Kodak film canisters in lotsa colors... why?

johannielscom

johannielscom

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Found this shot online today:

022.JPG


and I just wondered: any method to Kodaks colorful madness with these canisters? I've seen many others as well, green caps, brown caps, silver canisters, yellow canisters, mint yellow, list is endless it seems...

Anyone that can explain if any colors meant any kind of film and if so, what color what film had?
 
They look super cool -- me wants some :D

Just like the plastic ones had different-looking lids until quite recently, the different color combinations allowed you to check your stock without having to open them all...
 
Right.

Yellow can, orange cap = Kodachrome
White can, blue cap = Ektachrome

Anyone else know of any combination? Tri-X? Plus-X? Panatomic?
 
Me too, Dave! :)

I was looking into them today because I'm planning shooting some shots of the 1932 Leica II and nickel Elmar 50/3.5 I recently combined, and wanted to find a nice canister to go with it as a prop. But then started wondering about the correct color combo...

Hoping to locate a true 1930s canister to team up with the camera and lens!
 
buzzardkid said:
Me too, Dave! :)

I was looking into them today because I'm planning shooting some shots of the 1932 Leica II and nickel Elmar 50/3.5 I recently combined, and wanted to find a nice canister to go with it as a prop. But then started wondering about the correct color combo...

Hoping to locate a true 1930s canister to team up with the camera and lens!
Click to expand...

Wouldn't an old Leica XMOO reloadable brass canister be more appropriate?
 
Hm.

FILCA (the IXMOO for LTM cameras) might be a decent alternative indeed, I may still have that one specimen I used to have...

Meanwhile, I found this link with a listing from a collection in the George Eastman House. Although Kodak itself says it does not provide any certainty since the canisters and cassettes on display were all opened before...

Anybody that can point me to a list of which films came in which canisters? I'd consider it pretty ridiculous that nobody would know about this anymore, not even Kodak?
 
Red for Kodachrome, blue for Ektachrome, black for Kodacolor, and I think green for Tri-X . I seem to remember that daylight Ektachrome started as blue top/yellow can but tungsten film was yellow top and blue bottom.

Tom
 
As kids, we'd fill them with sand and use them as 'shells' in our homemade cannon.
Nuts. Somehow, I still have all my digits.

.
 
Kodak Canisters

Kodak Canisters

At the October annual meeting of LHSA in Pittsburgh we visited the Photo Antiquities Museum they had a small collection of these canisters. That is when i learned that there was no official guide as to the color/film/date for these canisters. I found that hard to believe. It appears that the factories sometimes used the canisters they had on hand. So the only way to know for sure is to open an unopened box of film. These canisters were used from the late 1930's to the early 1970's, that a lot of different films and possible combination. It is not just the exterior colors, but the metals used and the physical differences in the canisters over the years. I am trying to confirm color/film/date combinations. I have about a dozen documented. So far I have found over 55 different color/style of canisters. If you have firm data on any color/film/date matches please let me know.
Thanks
Bob
 
vaphoto said:
So far I have found over 55 different color/style of canisters.
Click to expand...

Labs and users mixing them up on return or in storage won't make matters easier. I've got plenty of exposed Kodachrome stored in Agfachrome 50 silver aluminium canisters - that doesn't mean that it sold in bare metal canisters in the late eighties (indeed it positively did not at that time, well past the plastics age, and probably never did - the only colour canisters I've found period Kodachrome in were yellow), but rather that I was a Agfa employee after they had got out of both the Agfachrome process and silver canisters, and had plenty of opportunities to pick canisters out of crates of film that were being junked.
 
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