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

Minolta Hi-matic 7SII

So far the Minolta Hi-matic 7SII has been my best find in an antique shop.  I got it for $10 last fall.  The camera is in excellent condition and came with a case and flash in the same condition.  I didn't know much about this camera when I saw it, however its condition and obvious quality told me it was worth the $10.  A funny thing is that in the same group of cameras there was a fairly common SLR that looked like it had had its hot shoe pulled off with a pair of pliers. The asking price for that camera was $25.  All I can figure is that the dealer was pricing the cameras by size. 


The Minolta Hi-matic 7SII is a compact and light-weight rangefinder with a sharp 40mm f/1.7 Rokkor lens.  It has a very quiet mechanical copal shutter with speeds from 1/8 to 1/500 and B. The rangefinder on mine is bright and easy to see.  I started out in photography at the time when SLRs were taking over from rangefinders.  I had never actually used a rangefinder until a year or so ago.  Back in the old days my eyesight was much sharper than today and focusing an SLR was easy.  Now with my decreased eyesight I often find the rangefinder easier to focus.  


The Minolta Hi-matic 7SII uses a CdS cell that was originally powered by a 1.35v mercury battery.  Since these batteries are now banned you will have to work out a substitute like one of the Wein Cells. Without the battery the camera will still work fine in manual mode.  With the battery you have the option of using shutter priority auto-exposure.  So far I have been using the camera in manual mode and a hand-held meter, however I just got a battery and plan to test out the auto-exposure soon.  I imagine that in auto-exposure mode that this light weight quiet camera will be very good for things like street photography.  


I have been well-satisfied with the results I have had with this camera and it is definitely a keeper.  In fact it is a camera that I think I would enjoy even if it didn't work just because I like the way it looks.  The B&W photos in the gallery below are Legacy Pro 100.  Fuji 800 is the color film. 
Minolta Hi-matic 7SII Gallery

Camera Older than Me and Newer Camera

I am getting to an age where I see items that once were a familiar part of my daily life selling in antique shops.  So it is nice to find there are still some collectable things older than me. The camera older than me is an Agfa Sillette. The Sillette was made starting in 1955.  It is a range focusing camera with shutter speeds from 1/25 to 1/200. It also has a B setting. The lens on mine is an Apotar 1:3,5, 45mm. Other versions have an Agnar lens.  These sold for around $40 back in the 1950's.  And considering how many I see on places like Ebay they must have sold a lot of them.  I haven't gotten around to taking a photo of mine yet, however you can see what one looks like here.

The Sillette is a solidly made camera that fits well in my hands.  It also appears to be a good picture taker.  I think the shortcomings in some of the images in the gallery below are more from the photographer than the camera.  I think that if I were to work with this camera more it could produce some excellent images. That being so, here is what I done so far.
Agfa Sillette Gallery

The newer camera is a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-TX7.  It came out in 2010. Since newer versions have come out I got this one for a much reduced price.  What I wanted it for was for a digital camera that was easy to carry around and also could take quality images. So far I have been very satisfied with it.

I took Simon for his shots yesterday. I do think the 25mm lens makes the vet assistant look a little heavier than she is.











One of my favorite features of this camera is iSweep Panorama.  Here you can make a panorama in one go just by picking a starting point and moving the camera across the area you'd like in the panorama.  The images are stitched together in the camera.

Waiting on Film

For most of my life if I wanted pictures from a camera I would need to either develop them myself or send them out. There always was a time of maybe hours, maybe days before I could see how my pictures turned out.  And for me at least there was a tendency of focusing on the frustration of the wait and forgetting the pleasures of finally seeing how things turned out.  A pleasure that I think was increased by the wait.  When digital came along I embraced no longer having to wait.  Still I have never felt the pleasure in seeing my pictures load onto my computer that I remember from seeing negatives come out of the developing tank, or from getting that fat pack of pictures in the mail.

Saturday I had the pleasure of getting some pictures back that I had sent off in the mail a few days before.  The feeling for me is very much like I can remember as a child opening Christmas presents. The films were from a variety of cameras taken over a few months time. Like Christmas I expected there would be both some wonders and disappointments. 

I have heard others report feelings similar to mine about getting film back. Although I haven't often heard such feelings enter into the film vs digital debate.  Instead I think that it is taken for granted that quicker is better.  And maybe sometimes it is.  However if you have never done so before try taking some pictures on film and send it off somewhere that makes you wait a few days.  Then see if when your results come back if you experience a pleasure and excitement that made the wait worthwhile.

One set of negatives I got back was from a roll that I had taken last summer and forgot for a while that it was in the camera.  The camera is an Argus STL 1000 with a Cosinon 50mm f/1.8 lens. The film is Fuji 200.

I also got some results from the Argus Dual HFM II that I have written about in an earlier post. The film is Fuji 200.  Although 200 ISO is the recommmended film for this camera, I suspect the a 400 ISO film would work better.

