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I don’t know how lucky you have to be to find three rolls of old, lost film over your lifetime, but apparently I’m that lucky. Film that went forgotten about for decades and decades, locked away in a camera that was also forgotten and locked away in some box in a closet somewhere. And somehow these rolls of film keep finding me.

What’s extra interesting about this roll is that I actually have been able to find out a little about it’s background and the people in the photos. Here’s the story:

One of my all-time best friends back in Minnesota, Katie Yernberg, came across five old cameras at a family garage sale for Steve & Bev Steberg, who have been very close to her since she was a wee girl. Knowing me, she knew they would make a perfect Christmas gift for a guy who collects vintage cameras. Also (from what I hear), I’m apparently difficult to shop for, so Katie was just relieved to find me anything I’d like. But little did she or the family know, one of the five cameras she gave me contained another present, a roll of Kodak Verichrome 620 film.

So after I got them developed we found out a little more about the backstory. The cameras belonged to the family’s late-grandfather, Clifford Steberg, the older gentleman in the photo above. It should also be noted he was a veteran of WWII, where he lost a leg and was obviously a total badass. The photos were taken around 1964 to 1965, and had been waiting patiently in a Spartus Full-Vue camera. On a side note, the camera is actually built for 120 film meaning someone had re-spooled it for 620.

The first three photos were from when the family was moving a new house onto the farm near Willmer, MN where Steve’s mother, Val was actually born. The kids in the photo are Steve when he was about 8 years old, his older brother Jim, and their cousins Gary and Mary on the right. From what I hear, this was a pretty big event on the farm, and it’s pretty cool since you can actually see the blocks and the crane they were using to lower the new house onto the old foundation.

The camping photos were taken at a state park somewhere in Minnesota where we find Steve at the water fountain when he was about 9 years old. Not only does Minnesota have numerous state parks, but they also run thick with water fountains, so it’s difficult to pinpoint which state park they could be in. The car to the right of the awesome camper trailer is apparently a ’56 Chevy Station Wagon, and the young man crying in front of it all is a friend who was visiting for the camping trip. What had him so upset is lost to history. The mother, Val Steberg, also makes her first appearance. And I may be to blame for the black stripe across the top of the last photo. I didn’t expect there to be a roll of film inside the camera when I first opened up the back, and unfortunately it wasn’t completely rolled through.

But either way, it’s always incredible finding a roll of film that had been lost for almost 50 years. The family was as happy and surprised as I was to finally see the pictures, which it felt good to actually be able to get them in the hands of some true owners.  Which was rewarding and an added bonus (that hadn’t been the case in the other two rolls I’ve found seen here and here). And it’s another good lesson in always keeping your eyes open for hidden treasure.

After finding my first roll of mystery film, I’ve been instantly trained to pick up and open every old camera I see while in an antique shop with the hopes of finding another roll. And luckily my persistence paid off and it paid off rather quickly.

Last October while in an antique shop in Portland, I spotted an mid 1950’s Kodak Brownie Hawkeye with a little paper tab sticking out the bottom seam. And what do you know, that little paper tab was attached to a roll of Kodacolor-X 620 film. So after buying a camera I already had for $15, it was all mine.

The problem is, being that it was color film that hasn’t been made since 1974, the chemicalsto process this film also haven’t been made for over 30 years. So after some detective work, I found I could send the film to a select few labs in the country that specialize in antique film and freeze these old chemicals to develop everything in large batches. The place I settled on and got the best vibe from was called Film Rescue International all the way out in Fortuna, ND. Also, I learned that whatever you do, don’t send your film here.

And as luck would have it, Film Rescue happened to have a batch deadline coming up. So Iquickly mailed in the mystery film, waited a few weeks, then they called and said they would start the processing in four weeks. After that it was another four weeks to see what developed. Then they emailed me back with thumbnails of whatever they could find on the film, and luckily there actually was something to see. So after months of waiting, I finally got my first glimpse of what has been locked away in the back of that forgotten camera for over thirty some odd years.

Unfortunately, the wait wasn’t over just yet. It wasn’t until another three weeks that I finally received a nicely packaged package with the results from a find made way back in October. But it was well worth it. The waiting, the money (definitely the most expensive roll of film I’ve ever developed) and the anticipation of not knowing was all worth it. Here are the results to the left.

Now all kinds of other questions can arise. Who the hell are these people and where are they? Why didn’t they develop this film themselves? Where did that guy learn that steely-eyed stare and does he still have those sideburns? Are they even still alive? We may never know.

It’s always fascinating to think that these images were burned into light-sensitive photographic film all those years ago, then sat forgotten about in the back of a camera which was soon forgotten about, and one day left the hands of the original owners and wound up in an antique shop. Then how I managed to stumble upon it is beyond me. But I feel pretty lucky.

Also, I should thank Film Rescue International for the wonderful job they did on turning that old roll of film into something. And note the reason these photos are in black and white as opposed to their original color has to do with their age. After sitting around for roughly 37 years in some unknown place, the color just doesn’t hold up in the negatives like one would hope. Good thing they still look pretty cool in B&W.

Recently while searching through an antique shop, I bought a vintage camera, an Argus Argoflex E to be exact.  It’s an old twin-reflex camera, made sometime between 1946 to 1948. But that’s not the cool part. Inside this camera was a little gem. Or at least the possibility of being a gem. Because inside this 70 year old camera sat an undeveloped roll on 620 film. The only thing was, no one knew what was on it, if anything. For all I knew, it could have been damaged beyond recognition after years of rotting in some musty basement and from the outside you couldn’t even tell if it was black & white, color or slide film.

But all that doesn’t matter because it was far too interesting to remain sitting in the back of this camera any longer. So Ibrought it down to the Panda Lab and got it developed. And to my surprise, it had ten beautiful images waiting to blow the minds of all who gaze upon them.

The thing is, only more questions arise now that it’s developed. Things like, “who is this family?”, “What happened to this camera to why it lay forgotten for what appears to be 45 years?” and “where are these people now?” It’s mind boggling and frustrating to think these questions will most likely never be answered. How could you take photos of your young family playing in the yard, only to then leave the camera and the film sit untouched for decades and decades? It’s even confusing to think about how the camera ended up on the shelves of an antique shop.

But as for now in the year 2010, after all the things that must have fallen into place for these images to cross my path, I feel mighty lucky.

NOTE: Thanks to the detective help of Andrea Nelson and her automotive scholar dad, they were able to decipher the white car in the photos to be a ’66 Ford Thunderbird and the others are early 60’s Dodges. So perhaps if the Thunderbird is a few years old, it could mean the film was taken sometime around 1968.