Film Folders – Pure nostalgia, with a few tips from long, long ago

I was recently scanning some very old family photos to preserve them, as the negatives were not in the best of condition, and I found myself enjoying looking at the folders they were contained in. They come from an age when, unless you did your own processing (and one of them has instructions for using hypo scribbled on) you sent film to a shop and received a set of prints in a folder.

In case they are of any interest, I thought I would scan and post them. Several of the folders contain tips such as that pictures can look better if enlarged (contact prints were the norm) and that any negative that makes a good contact print will make a good enlargement. The Kodak folders show that the same folder, with the same image, could be used by a store in London and Bombay, with just the prices changed (a supplementary lens to be used for portraits was 2 shillings in Britain and 1 rupee, 11 anna in India) .

And it tells/reminds us about films that no longer exist. I knew about Ensign cameras, but I had not heard of Ensign film. The advice to make sure you have wound on the film before closing a folding camera is also important, as is the advice to enclose your name and address when sending film off for processing. So here is a selection of folders. I cannot date them all, but one is dated 1937 and the one from India is probably a bit before 1920.

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