Photos the old way

< Previous | Index | Next >

Image 125 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.

My digital photo collection is growing – in two ways.

On the one hand I have my Pixel 7 phone and take many photos with that, and I also have an old Canon G16 with basic telephoto zoom capabilities that provides much better results than the phone can manage in some circumstances. Unlike the phone it can’t fit in my pocket. Horses for courses.

On the other hand I’ve been copying old photos from years past. My photograpic hobby began when I was nine-years-old, I was given a Kodak Brownie and a roll of black and white (B&W) 127 format negative film (probably an Ilford film). Later I used a Kodak Starmite with flash and two aperture settings, and used it for my first colour shots as well as B&W, also on 127 format. When I was sixteen I graduated to 35 mm format using a Kodak Retinette camera with a range of apertures and shutter speeds available. And finally, of course, I moved to a single lens reflex camera.

As a result, I have a lot of old negatives and colour transparencies, and little by little I’m scanning these on an Epson Perfection V600 Photo scanner. It gives excellent results.

Today’s photo shows some of the 35 mm transparencies in a storage box. The different designs of mount (some plastic, some card) come from several different film manufacturers. Things were so different back then. You had to buy a film from a chemists or from a photographic shop, load it in the camera, and expose the photos. Usually a film would provide 8 or 12 photos (127 roll film) or 24 or 36 photos (35 mm film). It was a costly hobby because film wasn’t cheap and there were development costs to consider as well. As a result,you might make a film last for weeks or even months.

The exposed film had to be taken for development to a local chemist, or sent back to the manufacturer for 35 mm processing. And then – finally – you could check the results.

When: 9th October 2023
Where: At home

See also:

• Image of the day – 56 – Journeys of Heart and Mind
• Photography – Wikipedia

< Previous | Index | Next >

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome!