Very Old Verichrome Found in Great Grand dad's Brownie

[Andrew O'Neill]

No clue as to where to post this but... My mother gave me her grandfather's old Brownie Target 620 camera. I took it into my darkroom and opened it up. Wouldn't you know it there was a roll of film inside! I closed it up and advanced the film knob and the number 7 appeared at the back through the little red window. Six exposures had been made. I wound up the film and removed it from the camera. The film was Kodak Verichrome, an orthochromatic film. Kodak introduced this film in 1931 and reintroduced a panchromatic version (sensitive to entire light spectrum) called Verichrome Pan in 1956.
I decided to develop it. The 620 format fit my 120 spool, although it was very difficult being rolled up for so many years. I developed it in pyrocat-hd as that was all I had on hand. Upon inspection, it appears all fogged, with no images. I scanned them in at a high resolution and found these two figures. The figure on the right looks like my Grandfather, and the figure on the left could be my Great Grandmother, according to my mother. You can see a house and trees behind them. I believe it was in Melville, Saskatchewan, as that is where he grew up before heading west to Kamloops, BC. Pretty cool! What a find! Imagine, this film has been sitting for probably over 70 years in this little camera... that still works! Take that, digital!

 

[JLP]

Very cool and great to have a camera that have belonged to the family for so many years.

 

[Bill Burk]

That is so cool, good job rescuing the film!

 

[snapguy]

wow

Awesome. Ghosts from the past. A real keeper.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

My sister saw it and said it looks like me in the picture. I kind of agree!

 

[Jeff Kubach]

That is great!

Jeff

 

[jerrybro]

There is a joy in connecting with the past. In a box of stuff my parents gave me I found some negatives my dad shot a decade before I was born. I even found what he thinks is his first roll of film and a photo of my mother when she was 15. Printing the negs was a joy. Scanning and emailing the print of my mom was great. I also found a print of my grandfather holding me over his head when I was 2, and a neg of me and my brother when we were very young. These moments, where we can connect with relatives from the past, via photography, cannot be relived any other way.
This is why I love film and analog media. Digital is now. The history of digital is one of transience. Changing from 1 perfect medium to another, and obsoleting the past at an incredible pace. I have diskettes that cannot be used by any computer I or anyone I know, owns. But I can listen to albums from the 40s and make prints tomorrow from negs almost 70 years old. So why is digital better for anyone other then the producers of the medium?

 

[Ian Grant]

Verichrom was introduced in 1907/8 by Wratten & Wainwright in the UK, the director responsible for the research into spectral sensitivity and the films introduction was CEK Mees who joined Kodak in 1912/3. Wratten still exists as part of Kodak UK.

Ian

 

[Axle]

Fantastic! I love finding rolls of film in old cameras and processing them and seeing results.

Sadly I've only had one success, the other two had nothing worth scanning on the rolls.

 

[Michael Howard]

Very likely, you can pull much better results out of that film by darkroom printing it. I had a roll once that looked completely black after development. After shining a spotlight through it, you could discern features in it. Putting in an enlarger, and about 3 minutes of exposure on RC paper, I got this:

 

[pentaxuser]

Very likely, you can pull much better results out of that film by darkroom printing it. I had a roll once that looked completely black after development. After shining a spotlight through it, you could discern features in it. Putting in an enlarger, and about 3 minutes of exposure on RC paper, I got this:

View attachment 85707

Wow - 3 mins! Just goes to show what is recoverable. If that hadn't have worked, the neg sounds bullet-proof enough to be made into Superman's vest

pentaxuser

 

[MattKing]

Andrew should make a carbon print from it. Then the print would last even longer than the film!

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Hey Matt, the thought actually did cross my mind!

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

I re-spooled a roll of Presto 400 (expired in 2010) onto 620 spool so that I could shoot it in the Brownie Target Six-20. All exposure were thin except for one which I shot in bulb mode for 2 seconds. It was a cloudy overcast day. Can't wait to shoot again but on a brighter day. Here is the one image that turned out well. My mom is on the right. It was her dad's camera. She initially thought that it may have been her Grand Father's. Developed in Obsidian Aqua.

 

[StoneNYC]

It's a shame you rushed the job, you most likely would have have a LOT cleaner image using HC-110 instead of a staining pyro developer, would have held back a lot of the fog and given some better images, but I'm glad through scanning you were able to see something.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Which image are you referring to? Are you referring to the old Verichrome image? I never rushed the job. I put a lot of thought into it. I doubt HC-110 would have made a difference. Besides, I did not have that developer on hand anyways. I'm sure that is as good as I was going to get it.

 

[StoneNYC]

Which image are you referring to? Are you referring to the old Verichrome image? I never rushed the job. I put a lot of thought into it. I doubt HC-110 would have made a difference. Besides, I did not have that developer on hand anyways. I'm sure that is as good as I was going to get it.

Well for one, HC-110 is specifically known to be excellent at cutting down on base fog of old films, for 2 the times and dilutions for Verichrome and HC-110 are actually KNOWN, but the dev you used wasn't around then, so you had to guess at times or take other people's times.

I'm not saying like "bad bad" or anything, I'm just explaining why I made my statement.

We will never know for sure, but the oldest film I've used with HC-110 was expired in 1947 and gave a much clearer image than the one you were able to pull.

That said, I'm still really happy you got something out of it, it's very exciting.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

It's all a guessing game. I could have used HC-110 and gotten no better. We'll never know. My mother was absolutely thrilled and that's all that matters. She's even happier that that old camera is still being used.

 

[wblynch]

Just imagining that the negative is a manifestation of light particles that actually touched the subjects those many years ago is amazing.

It truly is the physical presence of those people!

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Yes, I think it's pretty special.