some amount of light leakage over time to wash it out, but these prints look fine. I suppose if they're kept in a box in a basement or attic maybe there just isn't much light in the first place?
I kind of miss film. I fancied getting into photography as a kid and it was right around the time when digital sensors were just getting good enough to be competitive, but there was still a quality trade-off. There is something about the mechanical nature of a film camera, especially a fully manual one, that makes you feel really connected to how you frame a compose a shot. Modern digital cameras hide so much of that functionality through complicated UI that it's almost not worth it to bother.
I still can't really figure out how to quickly set the f-stop and aperture setting on my Sony a6000. My old manual Vivitar had 3 rings on the lens that did basically everything and it was so easy and intuitive once you understood what they did.
Where does one even go to get film developed these days? The only place near me now is a specialty camera shop that happens to be situated right in-between a major national newspaper's headquarters and several large format magazine publishers. And even then, I'm pretty sure they only maintain the film-development stuff out of a sense of tradition/nostalgia. And I'm in a major city. Do people mail it in somewhere now or do you basically need to start setting up your own darkroom at home?
If the film is in a box in a dark place -- and most stored-things are -- that isn't a problem. Heat and humidity likely have an impact, though. I inherited 5 huge boxes of slides from my parents,...
If the film is in a box in a dark place -- and most stored-things are -- that isn't a problem. Heat and humidity likely have an impact, though.
I inherited 5 huge boxes of slides from my parents, along with home movies that dated from the 1920s (!). My father loved to take pictures but was uninterested in organizing them, and always said, "I'll do that when I retired." He died in his sleep three days after he retired in 1986, and I'm pretty sure that he checked out because of the immensity of the project. The slides moved from my parents' house to my sister's garage, which was not an ideal environment but could have been worse.
They were all processed film, so somewhat different than would be the case for undeveloped film, but in scanning 12,000 slides I noted a lot of variance about how well it'd "kept." Mostly, I saw a difference in the film brand. Anything on Agfachrome (which was much cheaper) faded alarmingly, to the point that some images were useless. Kodak was excellent. To my great surprise, among the best preserved (in clarity if not color correction) was the box of slides from my parents' engagement party in 1942.
You can still get film developed at Walgreens and CostCo these days, though there is no longer a dedicated counter for them. And for the serious stuff there are specialists. I used imemories.com to digitize the 100 home movies; it wasn't cheap but it was worth every penny. (One, for example, shows my aunt introducing my great-grandfather to the camera. He was born in 1857.)
Anyone have thoughts on the privacy of those pictured when a third party sells a film? Like if you found images of people, what would you do with them? What if they were famous? What if something...
Anyone have thoughts on the privacy of those pictured when a third party sells a film?
Like if you found images of people, what would you do with them? What if they were famous? What if something illegal was depicted? Something intimately private?
Do you get to do whatever you want with the images? Should you get to do what you want? Where are your limits?
I'm honestly surprised that film canisters are this light-tight. I would have expected some amount of light leakage over time to wash it out, but these prints look fine. I suppose if they're kept in a box in a basement or attic maybe there just isn't much light in the first place?
I kind of miss film. I fancied getting into photography as a kid and it was right around the time when digital sensors were just getting good enough to be competitive, but there was still a quality trade-off. There is something about the mechanical nature of a film camera, especially a fully manual one, that makes you feel really connected to how you frame a compose a shot. Modern digital cameras hide so much of that functionality through complicated UI that it's almost not worth it to bother.
I still can't really figure out how to quickly set the f-stop and aperture setting on my Sony a6000. My old manual Vivitar had 3 rings on the lens that did basically everything and it was so easy and intuitive once you understood what they did.
Where does one even go to get film developed these days? The only place near me now is a specialty camera shop that happens to be situated right in-between a major national newspaper's headquarters and several large format magazine publishers. And even then, I'm pretty sure they only maintain the film-development stuff out of a sense of tradition/nostalgia. And I'm in a major city. Do people mail it in somewhere now or do you basically need to start setting up your own darkroom at home?
If the film is in a box in a dark place -- and most stored-things are -- that isn't a problem. Heat and humidity likely have an impact, though.
I inherited 5 huge boxes of slides from my parents, along with home movies that dated from the 1920s (!). My father loved to take pictures but was uninterested in organizing them, and always said, "I'll do that when I retired." He died in his sleep three days after he retired in 1986, and I'm pretty sure that he checked out because of the immensity of the project. The slides moved from my parents' house to my sister's garage, which was not an ideal environment but could have been worse.
They were all processed film, so somewhat different than would be the case for undeveloped film, but in scanning 12,000 slides I noted a lot of variance about how well it'd "kept." Mostly, I saw a difference in the film brand. Anything on Agfachrome (which was much cheaper) faded alarmingly, to the point that some images were useless. Kodak was excellent. To my great surprise, among the best preserved (in clarity if not color correction) was the box of slides from my parents' engagement party in 1942.
You can still get film developed at Walgreens and CostCo these days, though there is no longer a dedicated counter for them. And for the serious stuff there are specialists. I used imemories.com to digitize the 100 home movies; it wasn't cheap but it was worth every penny. (One, for example, shows my aunt introducing my great-grandfather to the camera. He was born in 1857.)
What a find!
Anyone have thoughts on the privacy of those pictured when a third party sells a film?
Like if you found images of people, what would you do with them? What if they were famous? What if something illegal was depicted? Something intimately private?
Do you get to do whatever you want with the images? Should you get to do what you want? Where are your limits?