Monday, February 6, 2012

Found Film Negatives from the 1940's & 1950's







Image from some of the found negatives.







Saturday I visited a couple of antique shops in St Joseph IL looking for camera stuff.  Didn't find much until I came to a bookshelf piled down with cameras and assorted film items.  Upon a closer look most of the stuff was broken or dirty and priced like the dealer thought his stuff was mint.  The only thing I ended up getting was a box with some old film containers and a 1951 issue of Popular Photography. 















The box with the film containers was wrapped in plastic so I didn't check it out much until I got home.  Once I took a closer look I found that the containers each held at least one roll of developed film.  There also were some rolled-up 35mm film loose in the box.  I also found a few black & white slides which were mostly unmounted. Overall there are probably enough developed film to make a few hundred images.  In the past I have found underdeveloped film in cameras, however this is the first time that I have come across discarded developed film.

Mostly the film is in fair shape.  It has some dust and scratches and some deterioration, however most should be able to give a usable image.  I don't know if these were made by one photographer or by several, or who the people in the images are.  The results I have gotten so far are mostly family type pictures from what I am guessing is the late 40's or 50's. Hopefully, I can get some information about the source of these pictures from the dealer that sold the negatives.  Scanning the negatives looks like it will be a slow process since they have a lot of curling and therefore require some effort to place into the negative holder.  So far I have just scanned a few strips.  A few of the images that were the most interesting to me are in the gallery below.  As I do more of the images and maybe find out more about the source  I will share the results and information with you.
Found Negatives Gallery

2 comments:

  1. Fascinating stuff! I've never heard of anyone finding developed negatives either.

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    1. Jim it is pretty interesting to get this look into family life as it was back then. I think there is something about the comfort and naturalness that people often have in such images that makes up for the lack of technical excellence.

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