{"id":316733,"date":"2026-02-25T16:00:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T16:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/316733\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T16:00:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T16:00:11","slug":"these-1920s-film-photos-sat-undeveloped-for-100-years-until-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/316733\/","title":{"rendered":"These 1920s Film Photos Sat Undeveloped for 100 Years, Until Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/p>\n

After a film lab technician developed a 70-year-old roll of film<\/a> showing a group of skiers in post-war Switzerland, he was contacted by a man who had an even older roll of undeveloped film. <\/p>\n

Ian Scott of Salisbury Photo Centre<\/a> in England was contacted by a Mr. Bennett from Manchester who had a 3a Folding Pocket Kodak that still had film in it \u2014 and had been in it for 100 years. <\/p>\n

\"AnThe Folding Pocket Kodak that held the film. \"AThe old Verichrome film inside that was an unusual size. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a Kodak Verichrome black and white V118 film, which was made from 1900 to 1955,\u201d Scott explains. \u201cI knew it was an early version because it wasn\u2019t panchromatic film; it would be orthochromatic. The film was much larger than the 120 or 620 films \u2014 it is 3.5 inches wide.\u201d<\/p>\n

The folding camera was taken from a \u201cwaste bin\u201d at a Christian Aid charity store in Manchester 40 years ago. The bin was made up of items the store couldn\u2019t sell. <\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Bennett had known there was a film inside, but never got it processed until now,\u201d adds Scott. <\/p>\n

\"AThe back of the folding camera. \"TwoThe 3.5-inch V118 Verichrome film, right, compared in size with a regular roll of 120 Verichrome Pan. Scott believes the older roll is orthochromatic instead of panchromatic. Processing 70 Year Old Film <\/p>\n

Before Scott could even develop the ancient roll, he had to break one of his film spindles to accommodate its unusual size. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we processed the film it was very dark and I thought it was blank but with close inspection against a bright strip light there were two images,\u201d Scott says. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo we got the film dry and scanned the two images. There was lots of base fog and age damage.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Scott says that while there wasn\u2019t much to work with, he enjoys the challenge and proceeded to scan them into positive images anyway. He adjusted the photos best he could in Photoshop. <\/p>\n

After conducting research, he believes the photos were taken in the 1920s \u2014 100 years ago. For reference, the oldest film ever developed<\/a> by Film Rescue International was 134 years old. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis might be the oldest processed film in the U.K.,\u201d adds Scott. <\/p>\n

The hotel in the photo is Kviknes Hotel in Sognefjord, Norway, built in 1877. The woman in the other photo is unknown, but is apparently dressed in fashionable garb from the 1920s. <\/p>\n

\"AKviknes Hotel in Norway. \"AUnknown woman. Using AI to Enhance the Photos <\/p>\n

Scott decided to enhance the photos using ChatGPT. But the results have to be taken with a pinch of salt because AI doesn\u2019t restore an image the same way a photo restorer would; instead it takes the original photo as a reference and creates a novel image that closely resembles the original. <\/p>\n

\"AThe AI made up details, such as the shrub. It\u2019s also far from clear in the original image what activity she is doing in the photo. \"AAI restoration. <\/p>\n

While they are much clearer than the actual scans, there are some clear mistakes such as the woman\u2019s left hand pointing in a different direction than the original and it added a random shrub. <\/p>\n

Image credits: All images courtesy of Ian Scott \/ Salisbury Photo Centre<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a film lab technician developed a 70-year-old roll of film showing a group of skiers in post-war…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,8959,308,93,147759,147760,147761,64164,61,60,6820,147762,147763,147764,147765,130483],"class_list":{"0":"post-316733","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-blackandwhitefilm","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-filmlab","16":"tag-filmprocessing","17":"tag-foldingkodakpocket","18":"tag-forgotten","19":"tag-ie","20":"tag-ireland","21":"tag-mystery","22":"tag-oldfilm","23":"tag-oldphotos","24":"tag-photorestoration","25":"tag-undeveloped","26":"tag-undevelopedfilm"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}