Old Film Cameras - With Film Inside!

[Mickey Caesar]

I'd forgotten about this link a former work colleague sent me a couple of years ago. This gentleman collects old cameras and, often finding film still inside, develops it and has posted a wonderful collection of pictures from several decades in the last century.

He always asks the question: Who owned the camera, and why, if they took the trouble to buy film and take the snaps, did they somehow dispose of/give away/lose the cameras???


http://westfordcomp.com/updated/found.htm

Maybe the camera belonged to someone who died and it got lost in the shuffle of clearing out their estate.

 

[scottyrocks]

So it wasn't uncommon for a camera to sit in a cupboard for months and months between shots -- and sometimes it'd simply be forgotten. My mother had a movie camera with a roll of film in it that sat for nearly twenty years before she got around to having it developed -- because nothing happened in all that interval that she felt was worth taking movies of.

When I was a senior in high school (1977), I was taking a photography course. We found an old brownie camera in the house. There was film in it. We had it developed. It was pictures from the '64-'65 Worlds Fair in Flushing, NY 13 years earlier. That was something! It brought back recollections of most most prized possession I got from the fair - a black hat with a feather and my name stitched into it.

 

[martinsantos]

Never found old film in a camera. But I had two experiences that surprised me about the "magic" in any roll of film.

When my granfather died in 1975 there was a roll to be developed. Panatomic X, his preferred film. I got it this year, and I could get some images (unhappilly just tests with filters, I presume).

I got myself some photos in 1998 with my Rolleiflex, and just forgot the rolls in a box (I moved home in next days). Found them few weeks ago, developed them and... The ersults are just perfect! There is something special about an exposure of a fraction of a second to be registered so many years, just waiting for developement.

Martin