Found film in purchased camera

[skucera]

I just picked up a Nikon F2 Photomic today for a steal at a thrift shop, and it has a roll of film in it. Every time I've gotten a camera with film in it, it has always been opened by curious folks at the stores, and then closed again. The rolls are always ruined up to the point that the film hadn't come out of the canister yet, and the part I shot was the only bit that turned out. We'll see about this roll, since it has only four shots exposed so far.

Scott

 

[largedrink]

I have processed found film in the past, it's interesting. About a year ago I purchased a box of camera gear that included a roll of exposed 620 Kodak Verichrome Pan film wrapped in paper with the label "pre-war Rolleicord". Today I finally took it into the lab to get developed, if there are any good shots I'll post them here.

 

[papaki]

It has happened to me with three Lubitel cameras I bought (all different, one of them inscribed with Loomp).
I just love it. I give it my best guess/shot in developing them. It is worth it 100%.

 

[David Hughes]

Hi,

A lot of cameras come with a dead battery and a part used film in them. I guess the battery dies and they think the camera is broken and abandon it and then, later on, it goes - just as it is - to a charity shop for me to find...

Or else they see the price of a new battery and abandon the camera.

I used to finish the films but don't bother these days as other people's photo's are boring and the film is usually not worth saving because of its uncertain age. OTOH, they are useful if you want to display, say, a FHKOO with the usual 3¼" of film in it.

Regards, David

 

[sleepyhead]

It has happened to me twice. Reading the posts above, I think I may be different from the average, because one time I contacted the previous owner (an Ebay seller) and told them about the film I found in the camera. I asked him what I should do with it. He asked me to send it back to him (and refunded me the postage).

The second time I found a film in a garage sale camera, I just threw it away. The owner was not find-able.

For me, and this is where I may differ from some, it's a privacy issue. What right have I got to develop someone else's film? If I forgot a roll of film with family photos in a camera I sold, I would prefer to either get it back or have it be destroyed, unviewed.

 

[seany65]

"The real camera company" (Manchester, England), usually takes any film out of the cameras that they sell, BUT, they sometimes sell joblots of these films for the curious to dev and print.

Usually You can never know what stories a camera has to tell, but if you get an exposed film in one it's a bit like the very first film of your own that you took to the lab to have processed: Will it come out alright? Will the pics be good, bad or indifferent? You have the added thing of What will the story be?

 

[skucera]

The thrift shops all say they remove film from donated cameras, but they leave film in all the time. I've seen many cameras that I have no interest in with film in them, and sometimes good batteries too.

I think there are two classes of sources of donated cameras here in Oregon:

1. Old folks die or downsize to move into assisted living, and their old cameras are donated. These seem to be the cameras that have good batteries and film, or sometimes dead batteries and film. Sometimes this includes dark room equipment too.
2. Normal folks bought a digital camera, or just use their phones, and don't need either old digital cameras or old film cameras, so they get donated.

There are undoubtedly other classes of people who donate cameras too. There are also some surprising people who rummage through the donated cameras too. (No, I'm not the surprising type.) This summer at 13-14-year-old girl was very curious about a Pentax ME Super, so I showed her how it worked, and she took it off to ask her mom to buy it for her. I hope the answer was "Yes."

Scott

 

[Ronald_H]

I love finding mystery rolls (in or outside a camera) and I always have them developed. My most spectacular find was a roll of C-22 color film in a Kodak Stirling II folder of mid fifties vintage. Sent it to a specialized lab and got back b&w prints.

A little bit of Google taught me the pictures were most likely made in the summer 1963 in Italy. Below I embedded the best of the lot:


Mystery roll - Kodak Sterling II by Ronald Hogenboom, on Flickr

Considering these pictures were made almost 55 years ago, and seeing the age of the subjects, it is extremely unlikely any of them is still with us. It also raises the question why the camera and film lay untouched for 51 years!

 

[agfa100]

Well not found in a camera but a bar! We went on a vac. to visit my aunt who was living in Nassau at the time. We used to spend our afternoon at this beach that had a nice little bar. After about our third day their the bartender had gotten to know us and said someone had left a roll of film and had never came back for it. He said enjoy someone else's vac also, and gave it to me. When we got home and developed the film we found two girls in there 20's had been to a topless beach and had spent too much time in the sun. When I opened the envelope with the prints both my wife and myself said at the same time "Nooooo!" we felt sorry for them and could understand why they left that roll of film behind.
wbill

 

[Dogman]

Not film but a SD card in a camera..../QUOTE]

I had this happen recently. It was a cheap, low capacity card with nothing interesting on it.

Even if you open a camera with film in it, you may be able to salvage some of the early shots on the roll. I know from past experience you can still get usable negatives even with pushed Tri-X that was inadvertently exposed.

 

[David Hughes]

I don't mind the old films in cameras but I do wish they'd throw the ones with a gruesome battery oozing yuk into the bin. I've picked up no end of cameras in mint condition externally but goo inside thanks to those morons.

Just once, and never again, I bought one and ended with a self tapping screw in the battery and a crowbar to try and lever it out and it was a complete waste of time and a good to excellent camera.

Regards, David

 

[john_s]

Some great work here:

http://westfordcomp.com/updated/found.htm

 

[Lux Optima]

Have inherited two old Pentax ME Super from my father. One with a film, 24 pictures taken. Inside the camera since the 1980s. Will develope it the next days, if there is any hope for pictures at all. Feels eerie...

Got a Super-8 camera (Paillard-Bolex) with a roll of film inside, too. Don't think that this will still be ok. The camera was opened before by some relatives...

