Posted on 01/18/2015 7:34:25 AM PST by virgil283
"Photographer Levi Bettweiser is the man behind the Rescued Film Project, an effort to find and rescue old and undeveloped rolls of film from the far corners of the world.
He recently came across one of his biggest finds so far: 31 undeveloped rolls of film shot by a single soldier during World War II.
Bettweiser tells us he found the film rolls in late 2014 at an auction in Ohio. About half the rolls were labeled with various location names (i.e. Boston Harbor, Lucky Strike Beach, LaHavre Harbor). “I know nothing about who shot the film or who it belonged to,” he says...."
(Excerpt) Read more at petapixel.com ...
One thing to consider is that ultimately the negatives will be scanned and processed in Photoshop, or something similar. This is a huge advantage. So long as enough detail is preserved, you can adjust the print you make to look great. Sharp, crisp, evenly exposed after post processing, it can look as good as if it were taken yesterday. I have taken old prints from the 1880 that are faded almost to nothing, Scanned them in color, and adjusted the levels for each color separately. The results are astonishing.
Wow! Thanks for the ping!
My friends father found a case of undeveloped film from a German WW11 captures train he had one roll processed, the pictures were amazing. I’ve lost contact with him so I don’t know what became of the rest.
Great photos and information about the Rescued Film Project. Thanks for posting this.
It is amazing.
I had a roll of film that sat around for about 7 years and the photo quality was pretty bad. I was color, so perhaps that was a factor.
Thanks for the shortcut! This is incredible. I have an uncle in California that had a huge jar full of undeveloped film. He’d fill a roll and toss it in the jar. I wonder if he still has all those rolls? I haven’t seen him in years. They wouldn’t be this amazing but it would still be fun.
Its alway fun to look into the past.
This site is like going to a museum with out leaving the house.Best thing I have seen in years
Chances are someone will run across this and recognize someone or some place or even themselves in the pictures. Toward the end of the site, it looked like Normandy with a photo shot from a German gun emplacement... Hope the right someone sees these.
Indeed. Color film is organically base, where the older b/w film were silver (as I remember). Used to develop and print my own b/w many years ago. Was schooled that b/w was much more durable. Our color negatives and prints have faded over the years, but my old b/w prints and negatives are still solid..(40 years).
Glad to see this man doing this work.
Okay, thanks for that info.
I know what you mean about the old prints. I have faded photos of my kids, who were born in the 1970s, but I have some family photos that are slightly more than 100 years old that still look pretty good.
Bump
That we’d striking to me too. The quality seems comparable to shots from that era developed and printed promptly.
Stupid Android spellchecker!
don’t forget to go to the source website
On a personal note, I am looking for photos of Saipan during wwwII.
If anyone knows of any database or collections, please let me know
later read
ping
Bookmark.
Thanks for keeping us apprised of the latest developments...
It is matter of heat, humidity and the type of storage. Most of the flaws in what you are seeing is the invasion of light as the paper became more loose. If you were to put the film in a sealed box, and stuck it in a controlled enviornment it should last many years.
The other issue that would be of concern is some of the formulae used has changed over the years. In order to get optimum results you might have to re-formulate the developer for those specific films.
I’ve processed rolls from the 50’s without a lot of degradation.
The contrast on these could have been kicked up a little bit in the post processing. But other than that, they look like the same horrible snapshots we take every day.
Its funny, I have been reading some letters from uncles writing from the front. They all asked for film in their letters home. Seemed to be the only thing they wanted. I would love to get my hands on it now, but they were probably thrown away 60 years ago.
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