I can understand the <No. 3> but after that I’m lost.
On the back of one picture of lilacs and the sky (taken with Kodak 100 35mm film Developed at London Drugs) here it says:
064 NA 6AAAA2N NNN 0 0646
<No. 3> 94369
The 94368 seems to be sort of an ‘odometer’ of how many pictures have been printed since it was reset because it goes up steadily (but on the second set it stays the same).
Can anyone tell me what the rest is?
I’ll be very grateful for your answers! This has confused me for years. Also if people understand the stuff on the back of APS pictures, I’d be twice as happy!
On another picture (if it helps!) It says:"
003 NA 2AAA2N a1J+ 2 0646
<no. 23> 94348
This is a blurry picture Taken on Fuji 200 film.
A long time ago I was a photographic printer, but the machines have changed a lot since then. Most of the colour corrections we did manually by looking at the negative.
One of the numbers will be the “channel”. In the case of the Noritsu machines we used at the time, this was the first 3 digits, i.e. the 064 or 003 on the back of your pics. The channel is basically the default exposure settings for the type of film emulsion, stored in the machine’s memory. So, in this case the channel for Fuji 200 would be 003.
The machines we used then printed four values for the basic colours cyan, magenta and yellow. Back then, this would be either an N (for neutral) or a + figure or a minus figure. If N, then there had been no need to correct. But, if we saw from looking at the negative that there was too much red, for example, then some magenta might have been taken out, giving a value of between -1 and -5. The fourth number was ‘density,’ which in practical terms means that if the picture was a bit dark you could lighten it up a bit. This was the most common correction made, and on the machines we used when you pressed the button to give the density setting this would expose the print.
I suspect that the "A"s in your sequence of numbers may just mean “automatic,” as the technology has come a long way since then (I left that job in 1989). Other numbers indicated the number of prints in that film and how many copies of each print, but unfortunately, I can no longer remember the order of the numbers.
I wouldn’t mind betting that the 'A’s refer to some variable that has been set on ‘automatic,’ though.
To Quote Arlo Guthrie (perhaps its paraphrasing - it was a long time ago)
“with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back explaining what each one was about”
This has confused me for years. Also if people understand the stuff on the back of APS pictures, I’d be twice as happy!