For Father's Day this year, Dakota Deady surprised his father, Jones, with found footage of Jones' father who died when Jones was just a toddler. Jones had never seen anything but a single photograph.
Photographer Eneko Jorge Gomez was browsing a thrift store near his home in Spain when he came across an old camera that he realized was still loaded with film. After developing the roll, he used clues in the photos to determine that he believes the images are at least a decade old and taken in Turkey.
Photographer Mychal Watts recently stumbled across an old 1920s-era Kodak Series II camera in a small shop in New York. Enamored with the piece of history, he bought it after he found that it still held an undeveloped roll of 120 format film inside.
In my mom’s home office, there has been a really old camera sitting on her bookshelf since I can remember. No one ever touched it. I don’t remember a time where it has ever moved.
Portland photographer Kati Dimoff has a habit of hunting for old cameras at thrift stores and checking to see whether they contain undeveloped rolls of film. Earlier this year, a camera she found contained a set of unexpected photos: they show the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.
Photo-enthusiast etxenike recently won a spool of Verichrome Pan 116 film in an auction, and discovered that it had already been exposed. He had the film developed, and found that five of the eight photographs survived -- not bad for film that has been sitting around since the 50s or 60s!