I just found an old 110 camera of mine that still had the film in it. It was kept in a box on the upper shelf of a closet. I am guessing it is 20 to 30 years old.
Think the film is still good?
There are also some shots left. Should I shoot them just to get the film rolling or take it in to get developed as is?
You might not get much out of it, but for less than ten bucks (with shipping), you can’t go wrong.
I had one of these developed a few years ago, most of them came out purple. But for 10 bucks you really can’t go wrong.
I’m not sure what good it will do to ‘get the file rolling’ but I don’t imagine it would hurt or help anything by taking more pictures. Whoever develops it will have to string it out anyway. Personally I’d take pictures with it just to see if there is a different quality because of age of the film versus the age of the picture.
I turned in a 110 roll a few years ago under the same circumstances except it was all used up and not in a camera. Purple is a good description… they all looked like they had a purple tint to them. But, I still got some pictures I was happy to have.
finish the roll or advance the film to the end before removing from the camera.
I’d take other pictures just to get the entire roll on the take-up spool. I’ve developed old exposed (8-10 years) 35mm film and it did have a strong bluish tinge to it. It wouldn’t surprise me if you had the same result, assuming they come out at all.
As others have noted, for ten bucks. . . .
I found some old 110 film in a camera about a year ago. Had it developed and got some very pink pictures of a dearly departed dog. Scanned them and color-corrected them as best I could. They were also pretty grainy, but it was neat to have a few more pictures of Miss Emily.
I think the 110s were always grainy. I took some similar shots with a 126 (its predecessor) and 110. Down the line, 126 was superior.
Similarly, the 110 was vastly superior to its successor, the Kodak Disc Camera.
When I worked at a 1 hour photo lab in high school (mid 90s), “I found this old roll of 110” was one of my most dreaded phrases. 110 was really terrible to begin with (grainy, as Earl says), and age really doesn’t do it any favors. You’ll probably get pictures, but they’ll almost surely be grainy and the color will be very weird. Please don’t take it out on the person at the photo lab – he probably did his best. These days I imagine the tools are somewhat better (though maybe not for 110), but in my day, I basically had to run a print, look at the outcome, and make adjustments based on my experience and judgement. I was very good at color correction on those machines, if I do say so myself. With normal film, I could almost always get it right the first time, or definitely the second. With old 110 (or really any old film), I could do 4 or 5 tries and still not get it to look right (and by that point the profit for the shop has evaporated – usually in those cases, each frame needs to be individually corrected, so it’s multiple tries for each shot).
Anyway, my point is – go ahead and get it processed, and be happy to have any images at all, but don’t expect them to look good.
My tale of 110 film from a few weeks ago.
I took some 110 negatives (already developed) to a chain camera store to have new copies made. (The originals had been damaged and were printed on awful matted/weaved paper.) I asked the clerk how much. 40 cents per print plus $4.95 for a CD. Had to be sent to the lab downtown. Okay.
A week later I go to pick them up. That’ll be “$54.74 plus tax.” What the flarging huh? I was stunned. Pointed out what I had been quoted. (The prices were listed.) But they had extra charges for scanning etc. that were not listed or quoted. Managed to get them down to the original quote though.
So the $10 in the link including developing the negatives looks great. I also note that the site doesn’t seem to charge extra for scans onto CD. So I think the store was definitely trying to rip me off.
Moral: Buyer beware.
And the prints came out grainy and kinda bluish. Oh well.
Ugghhh, those things were REALLY bad. And if you used something like 400 speed film in em you might as well not have bothered taking a picture in the first place, unless of course you were going for that “hmmm, that might be big foot off in the distance” look.
I found undeveloped 35mm film in a drawer I was cleaning out. Having no idea what was on it, I decided to get it developed out of curiousity. It was of my cousins two kids when they were about 2 and 3 yrs. old. At the time I developed the film they were in their early 20’s. It was color film and the pictures came out clear but there was a sepia tone overlaid on them.
Anyway, I had no idea film lasted that long.
They don’t charge extra because they specifically state that they don’t scan 110 negs to CD.
Kind of related to this, but recently I found a box of unexposed rolls of B&W 35 mm film from when I took a photo class in college. This would have been about 10 years ago. Anyway I put one in my camera and shot some pictures, but haven’t developed it yet. What should I expect?
Hey, look what I found, although I’d take it with a lick of salt:
“Negative values on the sliders in these tools will allow modern digital images to achieve the color shifts and grain of vintage film, for that elusive “Retro Look”, which has become the fall-back position for many middle-tier designers. Adobe is currently putting the finishing touches on a deal with Polaroid to fold their Instant Film Plug-In into CS5.”
Man, I better get cranking on my new “Grassy Knoll 2.0” book complete with new found footage!
Isn’t it terrific when “looks like shit” morphs into the coveted “elusive ‘Retro Look’”?
Same with those people who claim they adore the evocative crackles and hiss of badly preserved vinyl records.
Its funny you should say that.
I have couple of paddling pictures. People in canoes greeting each other on a river bank. One in the distance with a rapid close to the camera. And one of a guy doing a serious rapid in a canoe.
All three were just very so so pictures. But I uses an image editing tool that allowed you to turn the pics into “oil paintings”. You could adjust how realistic/unrealistic the “painting” was. By making those photos fairly impressionistic I turned some really blah photos into three of my all time favorite pics.
I will be getting it developed soon. Don’t really care too much how they turn out, I’m more curious about what is on them. I also don’t have any idea how old it really is. But, it has to be at least 25 years.
So. . . any update???