Roll film courtesy of Annex Photo
Toronto. My thanks to Annex Photo here in the big smoke for the image illustrating today’s post. Give them a try if you are one of those folk determined to use film and film cameras. Ever since I was a kid during WW2 various drums and tanks have been around for film development. Prior to the war, a see-saw technique was usually used to develop roll film in a tray of solution.
Around 1960, I happened to be in Collingwood when the telephone exchange was being upgraded (I still have the massive old Weston meter used to test the telephone lines damaged by inclement weather). Having recently built a darkroom at home, I searched for a drug store to see how they handled film and printing for customers.
As it turned out, the local druggist did his own processing and printing. He was so pleased with his film developing set-up that he took me in to see it. Suspended in a long, narrow, deep trough were strips of black and white film – 120, 620, and 127. The room was almost totally dark (later I realized the films must have been orthochromatic). Weighted clips held the film strips in the solution while similar clips with short arms rested on the top edge of the trough. Periodic lifting of each strip circulated the developer. Once developed, a film strip was lifted out and dunked in a similar trough full of fixer.
Years later, I realized that vertical troughs were very unusual – most non tray vessels used aprons and/or special reels to minimize the volume of liquid needed to submerge the film. A British website called Photo Memorabilia has a wealth of information on its pages including a brief history of developing trays and tanks. The site looks very old but can be read with a modern browser (the browser window may need to be made a bit wider as the site uses fixed width lines of text).