Last results for today are from the Sawyer's Nomad 620.  Whoever I bought this from had loaded it with a re-spooled roll of Porta 160.  I took a couple of pictures with it when I first got the camera and didn't get around to finishing the roll until this winter.

I got the results from 11 rolls of film from 11 different cameras so this is just a small sample.  I would recommend the place I sent the film to.  They do a good job and are inexpensive.  Sharp's Photo

March of the Toy Cameras

Toy may be the kindest categorization that these cameras get. Here I am talking about the simple amateur-oriented cameras of the age before digital. Still when looked at in the long arc of human history these cameras are a marvel. If in the middle-ages you had a Polaroid Color Pack and a supply of film you might have been seen as a great wizard or as somebody to be burned at the stake.

Throughout most of the time in which there have been people it has been very hard to make images or save descriptions of the things that mattered to us. I used to wonder why in the Bible there are few if any descriptions of what the people looked like. I thought maybe appearance didn't matter as much to the ancients as much as it seems to matter to us today.  Then I realized that in those times the materials to write on were often expensive and making copies was a pain. So it is likely that only what was essential was recorded. I have not researched this, however I would not be surprised if descriptions of people in literature did not become common until the printing press and cheap paper became available.

And while making and transmitting verbal descriptions used to be hard, making illustrations was even harder.  Even though literacy was rare in the olden days someone with the skill to make a reasonable representative of what he saw was probably even rarer. Today ancient forms of illustration like the reliefs in the Parthenon or the statutory in a Gothic Cathedral are still admired. However I think it is hard for us to appreciate that at one time such illustrations were about the only show in town.

The birth of photography in the 1830's started a progression to where almost anyone could capture an image of what mattered to him.  By the 1950's in the US almost every family had at least one of the simple box cameras that we now call toys.  Most of the time you could take a decent photo with these cameras without a lot of expense or trouble.  You could even make copies of your images to send out to family and friends.  An amazing advance that seems to have been quickly taken for granted and probably is under-appreciated.

Maybe some day in the distant future someone will come across a cache of ancient photos from the 50's and 60's and wonder why all the children were gathered around a circular object with burning candles on it. I imagine even then there will be little appreciation for the cameras that made this puzzle possible.

  


Taken with Kodak Duaflex II

Taken with Kodak Duaflex II




















More Information about the Kodak Duaflex II at Matt's Classic Cameras.

My Photography Year in Review - Part Two

As far as a review of last year I think this will be the second and last part.  At least it serves as the title for one more post.  My history in photography goes back to the 1960's.  My first camera was a 127 camera that the Boy Scouts sold.

After my experience with the old box camera  I decided to see what other film equipment I still had.  One of the first things I found was the Boy Scout camera.  I also found a roll of Verichrome Pan film that had expired in December of 1967.  The film has been at room temperature and from what I have read it is possible that images still could be made with it.  My plan has been to try the old roll of film in the Cub Scout camera.  However while I learned about the possibilities with this old film and camera I haven't felt the inspiration yet to test that knowledge.

My mother, aunt, brother and sister from around 1965. Taken with Cub Scout Camera.












Now, while I am aware of the shortcomings of some of the simple cameras, like my Cub Scout one, I actually always kinda liked some of those less than perfect results.  So when I decided to do film again one of the first things I sought to learn about was the other simple cameras.  One thing I found is that there are many people who have the same interest.

I remember spending quite a bit of time looking at the Junk Store Camera site. I also found that there is a Toy Camera group on Flickr. There also is a whole movement called Lomography based on using often simple cameras and almost seeking out less than technically perfect results.

So my first phase in a return to film was getting and trying out several box-type cameras from mostly the 50's and early sixties.  I also got one of the famous Holgas.

Taken with Agfa Clack.  The Clack was a popular family camera in Europe during the 1950's. 

Taken with Imperial Reflex 620 Duo Lens. Another camera from the 1950's.

And here is one from a Holga. 










These are just a few of the cameras I tried.  I learned that each camera has its own character.  And that character can show even more variety as it interacts with different films.  There can be a lot of surprises with these cameras.  They are probably not the best camera to use when you want a reliable predictable result, however if you enjoy image-making they can be a lot of fun. And at least I find that I am much more emotionally engaged by the images these cameras make than I am by my digital images. I suppose part of it is from my love of history and feeling that I am connecting to the photographic past with these cameras.  I wonder who might have used the camera before me and what images they made.  

So this is as much reviewing as I'm going to do.  Hopefully, I can come up with better and more creative titles as this blog grows. 

Sears TLS

From the glory days of the all-metal mechanical SLR is the Sears TLS. The Sears TLS only needs a battery for the exposure meter.  The battery called for in the Sears TLS manual is a no longer made mercury PX625 1.3v. I have found that an SR44 1.5v fits and works fine. You can find out all the details about the Sears TLS at Matt's Classic Cameras .  The Sears TLS is usually very inexpensive on Ebay.  I tend to think it may be the best bargin out there for this type of camera.

