What did people do with pre-WW2 roll film negs?

xtolsniffer · Feb 16, 2017

Hi all,
I've started collecting old folders that I find in charity shops. It's fun to get them working and to use them. They mostly take 6x9 cm negatives on 120 film, and most pre-date the second world war. I don't have a 6x9 enlarger (6x7 is the biggest I can go), so I've either been cropping them to 6x7 which is shame as I like the more rectangular format and the loss of resolution in the corners, or contact printing them. I thought that contact printing them would be a little small, but I notice that 6x9 is about the same size as the old 'carte de visite' photos. I have some very old family photos from around that era that look like contact prints but I was wondering what the usual form of production was around that era, were they all just contact printed or enlarged? If contact printing was the norm, then I'm delighted to not only take the images on the old cameras but to print and present them in the traditional way too.

Theo Sulphate · Feb 16, 2017

I, too, have such family photos that appear to be contact printed.

As for the negatives, there are no old ones. Apparently I'm the only one in my family who was interested in photography and who bothered to save negatives.

R.Gould · Feb 16, 2017

I also collect folders. my oldest being a 1936 Voightlander baby bessa, before the last war, and for a while after, most were contact printed, enlargers were more for the Professional and very advanced amateur, indeed, up till the mid to late fifties contact printing was more the norm, indeed, the first printing I ever did was with a contact printing kit from Johnsons of Hendon, and a lot of cameras from the era were 66, even 645, I have recently bought an Ikonta 645 fro the late forties, many folb
ders were duel range, 69 with masks for 66, I have a few ensigns, an English made camera, that have the masks for 66, but most people in that era would use 69 for the bigger size for the contact print, I also have a lot of prints, many made by a relation of mine, taken on a Kodak folder, contact printed, and it was not untill the earlie sixties, when enlargers became more affordable, that he bought one and printe to 1/4 to whole plate ( don't ask me the actual size in inches)
Richard

xtolsniffer · Feb 16, 2017

Thanks for that - looking at the size of the negative you would think that there is no real point in contact printing something that small, but actually they are rather beautiful - even though i now have to wear reading glasses to see them properly!

locutus · Feb 16, 2017

I've picked up some 10x15 postcard sized ilford paper and as a project i plan to contact print 120 negatives on them in matching sets.

Should be fun! :-D

xtolsniffer · Feb 16, 2017

I'm contacting them onto the postcard sized Ilford paper - it works well!

AgX · Feb 16, 2017

In Europe the typical way to make prints of such negatives was contacting them. For the private user enlargements were the exception.

DWThomas · Feb 16, 2017

Yes, I'm not sure I could currently lay my hands on one, but when I was very young, my mother had a "folding Kodak" that shot 6x9 frames. I remember the prints being on glossy paper with a deckled edge and there was a rectangular area embossed into the finished print. I think it was when the 127 and 35mm films became more prevalent that enlarged -- "3x" or "4x" -- prints became popular, or "the norm."

tedr1 · Feb 16, 2017

I have a collection of 120 negatives from my father's Bessa 6x9 camera that are from Bristol (UK) in the 1950s and 1960s. The original wallet that holds them offers the "enprint" service which was the phrase used for enlargements, the standard sizes offered were 3.5in square, 3.5 x 4.5 and 3.5 x 5in and the price was sixpence each (about 3p). These are common in our family album from the period. Prewar prints seem to be mostly contact sizes. Where the negative does not exist these contact prints respond well to scanning and printing at larger size, there is plenty of detail in the original print and the larger print size is often preferable.

darkroommike · Feb 16, 2017

I used to have access to a early Pako projection printer, it had carriers, setups, etc., and buttons you used to tell the printer when to cut off the photocell, for sizes through 116/616 but my folks prints from that era are mostly contact print size. I have also used a Pako contact printer that used the same sort of 5-button arrangement but no photocell. I suspect that pre-WW2 drugstore quality prints were made by either contact print or printer but suspect that a printer with a photocell produced many more salable first prints.

jimjm · Feb 16, 2017

I recently contact-printed some old negatives for a neighbor who had received them from a family member. As far as I can tell, most were roll-film negatives from the 1910's to 1930's, all were either 3.5x4.5, or slightly larger. Probably taken with larger Kodak folding or box cameras. There were some scuffs and scratches and a lot of dust, but they yielded some nice images after a bit of cleaning. Here's a few:

Fujicaman1957 · Feb 16, 2017

AM I the only one that gets a sense of time travel looking at very old photo's like these ?

