Mother load of expired film

Sadly one of my best friends was killed 10 years ago and he is missed very much. I stay in contact with his parents and they recently ask me to help them go through all of his photo gear. His brother seems to be keeping all of the strobe lights but I will help them sell the darkroom equipment and maybe a camera or so. But this past weekend I went over to see what the brother had separated out for himself and what they had deemed as garbage. I went through the garbage first and found many photographs that we/he had taken when we went off to photo school together . So that was a score. But I am also happy to have acquired his expired film. Some of it is bulk loaded and I am not sure what it is. The color emulsion is a different color then the B&W so I can pretty much guess that he loaded the same type of film that he was using in prepackaged rolls. i.e. He seems to have mostly used TMax B&W and Vericolor neg films. Could be Ektachrome though cause he has a lot of that.... I'll just have to shoot a roll of each and see what I get. If processed right it will tell me on the film edges what it is hopefully. Some polaroid 600 too, but unless that works in my SX70 camera Ill have to move that on . And there is a lot of 70mm bulk load color neg film that I don't know anything about yet.

 

 

Holy silver emulsion, Batman!

Sorry to hear about the circumstances that led to this, but that's certainly quite a find!

 

The 4x5 EPP is like gold...let me know if you decide you don't need/want that.

 

On the bulk loaded film-what I've done in similar circumstances is clip off 6" or so(enough to make sure you're away from the gate of the loader, which will be fogged, and also give you plenty of edge markings) and develop in B&W developer. Something like 6 minutes or so(68ºF/20ºC) in D76 or HC110(B) followed by standard fixing should let you read the edge markings. Doing this is a whole lot less expensive than shooting and developing a complete roll, especially if you have to pay a lab to process it. B&W developer as I described will work well enough with most any film you'll encounter to at least give you edge markings and positively ID the emulsion.

I've shot most of it by now, but I formerly had access to a lot of past-best-date film. Most of it was old Kodak B&W film and I found that even the oldest (stored intermittently in refrigeration, but not constantly) worked pretty well at just its rated speed and development. Of course, since I scanned in the negatives, I had a fair amount of power to fix things like low contrast, etc.

 

I use D-76 for pretty much everything.

 

Chromogenic films, I just send to Dwayne's (link) and have not found it necessary to have them adjust the processing.

I mostly try to use older films near box speed.

 

I now have a roll of 30 year old TMY in my recently mentioned Argus 3D camera.

 

The camera has fixed aperture and shutter speed, and suggests ISO 200 or 400.

So, I am exposing at either box speed, or one stop more.

Yeah I have been shooting my own expired film and I have been exposing the same way. Leaning toward the 1 stop over in most cases

A friend gave me some film that was his father's. He was a photography professor. And I just spent $20 on 15 rolls of recently expired 120 film that a guy was selling on craigslist. Included was one roll of Ilford's SFX 200 which is an infraredish film.

 

I don't even mind a roll of kodachrome here and there if it's free. Fun to see what I can get out of it.

 

In a way I almost prefer expired film. I feel like I can experiment and if I end up throwing half the shots away, - no big deal.

And there is a lot of 70mm bulk load color neg film that I don't know anything about yet.

 

Well, the rolls are labeled as 100 ft by 70mm non perforated, so these presumably were intended for use in long-roll portrait cameras. These would basically be either Beattie Coleman Portronics or the Camerz line of cameras once made by Photo Control in Minneapolis. If your friend had such a camera it would be hard to miss because of the size. Typically they came with a small trunk, maybe 20" or so long, so look for such a thing.

 

There is plenty of online info about these camera (once you know the names), I think. When I was quite a bit younger I spent several years pushing these cameras around on a heavy-duty wheeled tripod, shooting several of those 100 ft rolls every week. Basically, the cameras were relatively simple in construction, but extremely rugged and well-suited to their purpose - high volume portraiture. Interchangeable film magazines that you preload could be swapped out in less than 30 seconds. The cameras were mainly suited for indoor work under studio lighting; the shutter speeds were pretty slow, contributing to long shutter life, plus you need to plug into an electrical outlet. To operate you simply focus (manually, via a ground glass, almost all were a tlr sort of system), then press the button on a remote release. The camera shoots, exposes an id on the frame, then advances the film. As soon as the flash has recycled you're ready to shoot again.

 

The SO-105 on the Kodak box means special order, ie, a certain configuration. The main question now would be what sort of spooling, but since you have the film its easy enough to open (in a darkroom) and check. We always used flanged spools ("daylight loading") but used changing bags so as to not throw away film. The spools would have a square hole on one end, round on the other; this prevented accidental double exposure (the spools only fit square-end-down, so a used roll couldn't be reloaded). If it's a flangeless spool, probably square all the way through. A standard film mag could use either style, but I think inserts were used for the thickness of the roll.

 

The film magazines can run independently if you figure out the connector and then supply power. They have an "advance" button that will wind to the next frame (plus a frame counter) so you could possibly rig up a home-built special purpose camera that would take a mag. If you look for a magazine (or camera system) make sure it's not a 35mm or 46mm unit. Also, 70mm mags came as either "full" 70, where "70mm" is the width of the rectangular frame, or as "split 70", where the "70mm" dimension is the height of the frame. In other words they are analogous to either "6x7" or "6x9" vs "6x4.5" in the world of 120-roll film.

 

I personally don't see much use nor value to the film nowadays. You can probably get the cameras for cheap, but if you shot any film what would you do with it? As a note, a guy on photrio was selling similar film a year or two back. He apparently was getting a pretty decent price for it, for something I would have probably thrown away.

 

Well, enough ancient history. Let me know if you have any questions.

google search find that SO-105 is Ektachrome EF, a Type B (tunsten balanced) ASA 125 film,

that so far I only see in Super-8.

 

When I was young, and maybe not so young, I liked to by freshly outdated film in stores.

Now, I still like to buy outdated, even very outdated, black and white film, but prefer not so

old color film. (Unless it has been cold stored by me.)

 

70mm is right for respooling 116 and 616 film, and appropriate cameras are easy to find.

(Also, old film to use, and then reuse the backing paper.)

 

Since you have 100feet, you will know after one roll what to expect, if anything,

for the rest.

 

But I don't know how hard it is to find someone to E6 process 116 film, though.

 

I have a 15m roll of 70mm Portra 160, which if I get in the right mood, will respool

for 116. I have some C41 chemistry to use with it.

 

For E6, I prefer new or recently outdated films.

I just notice that SO-105 says color negative, which doesn't agree with Ektachrome EF.

 

Kodak wouldn't reuse SO numbers, would they?

If the TMax400 and 100 is 120, check the lot numbers with the lists here - John Sexton.com - Newsletter - May, 2016

 

The backing paper now is said to be ok and yours may be old enough to be from before the issue.

And if you're shooting it all yourself, enjoy and have fun! If not, there are some of us who do still see the value and fun in shooting film. :)