My son is coming home soon from school, and there is going to be a blow out party here. Momma Bear wants a ton of pictures. She has her fancy-dancy digital camera. I still got a love affair going with my with my 35mm Canon film camera. So far so good. I thought it would be cool to take some vintage shots with the cameras I had as a kid, So I dug around in the basement and found my old brownie starlex and starflash cameras. I found B&W film on the internet, size 127, Efke R 100. made in Croatia as I understand. I got flashbulbs on e-bay. I have a lead on an old-timer a few blocks away who has the equipment to handle the old film type and will develop it for me. I get it all here, and I load the first roll of film, and it is not right. The numbers in the little red window are not right, and lead me to believe the film is loaded backwards, which is impossible as the spool is keyed and won’t load wrong way around. Please help me dopers, I know at least one of you has encountered this and found a work around.
Years since I used a camera of that type but is it possible that the film makers have used a count-down system rather than a count-up one, so you know how many exposures remain, rather than how many have been used?
What is ‘not right’ about the numbers?
I would add, if you’ve got time before the party, shoot and process a roll, to be sure there are no light-leaks in your camera. Or shutter problems. Or film advance problems. Or…
I think I got this sorted out. After a little searching on the web I found out 127 film would give 8 or 12 exposures depending on the camera. There are two sets of markings on the film backing, which one you see is determined by the location of the little red window on the camera you are using. So I took out the film in the camera (exposing it and making it trash, but heck, no images on it anyway a loss of $4, I will sue Croatia later). I compared the markings to a different roll, and they were offset by 1/8 inch or so. It was just a manufacturing glitch, a bad roll of film. I was seeing just a portion of the markings for the other size format. I loaded a fresh roll of film and all is good. Sort of. The exposure numbers are all upside down. Leave it to those wacky Croatians to have a good laugh at our expense.
To Postcards, I have four weeks, and will heed your advice, it is beautiful weather here right now and I will shoot a roll this afternoon and get it processed asap. The last time these cameras were used was around 35 years ago, a “weapons check” is definately in order.
Aw, too late to answer.
Still, it wasn’t just film cut and spooled, paper had to be cut, taped, and spooled. Glitches happened even with old Kodak roll films. On cameras that had autostop framing, no problem. On those that didn’t, sometimes ya just had to guess. That was pretty darn rare, tho, in my experience.
Old school is fun. Let us know how it went