Question for Peter or others

[lulalake]

On one of the Yahoo groups I moderate,

groups.yahoo.com/group/Epson_Scanners/

A group about Epson Scanners, this question came up:

"I have some b/w 120 negatives with a carat (^) character along the edge.
Would this be equivalent to the triangle character indicating that the
film was manufactured in 1938? The negatives would be from about that
time."

Any thoughts?

Thanks

[PeterW]

Sorry, I've never taken a lot of notice of film edge markings, except to indentify the film. I imagine it could be quite a study in itself. Now you've got me interested ...NO, NO, I've got far too many other things to do! Have you done a search for 'film edge markings'? I would be surprised if no-one's ever looked into it.

Peter

[lulalake]

peterw said:

Sorry, I've never taken a lot of notice of film edge markings, except to indentify the film. I imagine it could be quite a study in itself. Now you've got me interested ...NO, NO, I've got far too many other things to do! Have you done a search for 'film edge markings'? I would be surprised if no-one's ever looked into it.

Peter

Thanks Peter,

Yes I did that search and found a nice site for newer film, 197'0s and newer.
I think the person may have to contact Kodak for further assistance.

Thanks again

Jules

[PeterW]

Hi Jules,

I've got a vague memory in the back of my mind I heard or read somewhere that Kodak uses a sequence of date markings up to 20. If that's right, the same date marking could indicate 1918, 1938 or 1958. I suppose they thought they wouldn't need to identify a batch of film more than 20 years old.

Apropos Kodak date codes, some of you may not know that Kodak used a letter date code on cameras, lenses and other equipment, sometimes in tiny little letters, and I haven't found it on all Kodak products.

The key code word was CAMEROSITY to give the numbers:
C A M E R O S I T Y
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0

Sometimes they used six letters to give mm/dd/yy
so for example, YIYCIT would translate as 08/01/89, or January 8, 1989.

Other times they used four letters to give the month and year so YMIT would be 03/89 or March 1989.

Just to confuse things, at one time Kodak worked in 13 periods (of four weeks each) a year instead of 12 months, so if you find the month works out as 13 that indicates the production period, so CMIT would be period 13 in 1989. In that code, YMIT would be period 3 in 1989, not necessarily within March 1989.

Peter

[lulalake]

peterw said:

Hi Jules,

I've got a vague memory in the back of my mind I heard or read somewhere that Kodak uses a sequence of date markings up to 20. If that's right, the same date marking could indicate 1918, 1938 or 1958. I suppose they thought they wouldn't need to identify a batch of film more than 20 years old.

Apropos Kodak date codes, some of you may not know that Kodak used a letter date code on cameras, lenses and other equipment, sometimes in tiny little letters, and I haven't found it on all Kodak products.

The key code word was CAMEROSITY to give the numbers:
C A M E R O S I T Y
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0

Sometimes they used six letters to give mm/dd/yy
so for example, YIYCIT would translate as 08/01/89, or January 8, 1989.

Other times they used four letters to give the month and year so YMIT would be 03/89 or March 1989.

Just to confuse things, at one time Kodak worked in 13 periods (of four weeks each) a year instead of 12 months, so if you find the month works out as 13 that indicates the production period, so CMIT would be period 13 in 1989. In that code, YMIT would be period 3 in 1989, not necessarily within March 1989.

Peter

Thanks for this really obscure data Peter!
No wonder they have such a hard time.

Jules

[PeterW]

OOPS! I made a fairly obvious boo-boo when I wrote

Sometimes they used six letters to give mm/dd/yy
so for example, YIYCIT would translate as 08/01/89, or January 8, 1989.

I got my mm and dd mixed up because in the UK we normally use dd/mm/yy so YIYCIT in Kodak code, or 08/01/89, is August 1 1989 not January 8 1989.

Also, Kodak sometimes used just two letters followed by a serial number. I've seen this on Ektar lenses for large format. In that case the letters indicated just the year of manufacture.

Confused? I bet some people in Kodak are as well.

Peter