31 Rolls of Undeveloped Film from a Soldier in WWII Discovered and Processed

[$tevie]

Photographer Levi Bettweiser is the man behind the Rescued Film Project, an effort to find and rescue old and undeveloped rolls of film from the far corners of the world.

He recently came across one of his biggest finds so far: 31 undeveloped rolls of film shot by a single soldier during World War II.



Bettweiser tells us he found the film rolls in late 2014 at an auction in Ohio. About half the rolls were labeled with various location names (i.e. Boston Harbor, Lucky Strike Beach, LaHavre Harbor). “I know nothing about who shot the film or who it belonged to,” he says.

http://petapixel.com/2015/01/16/31-rolls...processed/

The Rescued Film Project website: http://www.rescuedfilm.com/#!rescuedwwii/c1d05

[Lemon Drop]

That is really cool, thanks for sharing that Stevie. I hope that someone will come forward who can either identify the photographer, who more than likely is deceased now, or recognize many of the scenes.

[Racer X]

I remember maybe 10-15 years ago, someone ran across over 8 hours of color movie footage from WW II, and that effectively doubled the color movie film archive for WW II.

[lost in space]

That is great to see. I read somewhere about a chemical used for old B&W photo paper. Anybody know what they have to do differently when developing film so old?

[JPK]

Thanks for passing that on. I am sure there is a whole generation of photographers that have no idea how to develop and print film. I am even before they had the cool spiral plastic film holders as shown in the video. I hated having to spool up film on the metal coil type spools in the pitch dark!

JPK

[Racer X]

lost in space wrote:
That is great to see. I read somewhere about a chemical used for old B&W photo paper. Anybody know what they have to do differently when developing film so old?

I would do some "snip tests" and use some of the film chips and experiment with various developers, times and temps to get the best results. The big issue is background radiation raising the base exposure on the film. But chemicals available today will develop WW II era B&W film just fine.

[M>B>]

lost in space wrote:
That is great to see. I read somewhere about a chemical used for old B&W photo paper. Anybody know what they have to do differently when developing film so old?

An anti-fog agent like Benzotriazole ?

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/12...Fog_1.html

[Racer X]

Yeah, I'd browse through the Photographer's Formulary catalog. They have their own versions of the classic chemistry that was contemporary to that WW II era film.

[davester]

Very nice, $tevie. I used to do a lot of darkroom work so I can completely relate to the tediousness and attention to detail involved in developing. I really liked this guys philosophy regarding the film that he was rescuing.