[Magdalen] Old photos

[Jim Guthrie]

From: Grace Cangialosi

I was struck by the difference in quality between the color and black and white 
pictures; the color ones have all faded, while the black and white ones could 
have been taken yesterday.

Black and White film is far more forgiving of not o good lenses in cameras and 
the processing is pretty straightforward. Many drugstores contracted with camera 
buffs to do developing and printing. I tried doing developing and printing B&W 
back in Junior High School -- but decided (as I have with many such things that 
seemed interesting during my lifetime <g>) that life was too short to devote 
time to it.

I've taken many slides over the years -- mostly railroad-related stuff and some 
record of my travels. My grandparents took thousands of slides, especially 
during their 64 week tour of Europe in 1959-1960,  but also other trips. Aside 
from several cartons of their slides, I'm the keeper of family photos going back 
4-5 generations.

The Michigan relatives (including my grandparent's entire collection of travel 
slides) are going to the Hop-Holland Archive in Holland Michigan (down the road 
from Judy Fleener).If you have family collections of photos and slides from 
Western Michigan, this might be a place to donate them. They're also getting 
family letters and the like (including my Uncle Dyke's letters describing the 
1927 revolution in China, and similar letters describing the 1949 revolution et 
seq. when he stayed to handle American affairs after the rest of the U.S. 
Diplomats were withdrawn (Aunt Frieda and his two children lived with us in NY 
during this period)..

Back to film:

The dies used in color prints varied from processor to processor. It should be 
remembered that film like Kodachrome have three layers and the dyes are added 
for each layer during processing. Then the dies on the prints are another 
process -- and the old "take it to the drugstore" method of getting pictures 
developed could result is really poor processing at both levels. I think you'll 
find that processing by Kodak (usually done by mail or through better-quality 
camera stores (remember them?) would not have faded so much.

It should be noted that even Kodachrome processing deteriorated when they 
switched to the Kodalux processing.

If one used Agfachrome, Dynachrome, Ektachrome or other types of film -- well, 
that was really chancy and one can probably see (or in worst cases) not see the 
result.

There were other efforts -- a company called Seattle Film Works sold movie film 
(as used in Hollywood back in the day <g>( spooled into lengths suitable for 35 
mm photos, and then distributed slides and prints -- but not the actual 
negatives(!) and as an added option -- digital prints (in different sizes/dpi) 
for a small extra fee. These varied in quality.

Finally -- it should be noted that if you have the negatives (or even slides) 
that were slightly or somewhat underexposed, the great thing about digital 
software is that you can fix these and get beautiful prints out of them. Over 
exposed, not so much as some detail will have been lost.

Cheers,
Jim Guthrie