Gerald C Koch · Feb 16, 2017

All the drugstore prints that I have are contact prints on deckle edge paper. They were true snapshots, a bit of ephemera. People were not usually interested in larger prints. Indeed the lenses of the old folders were usually not of sufficient quality for much magnification. I have tried enlarging some negatives and was disappointed in the results.

etn · Feb 16, 2017

Fujicaman1957 said:
AM I the only one that gets a sense of time travel looking at very old photo's like these ?

No, definitely not. I guess it happens to a lot of people.
I like this sense of time travel so much that I try to reproduce "the old look" using various devices ranging from cheap old cameras to, say, a Summicron from the 50's. Tri-X works well for that. When I see the prints, the look is there, but everything on the pic looks different, the cars, the fashion etc... the only thing I get is a time travel into the present! It's a fun trip none the less.

Andrew O'Neill · Feb 16, 2017

I've got all my Grand Father's old negatives from when he was a kid in the 1910's, and onward. All of them were stored in their original envelopes. No sleeves. All of them are in great condition.
My Gran and Gramps, skating on the Thompson River, Kamloops.

bsdunek · Feb 16, 2017

Enlargers are hardly new - they were around in the 1800s. My Grandmother had one in the early 20th century.

RichardJack · Feb 16, 2017

That is wonderful that you still have them. As mentioned most formats were large enough to simply make contact prints. Many old enlargers handled 4x5 and smaller negatives.
Scan them and archive them and hand down the originals to someone you trust.

Slixtiesix · Feb 16, 2017

Back in the days, contact printing was the way to go for everything larger than 35mm/4x4, at least it was so with the average people. Most box cameras and folders did not have the resolving power to allow for big enlargements anyway. This is not to say that enlarging did not exist as a technique, but it was merely used by professionals using a Rollei or Exakta or something like that.

xtolsniffer · Feb 16, 2017

Thanks for all the replies. I think I'll make myself a little 6x9 contact frame and enjoy a trip to the past!

paul ron · Feb 16, 2017

Gerald C Koch said:
All the drugstore prints that I have are contact prints on deckle edge paper. They were true snapshots, a bit of ephemera. People were not usually interested in larger prints. Indeed the lenses of the old folders were usually not of sufficient quality for much magnification. I have tried enlarging some negatives and was disappointed in the results.

Ive got shoe boxes full of old negatives and prints. Its family stuff, mostly from Europe, printed on heavy weight post card stock. It has mailing format on the rear with TO and FROM lines n an area to post a message... oh and a stamp rectangle in the upper right corner. BUT these were definitely contact prints, I did find the negatives that correspond with some of those images.

The drugstore pictures done in the early 1920s and forward, done here in the USA, are similar prints, rarely enlargements, but on single weight papers. Some with edges that looked like pinking shears were used to separate them, n very few with smooth edges, but all look as if cut off one larger sheet of contacts.. maybe they used a cutting stamp to keep them uniform?

Same here, I tried to print a few negatives n it was a disaster so I gave up. I still have the negatives saved for another day when I have time to possibly scan them. Maybe that will be a chore my kids may find interesting to track our relatives.

BTW many of the realy old European prints dating back to the Czar were done by studio photographers, flash powder LF cameras, for special family portraits, are silvering so badly faded, im afraid they will be lost forever since I don't have negatives for those. Does anyone know how to reverse print silvering?

dpurdy · Feb 16, 2017

My Grandmother born in 1894 worked in a photo lab when she was young and I have her contact printing frame. A beautiful wooden frame and back with a 4.5 inch square printing window. It is beautiful enough it could be used as a frame to hang on the wall. It must be from the 19teens. There was an old photo album full of old contact printed fiber prints most with deckle edges in my family filled with family photos. A real treasure.

AgX · Feb 17, 2017

paul ron said:
Some with edges that looked like pinking shears were used to separate them.

Pinking shears have got a regular pattern, deckle shears an irregular one.

mr rusty · Feb 17, 2017

I have been working with some small old prints from a deceased relative which were obviously contact printed. Most on post-card size from 1910-1920 and I guess from 122 film. The detail in the prints is excellent, and are easily increased in size by a process we don't talk about here

here's one that was a very raggy faded postcard sized print that has yielded a pretty good image of a relative

Sirius Glass · Feb 17, 2017

Negatives were stored in the negative bags in which the processors returned the developed negatives.

What did people do with pre-WW2 roll film negs?

xtolsniffer

Theo Sulphate

R.Gould

xtolsniffer

locutus

xtolsniffer

AgX

DWThomas

tedr1

darkroommike

jimjm

Fujicaman1957

Gerald C Koch

etn

Andrew O'Neill

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bsdunek

RichardJack

Slixtiesix

xtolsniffer

paul ron

dpurdy

AgX

mr rusty

Sirius Glass

What did people do with pre-WW2 roll film negs?

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