This photo was taken on--as far as I can tell--60 year old motion picture stock that I rescued.
A few weeks ago, I was at a junk store and I found a bulk film loader. Serious film photography nerds like me buy black and white film in 100 foot rolls, put them (in the dark) into a bulk film loader, and then are able (not in the dark) to roll the film into our own reusable film cassettes. It's a way to save a few pennies and to try weird film stocks that aren't offered any other way, such as black and white motion picture stock.
The bulk film loader that I found at the junk store was heavy, so I immediately knew it had film in it. What kind of film was it? How long had it been sitting there? I had to know, so I forked over a cool ten bucks and bought it. I reasoned that, even if the film had been exposed to light long ago, the loader itself was worth 20, so it was still a deal.
Figuring out what film you have if you don't even have a package is kind of tough. First, I assumed that it was black and white--while you could purchase color film in bulk for a long time, you cannot anymore and it was always more of a black and white thing anyway. Besides, if the film was color, the worst that would happen is that my chemicals wouldn't do much to it.
So, I pulled out a little in my film changing bag, loaded it up on a reel, and the next time I developed some of my regular film, I threw the mystery film in. I had no idea what the proper development time was, obviously, but I reasoned that if it was black and white, I'd probably at least be able to make out its edge markings and see kind of film it was.
My hunch was correct - it was black and white film. It was also motion picture film, which I knew because the sprocket holes were shaped slightly differently than standard still 35mm film. As long as cinema film is black and white, you can run it through standard home developing chemicals, but color film is a no-go even with anything but specialized cinema labs because of extra chemicals they put on the film.
The problem with motion picture stock is, because it's not intended for still photography, they don't bother to mark up its edges with much information - certainly not frame numbers, and minimal if any identification of what kind of film it even is. All I got from this film was a cryptic EASTMAN 7 SAFETY FILM.
"Safety film" is easy enough, it was common after the 50s to mark film that way to differentiate it from the very flammable nitrate-based films used before. You almost never see it anymore, but Ilford (my brand of choice) still marks it on their bulk film rolls. I'm not sure why, maybe they're just using an old machine for those, or maybe they're just being whimsical.
"Eastman" is no help other than to tell me what company made it. Eastman is the company that makes Kodak film -- film branded "Kodak" usually is made for still photography while Eastman-branded film is for motion pictures.
But that's as far as I could get. There was never a film called EASTMAN 7, and as far as Internet research could get me, the number 7 was likely some internal code that no one remembers, like the machine that spooled it or something.
I decided to shoot some and see how it looked, so I rolled off a few shots in the kitchen at ISO 400, just because that's what the camera was set to. I developed that roll and got incredibly faint images - this film was SLOW.
The edge code had one other clue - a set of symbols (in my case a triangle and a plus sign) that, according to the forums I found, designated year-of-manufacture. The problem was, they recycled those symbols every 20 years. So all I knew was that the film was made either in 1938, 1958, or 1978. Looking at the Eastman catalog, the slowest black and white they made in 78 was Double-X, which was 100 speed. What I was seeing was much, much slower.
So, looking back to 1958, I see that they sold a film called BACKGROUND-X. This was an incredibly slow (ISO 32) film designed to shoot the scenes they'd back-project behind actors for effects. So, for instance, if you need a scene of Spencer Tracy in the back seat of a cab as it travels down the street, you'd put him in a fake cab on a set and project the street moving away behind him on a big screen behind him. That footage needed to be extremely fine-grained, because it was going to be re-photographed and we all know that if you make a copy of a copy, it degrades.
So. I had a suspect. This might be extremely old Eastman BACKGROUND-X, which was presumably made in 1958 and was discontinued entirely in 1964.
I did further research and learned that many people think Kodak continued to sell a version of this film until the 80s as something called Panatomic-X, which was also a 32-speed film, so I looked up the proper development times for that and did some further tests.
I found that the film seemed to respond to about ISO 25 (which makes sense as the film has aged and become more unstable) and that it needed slightly more development time than what I found.
Rachel was kind enough to let me experiment on her, and this is what I got. This film has a lot of what is called "base fog", which just means that the chemical coating is starting to degrade and become unstable. If it looks like these images are fighting their way through a dense fog to get to your eyes, that's why.
I'm still not sure how to use this film, and it is extremely difficult to scan. It basically breaks my entire workflow, which is based on a consistent black value for the film base. The fog makes this film inconsistent from frame to frame as to what value black has, meaning the scanner basically throws its hands up in the air and says "you're on your own here, buddy." I don't even want to think about printing it.
On top of that, some frames just have some weird dark splotches. I am not a chemist but I'm thinking that this is another symptom of the chemicals falling apart.
There's a lot of this stuff, probably enough for another 20 rolls or so. I'm looking forward to finally putting it to use 60 years after it was made. To think - it's been waiting for longer than my father has been alive for me to use it.
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