What a wonderful thought! That is worth considering!
I have three... none have the stylus. I'd be happy just seeing a large collection of original autographic negatives with my own eyes. Despite the fact that one of mine was my wife's grandmother's camera, the only examples I've ever seen were on the internet. I use mine 95% of the time for paper negatives, and just occasionally with some cut down sheet film. Funny you posted this just now because just yesterday I was thinking I should load film and do more... I love the format and it's a waste having them just sitting in the closet. Plus I'm weird this way but I love going out with a camera that can only make one picture...
I used to own four of them, one of which was so beat up smelling like smoke, and the bellows were literally falling apart in my hands that I hacked the whole thing apart and use the lens now in my large-format 4 x 5 camera. I don't feel so bad as it is the crappiest of them all it was just a pony land not anything special, and it was a challenge because everyone else said that there's no way it would work on a 4 x 5 size format but to my joy, they were wrong
One of which was the one that got me started in using anything film related again after a long hiatus, saw it at a tag sale and got this camera for $20, the amazing part of the story is that this camera was in the family that I bought it from from brand-new and probably cost just about as much back then as I paid for it at the tag sale, the thing is in excellent shape with the case and instruction booklet, and yes the stylus was included!
I keep meaning to go back as the gentleman said that his family actually had a few more of them and that was the one he was willing to give away, perhaps maybe he has a few others that I could snag, anyway the other few I purchased on eBay because I wanted to shoot some 70 mm stuff and at the time could not afford an actual 70 mm camera, no of course I have lots of 70 mm gear and actually use that more, and re-rolling is kind of a pain however I did purchase a few rolls of the ilford ULF Special Order last year, some of which I'm forced to sell for money purposes and also because I just don't shoot enough of it. So I sold off all but one of the non-perforated rolls of it that I got last year, and I have still to traded rolls that I suppose I could use in a 116 camera.
I kind of wish I didn't have to sell off the special rolls of film as they cost a lot and also obviously are rare to even own, but desperate times and all that, I had about 40 or 50 rolls of 120 transparency film that needed to be developed somewhere over a year old, but I just didn't want to be at the money for other things and decided that I do use the money from the sale of the rolls to find the processing fees. Although it is not terribly difficult to process at home, it is a pain in the butt, and also takes a lot of my time and he was just better to send it off to the lab of course I used Praus, whom I trust. I actually have a short roller two of Ektachrome 64 in 70 mm perforated, so if the clip test from him comes back and tells me that it's decent, I might reroll that and have some transparency film to shoot in my 116 camera!
Anyway what's the point of all this? The point is that I have enough stuff to have a lot of fun shooting with these old cameras that are at this point close to 100 years old!
Hey actually kind of like the 116 format better than the 120 format, just the extra bit of surface area really helps to make the difference. I know that probably sounds silly, but there's just something about these images that just screams better quality, even from 100-year-old lenses!
As far as the backing paper goes, I'm sure it actually could be easily manufactured considering the technology is 100 years old, it's probably just some kind of rice paper or something like, or perhaps it's possible it's some kind of black wax coating of some kind, obviously I've never seen a real piece of backing paper that is the autographic kind, I doubt many at all exist anywhere in the world as it was typically probably thrown out, and the negatives are probably pretty rare, I believe that a friend of mine had some that were cut at each Photo spot, but I'd have to check with him, unfortunately he was a house filled with mold and he may have gotten rid of a lot of them.
It really would be fun to take notes on the film itself, I'm really surprised that this practice didn't continue but then again it's probably a factor of these speed of the film... Those super old speed of 25 were lower were of course less susceptible to light leaking through her, as the speeds increased the type of paper they would have to use that would not BC through except for where you wrote with the stylus would be a lot more difficult to manufacture and still be light proof. So that may be part of the problem, so realistically were probably only looking at something like PanF+ or even that Adox 25 speed film as a type you could use. I would love to hear from someone in the forum who might know a lot more about this stuff, as I'm only just hypothesizing...
