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I’ve been collecting a lot of old Kodachrome slides from the 1950s and 1960s the past two months. Recently, I managed to get my hands on a couple of old 400ft reels of various home movies of events such as vacations, events, parades, sports games, races, weddings, parties, etc--things of that nature, shot on Kodachrome. It got me thinking: how many people back then shot home movies on 35mm motion picture film? Obviously, I am not insinuating that anyone would have had a giant, 1,000ft mag, 90lb, blimped Mitchell camera ready in their backyard to shoot Dale’s high school graduation party. However, small, light, little MOS cams like the Arriflex 35 IIB were widely available at the time. I imagine Kodachrome was by far the most commonly used consumer film stock in that era, so I suppose most of any home movies would've been shot using it. Unless I have my facts crossed (feel free to correct me if I do), I believe Kodak briefly sold canisters of 35mm Kodachrome intended for motion picture use in the 1940s. The stock was called Kodak 5267, and was introduced in 1942. I know next to nothing about how the market for motion picture film worked back in the day. At the time, did Kodak also sell the 35mm variants of their color negative motion picture films—such as Kodak 5250—to consumers via mail order like they do for their VISION3 stocks today? To be direct, if old home movie reels on 35mm such as these do exist, they’re something I would definitely be extremely motivated to get my hands on. Let me know if anyone has any leads.

After having successfully developed 1972 and 1973 Eastman Color Negative 7254 (ECN-1!) at home over the last few months which I shot in my Krasnogorsk (developed even in color, with an adpated C-41 process!) I was able to find a can of 400ft of its predecessor, 5251. Both films are of course ECN-1 still and I bought them purely for experimentation and for the fun of finding out how much of an usable image I can get from these with different processes. The can of 5251 I just received today however really confuses me, maybe some of you already have some ideas, before I investigate it more myself. I did not shoot any and did not devlop anything yet (will do that on the weekend), but I opened the can in my darkroom and looked at the film with infrared goggles (I use these often, they do not even fog new and fast film, so definately won't affect ISO 50 film that I assume by now has around ISO 1 or less). Anyhow, the tape around the can did not look like Kodak originally put it there like that and sure enough, the film inside was wrapped in a sheet of a newspaper, haha. This one was from 1963, so maybe that's when this film was bought, in case I can develop it successfully, the edge codes will tell me more... The film looked really clean at least with the IR goggles, not sticky and did not smell. I cut off a short piece and looked at this in normal room light and here is what confuses me: It has negative sprocket holes as expected, but it is creme-white (instead of orange, or brown or black, or any other color I've ever seen on negatives in any stage) and also already shows edge printings that appear to either be feet numbers or any other codes used to indentify which machines made the strip in Kodak's factories. What is going on here? First I thought it might be the seller just sold me white leader film that turned creme-white over time, but wouldn't that have positive sprocket holes? Or this is a strip of an already developed negative, which is why I can see the edge codes already, but why would anyone put it back in the can and tape it? Then I thought maybe 5251 did not have any remjet yet and also no orange masks yet, which is why it is neither orange, brown, black or such. But how come I would already be able to read edge codes before developing anything?! And if it was just fogged a lot over time, shouldn't the negative be very dark, for sure not creme-white! I guess I have to eventually spool through more of the film in the dark and look for clues and also just shoot and develop it in a few days from now, but still this all seems very strange.