A week or two ago, one of my Facebook friends sent me a link to photos that were taken with aerographic film. Aerographic film is 70mm film that was used for reconnaissance photography. Hey look, there’s Havana, are those missile silos?
I’ve seen a couple of developed shots of aerographic film on flickr; Robert A. Stone III, who operates Stone Photography in New York City, has experimented with GAF Aerial film, here’s one of his shots.
If you can get fresh aerographic film, that’s fantastic. But you could also get some spoiled film – and the developed photos contain spider-webs, crackles and pinholes. Such was the case with flickr photographer nano_burger.
Man, and I thought my wonky Svema film had issues… But look. This aerographic film has sprockets. So theoretically… does this mean that my image will expose all the way to the sprocket holes and beyond?
Hmm…
Last week, I ordered two canisters of GAF Aerial film. This is what I received.
And inside the box is a film canister.
And inside that… fifteen feet of sprocketed, perforated, aerographic film, 70 millimeters in width.
I could trim this film so that it could fit in my Rollei or my Kowa or my Agfa Clack (120 shooters), or my Kodak Vest Pocket Autographic (my 127 shooter). Nah. It’s 70mm wide. That makes it the PERFECT size for my Agfa Chief and my Agfa Clipper Special f/6.3, both of which take 70mm film as long as the film is spooled on 616 rolls.
Oh you KNOW I’m going to have fun with this.
Okay. Time to load the film onto my 616 paper, and then wind it onto my spool.
And since I’m not doing anything with it currently… let’s take the Agfa Chief out of retirement.
I packed the roll of GAF Aerial film in the Chief, and took some test shots around the neighborhood. If the film develops well, then I can continue using it. If not… I’ve got another decorative knick-knack for the shelf. I walked up one side of Green Island and down the other. Keep your jokes about how that only took five minutes round trip, wiseacres.
And in doing so… I got these pictures.
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Well what do you know. This stuff works. I get halfway-decent pictures AND plenty of sprocket holes. Awesome.
So this is definitely in the “Chuck’s going to experiment a little more with this film” category. And just like every other experiment I do with film…
I’m going to keep trying and finessing this little project…
Until one day this black and white film set will have a colored ribbon next to it.
Chuck The Writer 
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