I had it 27 years but I found the owners. . .
Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2018 8:08 pm
In 1991, I bought a Kodak Autographic 3A Special. That's the model of 122-film folding camera with the coupled rangefinder, and -- being 122 -- gigantic negatives, about 5 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches. There was a roll, partly exposed, in the camera when I bought it, so I developed it. That wasn't easy -- the old dip-and-dunk method -- but it worked. There were three images, all of them good, and one especially lovely. They showed a family apparently on holiday. I couldn't tell where they were but it seemed pretty clearly somewhere in Newfoundland.
Lately I've been scanning all my old negatives, more or less in sequence, and yesterday I was doing 1991. When I scanned the three 122 images I thought to put them on Facebook. Maybe I'd find out who the people were.
Overnight, 385 people "shared" my posting and by mid-morning this morning I knew who the family were. They were not tourists, but a local family. (The 3A camera had been stolen from their weekend home forty years ago.) I have broached the idea of doing a reenactment of one picture later this fall. That should be interesting -- not least the developing (which I do not relish).
If I do the reenactment, it will be with one of the three rolls of 122 film that Erie Patsellis (one of our colleagues here at Photography Today) sent me six years ago.
I think this Facebook link will work even for those without Facebook accounts but, if it does not, I will try to post the pictures here.
Lately I've been scanning all my old negatives, more or less in sequence, and yesterday I was doing 1991. When I scanned the three 122 images I thought to put them on Facebook. Maybe I'd find out who the people were.
Overnight, 385 people "shared" my posting and by mid-morning this morning I knew who the family were. They were not tourists, but a local family. (The 3A camera had been stolen from their weekend home forty years ago.) I have broached the idea of doing a reenactment of one picture later this fall. That should be interesting -- not least the developing (which I do not relish).
If I do the reenactment, it will be with one of the three rolls of 122 film that Erie Patsellis (one of our colleagues here at Photography Today) sent me six years ago.
I think this Facebook link will work even for those without Facebook accounts but, if it does not, I will try to post the pictures here.
Here is a link to the local news story they did on it. . . 