The Secrets in the Sigar Box

My father was an avid photographer.

Not so artistic, but very taken with the chemical process of devloping his own pictures. He took loads of pictures on very simple cameras. He would have loved all the things you can do today with pictures on a computer!  

Many of his picture negatives along with some 8mm films and slides were left behind in a sigar box when my parents split up when I was very young. These negatives have never been made into papercopies, so we have never seen them. I have had this sigar box (plus another box!) for many years and decided it was time to find out what is on these film rolls. From scrolling through them under a lightbulb I gather that it is mainly pictures of me   ;-) and my American side of the family from when we lived in the USA in the early 1960s.

Talk about snapshots in time!

I took them to Jessops today to find out what it will cost to have paper copies made of the negatives and the films transferred to a cd. I quickly realised that this project will take some time because this was not cheap! There must be literally 100s if not 1000s of pictures on these rolls and no way of knowing the quality or if they are worth having.... I think we will have to do this in chunks! Perhaps I should see if I could borrow a lightbox first to check what is worth doing...

The sweet thing is that the film was in an envelope addressed to my paternal grandfather from my maternal granfather. My parents used to send the film to my mother's family in north of Norway (Honningsvag) for them to see and when they were done with the film they would send it to my other grandparens in the south of Norway (Sandefjord)!

It was too extravagant to make two copies 

- in those days you shared!

I left one roll of 8 mm film with Jessops to have put on a disc and will have to wait for another week before I know what is on the film!