In order to use my film cameras, I have to find a suitable supply of – you guessed it – film. 35mm film? No problem. I can feed my Nikon F100 and Nikon EM cameras all day on 35mm film. I can get 120 film for my Rollei, and I can respool it onto 620 spools for my Kodak Medalist.
616 film, on the other hand, is getting more and more difficult to procure. Right now my only sources are vintage eBay stocks of Kodak Verichrome Pan 616 film, that I hope isn’t older than 30 years past its expiration date. I’ve had some success with aerial film, such as GAF Aerographic 70mm film, but that’s still hit or miss.
Recently, however, I acquired a canister of 70mm Kodak WL Surveillance B&W film. This stuff is supposed to work with ISO 400 exposure, which means I should be able to get good shots if I stick it in my old boxy AGFA Chief camera.
So I spooled up a roll of the Kodak film onto some old 616 backing paper, put the mixture in the AGFA Chief, and just took some various shots here and there. Nothing exciting, it was just an opportunity to see if I could get anything semi-spectacular out of this film. If I get good results, then I’ll find a use for it. If not… then it’ll just stay on a shelf or land in a box or get packed away until I completely forget that I ever used it.
Monday morning, dropped the roll of film off at McGreevy Pro Lab. Say it with me, kids… it’s not a Monday morning unless Chuck’s dropping off film.
Tuesday afternoon, I got the e-mail from McGreevy Pro Lab. I immediately checked the invoice that was attached to the e-mail. If there’s any problems, the invoice will tell me that the film was undevelopable.
Nope, it was just a developing price. No sign of bad film. Good.
I picked up the developed film at McGreevy and examined it. Looks like I got four and a half shots. Hmm. Not happy with this one, this one looks like it has a light leak – hey, wait a minute.
I got this one for sure.
What you see here is a shot of what used to be a bookstore in downtown Albany. I remember the bookstore, it was thousands and thousands of paperbacks and magazines and textbooks, all strewn around with no sense of organization or cleanliness. That damp stench of musty paper permeated throughout the building.
And when the bookstore finally closed and all the books were removed, so too was the store’s big BOOKS sign… to reveal a glass-painted sign for Ferris Sales Co., a place that sold General Motors radios at one time in its life.
Snagged the picture. So this Kodak WL Surveillance film actually works. This is good. Now all I have to do is find a good use for it. Sprocket holes or no sprocket holes, this will provide me with some affordable ISO 400 film for both the wide-print AGFA Chief and the square-print AGFA Clipper Special f/6.3 cameras.
So what do I do with this vintage film? Probably the same thing I’ve done with all my experiments. Keep tooling with it, keep testing it out, keep testing and retesting and tossing and re-tossing and scoping and re-scoping… until one day, one magical day, this AGFA Chief will produce a photo that’s competition-worthy.
And remember, this is the same camera that helped me capture The Agfa Bridge Over Ansco Lake. Which means I do not think this camera is done producing quality shots. Not by a longshot.
So what do I do right now? I’ll re-roll another batch of Kodak WL Surveillance film in this camera’s chassis…
… and I’ll take the next step.
Chuck The Writer 