World 110 Film Day

The other day was World 110 Film Day. It falls every year on January
tenth. (There are actually two: some countries celebrate it on
October first.)

In the day's honour, I dug out my Minolta Autopak 450E (which I had
not used at least since a 110 Day four or five years ago, and which I
chose because I could not find my Pentax or Minolta 110 SLRs). I used
my last roll of 110 film from the freezer, a roll of 400-speed Kodak
Ultra film that expired in July 2007. My local photographic shop still
develops C41 film of all sizes, and they processed the film for me. I
have no dedicated 110-film holder, so I scanned it clipped in a
35mm-film holder.

Most of the pictures suffer from all manner of insult and incompetence
and this is a good example. It shows snow being cleared from our
sidewalk on January 10th. The focus seems pretty sturdily on what is
close to me rather than further back. This is because I have a lot of
trouble keeping the focus on this camera where it should be. The
brown line across the bottom is an artefact of scanning -- light was
refracted or reflected back from the film edge. If I could put
together something to hold both sides of the film, that would not be
there. The columns on either side are an artefact of the 110
technology -- the film was (inexplicably to my mind) pre-exposed in
wide swaths when, in the factory, they put the frame numbers on. If
they'd reduced the size of that swath, we'd have had a wider format in
our 110 pictures.

But it's all water under the bridge. I may never see another roll of 110 film.