Ok, so earlier this summer I was in a local state park, wading in a stream. I noticed something down there, grabbed it, and up comes a camera. From the looks of it, its been there awhile…it looked like a camera perhaps from the early-to-mid 1980s. Presumably theres a roll of film inside. Here’s my question: is it possible to retrieve the images captured on this mysterious roll of film? Imagine the weird stuff you would find on a camera that’s been tossed in a river…maybe it was done purposefully, to hide some awful secret! Or, maybe, some kid just dropped it while canoeing. Either way, I wanna see whats on the film. So, photographers, is there a procedure I should use to remove the film intact? Should I just take the weatherbeaten camera to a good camera shop and let them take the film out?
The best resource on the net for photo related questions is Philip Greenspun’s Photo.Net.
There are a lot of things working against you. Several seasons of the freeze-thaw cycle - waterlogged film can almost never be salvaged. The film’s gel deteriorates and becomes a gooey mess. Any metal parts in the cannister should have rusted by now. Also, the chemistry of film changes over the years. It is unlikely a local processor has the ability to develop such old film. That said, even if it were salvageable, they would be unlikely to process it for fear of damaging their equipment. You might be able to convince them to run it just before they clean a machine, or pay to have it manually developed. In any case, it’s likely a waste of time. Sorry.
I’d have to guess that 20 years of soaking would have washed all the emulsion off the film or otherwise have ruined it. But…
Is it a point and shoot camera or can you manually rewind the film? If there’s no manual rewind, you’ll have to remove the film and rewind it by hand. Go into a completely dark room, open the camera, remove the canister and film. If the canister hasn’t corroded away and the film isn’t too brittle, then you can manually rewind the film into the canister. If the canister is too corroded, you can wind the film and put it in one of those plastic containers that film comes in. (Kodak ones are opaque.)
Label the canister as “open only in a darkroom” in the special instructions section of the developing envelope and send it to a processor.
Depends on whether the emulsion is intact (doubtful). You might get something if the film was exposed but even so it’d likely be a mess, plus if you take it to a standard photo lab they often throw out the really messed up pics and opnly charge you for the “good” ones. If you are going to attempt this make sure they understand you want all the pictures.
I’d round file it. Your endeavor has a very low probability of success.
I found a couple rolls of some old film and sent one off to Rocky Mountain Film Lab. They were unable to get any images off my film, but it was 30 years old and an unusual format. The other roll was done by a local film shop, see myGrandma’s old film page.
While Rocky Mountain took 4 months or so, and didn’t get any images off the film, they are supposed to be the best at old film. Oh, and they state up front that they have to charge whether or not they can get the pictures off the film.
My recommendation: Take the entire camera to a photo shop for examination. If it is 35 mm film, they can probably try to develop it for you. If it’s funky old 126 or other format like mine was, they may be able to do it or you may have to send it off to Rocky Mountain and forget about it for a few months.
I wouldn’t try to take the film out of the camera except in a dark room, or rewind it, because you may damage the film further.
If you’ve got a spare $20 bucks, or a friend with a dark room (and the film is standard), go for it.
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My brother use to be on a ground search and rescue team in the rockies. He recovered a video camera from a small plane that went down. It was out in the woods for about a year and a half.
Yes the camera was on when the plane went down. It also had audio. VERY creepy to watch/hear the crash - then nothing.
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