{"id":168,"date":"2007-08-09T12:31:56","date_gmt":"2007-08-09T17:31:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/posts\/2007\/08\/09\/old-memories-trapped-in-126-film-cartridges\/"},"modified":"2008-10-21T22:58:20","modified_gmt":"2008-10-22T03:58:20","slug":"old-memories-trapped-in-126-film-cartridges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/posts\/2007\/08\/09\/old-memories-trapped-in-126-film-cartridges\/","title":{"rendered":"Old memories, trapped in 126 film cartridges"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was a child, maybe around 12 years old, I had a cheap Kodak X-15F<\/a> camera (why do I remember the model number?) that used those 126 film cartridge<\/a>s that were popular at the time.<\/p>\n

I could afford to buy the film with the money I earned from my paper route, but I could never afford to get the films processed. So, they went into dresser drawers, and sat there. Months turned in years, years into decades. I still have them today. Six rolls of colour film that have been improperly stored through 25 hot humid summers.<\/p>\n

I have very little idea what might be on them. I know I shot one roll on a trip to Ottawa with my “big brother” Mike. We visited his father, who was a senator. Some other rolls are probably from school trips… maybe the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto. Beyond that, I have no idea.<\/p>\n

I had tried to get one roll developed when I was in university, at one of those 1-hour photomat places, with the automated processing machine. As you might expect, it was a complete loss. The dried out old gelatin layers just fell right off. I can vaguely make out a few shapes, maybe a line or two.<\/p>\n

I recently discovered that there are actually photo-labs that specialize in handling these kinds of old films. And it’s not even too unbearably expensive. Much more than processing new film, obviously, but cheap compared to the excitement of rediscovering long-forgotten treasures.<\/p>\n

Two well-known labs are Rocky Mountain Film Lab<\/a>, and Film Rescue International<\/a>. Film Rescue has a lab in Indian Head, Saskatchewan, so I’ve decided to send my film there (avoid the border hassles.)<\/p>\n

The main trick they use, I think, to rescue old colour film is to process it with a black-and-white process. Colour film degrades much more than black-and-white film, because the coloured gelatin layers dry out and become brittle. But apparently the blue layer, which I guess is the deepest, can usually be recovered fairly well, and processed with a high-contrast developer. You’ll end up with black-and-white photos, but that’s better than nothing.<\/p>\n

I sent the film to them today. They only run a batch once of film once a month, though. I won’t get to hear any results until near the end of September.<\/p>\n

When I get some results back, I’ll put them up here.<\/p>\n

Update, Oct. 21, 2008: Here’s part 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a child, maybe around 12 years old, I had a cheap Kodak X-15F camera (why do I remember the model number?) that used those 126 film cartridges that were popular at the time. I could afford to buy the film with the money I earned from my paper route, but I could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":336,"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions\/336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thegatesofdawn.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}