The Sears TLS is a very durable reliable body of a camera and the standard 55mm f/1.4 lens seems to be excellent.

I find the standard lens to be especially good for Black & White.

The Sears TLS uses the M42 Pentax lens mount so along with its great standard lens it can use the wide variety of lenses made for that mount.

There are a few more images in my Sears TLS Gallery
The color images are from the Sears 28mm lens.

ANSCO READYFLASH

Roll film size 620; 8 exposures, 2'/4x
3'/4; flash synchronization; fixed focus;
eye-level viewfinder. Price, $5.95; with
gadget bag, flashing unit, flashbulbs,
and three rolls of film, $13.95; Ansco
flash unit, $2.75.

The Ansco Readyflash was the camera that my parents used when I was young. I suppose it says something about my affinity for cameras that I should remember that.  I have not been able to find the camera that they actually used, however I did find that the flash attachment had survived. I bought another Readyflash off Ebay to go with the attachment.  It is likely that the original Readyflash took the photos below:

My brother and sister, who are twins, being baptized in 1959.

Myself with my cousins, Debbie, Rosemary, Sharon, and Pam.

The 1953 Ford that my parents had when they were first married.








Sometime early in the 1960's my Father started recording family events with a movie camera.  The old black & white still images stop around that time.

I made one attempt to take photos with the Ebay ReadyFlash with poor results.  I do believe that the camera has some light leaks.  And so far I haven't had the ambition to do anything about the leaks.  Still I will likely give the ReadyFlash another chance and hopefully I will share the results here.

Camera ads from 1949 and 1955

I was using ABBYY FineReader yesterday to see how well it would copy items from some old photo magazines.  I think it works reasonably well.  So I decided to share a few things that I copied.  I also wanted to test putting the resulting pdfs on Google Docs. 

In 1955 Geiss-America offered a modification to the Argus C4 which allowed it to use interchangeable lenses.  Geiss-America Ad

Also in the same 1955 Photography Directory were some short descriptions and prices for most of the cameras made at the time.  Here is one page for box cameras.
Box Cameras

Also there was a nice early ad for Canon cameras.
Canon

The ad above is from the September 1949 issue of US Camera.  You can get a larger view with the pdf.  Ciro-Flex Model F

Lastly from the same issue is an ad for Bloom's Camera Center in Springfield MA.  Like most independent camera stores Bloom's is long defunct. The ad does list a nice variety of new and used still and movie cameras.
Bloom's

Hopefully, the links to Google Docs work okay.  If there are any problems let me know.

Found Film from the Ukraine

In May I bought a Smena 8M from a dealer in the Ukraine.  When I opened the back of the camera there was a re-loadable film cartridge with film in it. When I developed the film I got what were the most interesting found pictures that I have so far experienced. 

I am guessing these are photos from a visit to one of this young couples grandparents.  Maybe the grandparents are meeting their grandchild for the first time.  One commenter on my Flickr said that the clothing looked like the styles in the Ukraine in the mid-nineties.

If this is grandpa he doesn't appear to be very comfortable holding his grandchild.  I do wonder why the pictures were never developed and I imagine that may always remain a mystery to me.  Here is a gallery if you'd like to see more of these photos.
Found Film from the Ukraine

Here is the camera that took the photos.  I admit that I got it because it is red.

More information about the Smena 8M

Beacon Two-twenty five

The Beacon Two-twenty five was made by Whitehouse Products Inc in Brooklyn NY from 1950 to 1958. The one pictured here is one of the earlier models because it has two apertures and a bulb setting. These were removed in later models.

I did find a manual for the later model that said that the single aperture is f12.5.  So I would guess that the aperture on my version would be 12.5 for the larger and maybe f9.5 or f8 for the smaller.  The single shutter speed is 1/50.  The lens is a 70mm doublet.  It uses 620 film which is no longer made.  However if you have an empty 620 spool you can roll 120 film onto it and it will work fine.

So the Beacon Two-twenty-five is a very simple camera.  To me its main distinction is its wonderful molded bakelite body.  It is one of the few cameras that I found myself wanting just on the basis of appearance.  And I think its main value will continue to be that I enjoy looking at it.  The Beacon Two-twenty five I think is a little above average in its class in picture taking, however so far I haven't used it much for that purpose.  The Beacon Two-twenty five did do me the service of providing a name for this blog.  I am not good at naming things so when I had to type in a name I looked at this camera sitting on the shelf decided to use Beacon 225. And helpfully the Beacon Two-twenty five gave me the subject for the first post here.

Here are a few images in the Beacon Two-twenty five Gallery

Here are manuals for the Beacon Two-twenty five and the Beacon II:
http://www.butkus.org/chinon/beacon_ii/beacon_ii.htm

Found this after making the post.  It is an ad from the 1955 Photography Directory.