Print booklets from the '50s and '60s

biscuit · Jan 8, 2024

Back in the '50s and '60s, my parents would sometimes get their 120 or 127 film prints from the drug store as a little square booklet with a comb binding. The booklets were about 3 1/2 inches square as I recall, and had heavy embossed covers. Does anyone out there remember these? I haven't been able to find any reference to them via Google, and I'd love to either hear about them or see some photos of them. Better yet, I'd like to buy one as a sample. I'm interested in reproducing the same for my Hawkeye prints.

I wasn't sure which forum to post this question in, so I started here. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Dan

AnselMortensen · Jan 8, 2024

Sorry I can't help with the booklets...
but I'm in solidarity with you on the Hawkeye Brownie prints.
I even went so far as to buy a deckle-edge paper trimmer.
Still trying to figure out a way to print month & year text in the border.

biscuit · Jan 8, 2024

Hi Ansel,

Good to hear you are getting use out of your Hawkeye. I decided to fully embrace the whole point of this camera, which is to take snapshots of people and events in my life. No composition rules, no zone system, no pretensions of "fine art". I'm really enjoying the results. The prints from the Hawkeye have a very pleasing, familiar, and nostalgic vibe. Having a stack of these informal square prints to look at and show people whenever I want is so much more satisfying than having image files buried in a folder on my computer or on a website.

I'm not set up to do silver prints, so I'm using the next best thing, dye-sublimation prints from a Canon Selphy printer. The print stock is the perfect size for these 4x4s, and they have a nice, durable gloss finish. The grayscale isn't perfectly neutral (a little purplish), but good enough. And since they are digital prints, it's easy to add the date in the border. And yeah, I know, I violated the "analog only" rule for this forum.

Deckle-edge is a great idea! I'll have to look for one of those cutters. I'm considering getting those black adhesive corners (yep, they still sell them on Amazon) and putting the photos in an album, but I'd really like to build the comb-bound booklets instead.

-Dan

biscuit · Jan 8, 2024

I finally found a booklet from the 1950s on Ebay, complete with deckle edges! I bought it for 5 bucks. Photos attached.

Kino · Jan 8, 2024

You want a "comb binding punch", which can still be purchased new at most office supply stores. The "comb" is plastic and can be cut to length.

Used ones are pretty affordable on Ebay but be sure the combs are available before you purchase!

Luckily, I found a really old flat bed deckle cutter at a junk store that will cut up to 8 inches on edge. I think everyone thought the edge had been destroyed cutting metal, as the lady who sold it to me look at me really strangely...

I'm used to that.

Kino · Jan 8, 2024

AnselMortensen said:
Still trying to figure out a way to print month & year text in the border.

I thought of that myself but some of those overprints could get quite elaborate!

Maybe a hinged, wooden printing frame for brownie sized paper with a fringe of opaque material around 3 edges of the border to leave those sides unexposed (or patterned as you choose).

On the 4th edge, route a pair of very shallow circles in the bottom edge of the frame that slightly overlap and carefully cut an tiny aperture at the apex of each circle.

Inkjet print onto clear acetate a pair of discs with 1 through 31 on one and the Months of the Year on the other.

Contact print this onto lith film and process to dMax. Cut them out and pin them in to the circular routed holes so they overlap but still spin freely.

Now you can change each batch with a new day and month or whatever information you want.

You could also easily change or update the discs upon your whim.

At least, that's my theory...

Edit: come to think of it, this might be a good 3D printer project!

AnselMortensen · Jan 8, 2024

Hmmm....
Thanks for the ideas, Kino!
I have a couple 4x5 contact frames and some lith film.

biscuit · Jan 9, 2024

Indeed, I see plenty of comb binding punches for sale on Amazon and Ebay, all around 50 bucks. Thank you all for your help and comments.

reddesert · Jan 9, 2024

In case you're not familiar with these things, the comb binding punch machine, in addition to the paper punch, should also have a jig that holds the comb open so that you can assemble the bound booklet. (Usually a set of fins on top of the machine.) Otherwise it's a real hassle to get the combs through the paper. The combs can be bought new at office supply stores and so on. They come in different thicknesses for binding more/fewer sheets.

Don_ih · Jan 9, 2024

I have a deckle edge cutting wheel for my Fiskars rotary paper cutter. I use it every now and then - looks good. I actually have a box of Agfa deckle edge paper somewhere - it's contact paper of some sort, 85 years old but prints fine. But it's small (2x4.5 or something like that).
I make small square prints every now and then. I have a few albums that I found at a thrift store a few years ago that I put all of the Instamatic prints from when I was kid in. It's hard to find those old albums without the plastic yellowed.
I have seen individual photos that had the edge punched for that coil-bound album, so they must have been available at some point around here. But I've never seen an actual example of an album.
I'd use a second enlarger with a lith negative of "Mon - Year" on it to print the date on the edge. Just have to make sure the easel is clamped in place. I wouldn't anticipate wanting to do it often enough to set up a device like @Kino suggested - but his was a cool idea.

MattKing · Jan 9, 2024

The booklets may have been limited to particular markets/geographical areas/photofinishers. I've never seen one exactly like that, but there were similar alternatives around here then.

KinoGrafx · Jan 9, 2024

Maybe the modern version of this idea is chatbooks- they’re easy and inexpensive (and square format) and fun to make. By the way, that is one swanky brownie hawkeye in the first post!

biscuit · Jan 17, 2024

Update: I sprung for a comb binding machine and made a couple of books of 120 prints like they did in the '50s. I'm very happy with the results. It's a very convenient and fun way to store and present my Hawkeye photos, and I plan to make many more. I love being able to just grab them or take them with me whenever I want- no digging through boxes or searching for image files on the computer. They were fun to build too!

Thank you all for your comments, suggestions, and encouragement.

-Dan

AnselMortensen · Jan 17, 2024

Cool!
Congratulations!

Kino · Jan 17, 2024

Very nice! Great job!

Alan Edward Klein · Jan 17, 2024

biscuit said:
I finally found a booklet from the 1950s on Ebay, complete with deckle edges! I bought it for 5 bucks. Photos attached.

Wow. Walgreens Drugs printed film back then too. Didn't know that.

MattKing · Jan 17, 2024

Alan Edward Klein said:
Wow. Walgreens Drugs printed film back then too. Didn't know that.

George Eastman originally chose to use pharmacies to distribute Kodak products, because the pharmacists/chemists were part of an existing distribution system and had appropriate knowledge and a public reputation that supported the product and the marketing.
Initially that included receiving from the customer the camera with exposed film in it, returning them to Kodak, and then receiving back from Kodak the reloaded camera and the developed and printed film, to be subsequently returned to the customer.
And that evolved over the years - particularly when cameras evolved to being user reloadable, and photofinishing was offered separately. A huge percentage of US film and photofinishing sales went through drug stores for a very long time. If big chains like Walgrens didn't offer that in the 1950s, customers would not have been happy.

Alan Edward Klein · Jan 17, 2024

Walgreens still has kiosks where you can edit your digital pictures and then print them or email edited pictures at home to Walgreens for printing right there and pick them up later in the day. Not sure if they still do film.

biscuit · Jan 17, 2024

Alan Edward Klein said:
Walgreens still has kiosks where you can edit your digital pictures and then print them or email edited pictures at home to Walgreens for printing right there and pick them up later in the day. Not sure if they still do film.

Looks like Walgreens still processes 110 film.

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