 

[Bolo Kukus]

Forlorn hopes of pricless imaes in found films

Forlorn hopes of pricless imaes in found films

Some great work here:

http://westfordcomp.com/updated/found.htm

Is Gene still around? He was a regular poster on another photo sites (the one seemingly now in terminal decline) for years, but hasn't been heard of or from for some time.

His one-line responses in many posts were always a delight to read and ponder. A lateral thinker, with a fine sense of black humor.

Like the other posters in this thread and also, I suspect, the rest of us, I too have lived in the (so far unrealised) hope that films I've found in old cameras I've bought over many decades would hold priceless hidden images - my long-cherished fantasy of that 1920s folder found in a charity shop with a film of nude images of Mae West and suchlike, or candid shots of the gala swingers' ball in Atlantic City in 1910. To date, no such luck.

I still have a small box in my home darkroom with a dozen 'found' color negative films, but I'm by now leery of spending the cost of a C41 kit to soup them.

Sadly (for me) the 100+old films I've found in cameras over the years, have never produced any images I would define as "interesting". I've come to the conclusion that other people's snapshots are really of no interest to anyone. They did after all leave the film in the camera...

 

[Bolo Kukus]

Easy to clean some of these

Easy to clean some of these

I do wish they'd throw the ones with a gruesome battery oozing yuk into the bin. I've picked up no end of cameras in mint condition externally but goo inside thanks to those morons.

David, most of these can easily be cleaned, sometimes, by a careful application of isoprophyl alcohol with a Q-tip. The key word is "careful" - at all costs avoid saturating the innards with alcohol as it may seep into the electronics and cause havoc when you eventually test it out with new batteries.

I salvaged a really beaut Nikon F65 bought for peanuts on Ebay with this technique. It also contained a roll of C41 but I've yet to process it - probably I won't, at my ripe old age my curiosity about other people's happy-crappy snaps has long vanished. The camera continues to work well, tho the lektrics are a bit wobbly and on occasion the camera has to be turned off and on again between shots, but it keeps on shooting and shooting.

I paid A$50 for this baby. Everyone I know insists that was way too much, but it came with a fplastic 28-80 Nikkor G zoom which I flogged off for A$5 less than the cost of the entire kit. So!

Give the alcohol and Q-tip treatment a try, you never know your luck. Not on the bellows on a folder, please. This from one who did, and knows.

 

[David Hughes]

David, most of these can easily be cleaned, sometimes, by a careful application of isoprophyl alcohol with a Q-tip. The key word is "careful" - at all costs avoid saturating the innards with alcohol as it may seep into the electronics and cause havoc when you eventually test it out with new batteries.

I salvaged a really beaut Nikon F65 bought for peanuts on Ebay with this technique. It also contained a roll of C41 but I've yet to process it - probably I won't, at my ripe old age my curiosity about other people's happy-crappy snaps has long vanished. The camera continues to work well, tho the lektrics are a bit wobbly and on occasion the camera has to be turned off and on again between shots, but it keeps on shooting and shooting.

I paid A$50 for this baby. Everyone I know insists that was way too much, but it came with a fplastic 28-80 Nikkor G zoom which I flogged off for A$5 less than the cost of the entire kit. So!

Give the alcohol and Q-tip treatment a try, you never know your luck. Not on the bellows on a folder, please. This from one who did, and knows.

Thanks, Ill give it a try on the next horror I find. Knowing how this world works that will be years away as I'll be looking for a dud and will never find one. ;-)

Regards, David

 

[shawn]

I still have a small box in my home darkroom with a dozen 'found' color negative films, but I'm by now leery of spending the cost of a C41 kit to soup them.

If you want to see the images without the cost of the C41 kit process the film in B&W chemicals. You will get images out of them if the film is still intact.

Shawn

 

[Bolo Kukus]

My thanks to you both, David and Shawn. It should have crossed my addled pickled brain to process those C41s as B&W films. I will do the lot when I next crank up the darkroom at home. It's a little too cold now with the seemingly endless winter we are having down here in Tasmania, 4C and howling a gale today. Definitely not weather to be out and about with a camera...

 

[css9450]

I can add some to this thread. I bought an inexpensive Imperial Satellite 127 camera, which had an exposed roll of Kodak Verichrome Pan in it. I needed the spools anyway, for re-rolling 120 film onto. So even if the film turned out to be blank, I was gaining two additional spools. Turned out, the film was intact, if a little fogged. Probably shot in the early 60s. I was born in 1964, so these pics may have been shot before I was born!

This is a 1960 Chevrolet. Looks pretty new... And its interesting to see there are people besides my parents who kept film in the camera for many many months on end and get snow, summer sun, etc all on the same roll!

Don't know what's up with this airplane.... Mechanical issues?

One more:

 

[Archiver]

@CS9540 - would it be possible to identify the plane from the markings on the side? Might be a way to figure out who the photographer was, or who/where he was shooting.

The closest I've come to mystery pictures are:

- I once bought a new camera from a shop, only to discover a few photos in the in-camera memory. One was of a window covered with rain, another was a close up of a small potted cactus. EXIF data suggested that the photos were taken not too long before I bought it, so I suspect the camera may have been a return sold as new. Not cool. I found that I didnt like the camera anyway, so I took it back and exchanged it for a Fuji X100 black limited edition.

- my Dad has given me a couple of cameras as presents, and he sometimes takes test photos in the store before he buys them. The resulting images are always a bit funny to see.

- I dug up Dad's old Minolta SR-T and it still had a roll of film in it. For some god knows what the heck reason, I unspooled the film from the back. What on earth. It had been at least 30 years since that camera had been used, so who knows what images from our family's past might have been on there?

- I have a Fuji disc film that I found in a box a few years ago. The box had been sitting in a wardrobe since the early 80's, so again, I have no idea what will be on it when I eventually send it to Film Rescue.