Photo Shoot: Back-in-time film adventure evoked memories

Steve Heaslip, Cape Cod Times
·2 min read

Nostalgia is the urge to look back wistfully into the past, otherwise known as the “good old days.” My adventures with the vintage Bolsey B2 camera were just such a trip back to the past. Several weeks ago the tale of my return to film photography ended with the shipment of a black-and-white roll of film to Boston for processing.

It arrived close to two weeks later on a Saturday. A text alert from the USPS confirmed its arrival. I diverted from an assignment for pickup. A 5-by-7-inch box was retrieved. It was tempting to rip it open in the lobby and take a peek, better to slow down and savor the moment. In the privacy of the bedroom, I opened the box containing a full uncut roll of sleeved 35 mm film and a small contact sheet showing the scanned images. Disaster!

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There were about 15 images on the printout, most with some light streaking and about five images that actually had definition. Unrolling the film told the story: shutter malfunction. I had tested it before starting out and it seemed fine. But it must have stuck open sometimes and fired properly but then became stuck again. It was when staring down at the illuminated ruined film that the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia came off.

This wasn’t the first time I had my photojournalist heartbroken beside a light table. Many a day after a long assignment, and then in the darkroom, a technical glitch would ruin your film, nothing to do but start over. Those technical heartaches are very rare these days. A bad shutter, lens, or strobe shows itself in the viewing screen and a salvage operation can begin immediately.

A vintage look towards the Sandy Neck Lighthouse in Barnstable captured recently with a 1950s-era Bosley B2 film camera. Shutter problems provided some light banding seen at the left edge of the image.
A vintage look towards the Sandy Neck Lighthouse in Barnstable captured recently with a 1950s-era Bosley B2 film camera. Shutter problems provided some light banding seen at the left edge of the image.

All was not lost. As you can see, a few images were printable.

The old lens proved to provide a very sharp focus. The grainy overexposed film certainly gave an “old-fashioned” look. But perhaps the best part of this experiment, was hearing from so many readers. Most were offering a vintage camera of their own that had been in long-time storage. Thanks for the offers, but my collection is already too big for its space. An email from an associate documentary film producer of “Beyond the Bolex,” arrived. The movie is about the camera’s inventor Jacques Bolsey and was made by his filmmaker great-granddaughter Alyssa Bolsey. It will be streaming online in the near future, if interested, check out the website, www.beyondthebolex.com.

I’m doubling down on the project, found a website with shutter cleaning instructions, and will be re-activating the darkroom to process the film myself, so no more long waits, Stay tuned.

Contact Steve Heaslip at sheaslip@capecodonline.com. Follow him on Twitter: @cctphoto.

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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: A return to film photography with a vintage 1950's camera