Forward, into the past

Around 1978, I bought a pack of 100 negative preservers for 120 film ($12 at State Photo...), to go with my new 6x7 back for my Crown Graphic. I carried it around from apartment to apartment for years. Actually, though, I used most of them here in the 21st century; in fact, mostly since I re-started using film mailers around 2004.

I finally finished the hundred-pack earlier this year - so, on average, that's a whisker over (3 rolls of 120 film) per year.

The hundred-pack took about 31-32 years.

I just finished the 25-pack that I bought to replace it. (It's July....)

Clearly, as digital takes over, I'm doing more and more medium-format photography.

Similarly, I'm just finishing a bottle of glacial acetic, and a bottle of PhotoFlo 200. The latter has a label: "State Photo, $2.07".

State Photo closed in 1986, 24 years ago.

Note to self: order/buy some more negative preservers. Oh, and some acetic acid.

The larger story: back in the '80s, we bought a house, and I installed a home darkroom in the corner of the basement. Then we started having kids, and I discovered that grandparents want to see color prints of their grandchildren. So I largely switched away from B&W and color slides, and shot mostly C-41 for most of the '90s.

I had a developing tank with two rolls of 120 Plus-X that I loaded around 1995 (give or take a year...) - and then went off to chase my kids.

Now that my eldest is out of high school, I JUST got back to that tank, roughly fifteen years later. (Not surprisingly, it has lots of base fog....)