This was not just any roll of film, but a gift of sorts: an ordinary roll of long-expired 220 Kodak Tri-X shared with me as part of a film windfall by Mike Eckman. And this was a roll, that when I got it, I had no idea what I would ever do with it, given that I didn't have a 220 camera in which to use it.
But Mike had a few rolls of this film too, and also had no official 220 camera in which to load it, yet he had an interesting idea that made perfect sense, essentially to load the 220 film (which lacks any backing like 120) into a 620 camera with an automatically measured advance (lacking the need to peer through a red window to scroll to the next frame) and reset the counter halfway through to make use of the full roll.
I had considered doing something similar in the Yashica 12 or Seagull since they had similar arrangements, but before I ever had the chance to do so, I began getting into the 127 format, and found a lot of interest with the Revere Eye-Matic which also sported a similar measured film advance and no porthole window to fog film that lacked backing. And then an idea began to surface, namely to cut down this 220 roll of film to a REALLY long roll of 127 film. If I was able to do this successfully, I figured I could ferret out 36 shots in 4x4 format from this one roll of 127 film, three time the yield of a standard 127 roll. Thus, I badged my odd creation as the "World's first roll of 327 film!"
I loaded the Revere in the dark and began my shooting adventure on Easter Sunday of 2016, continuing in the week or so afterward, picking up roadside shots along the old National Road in Maryland, in Downtown Washington DC, and as well as near the Monocacy National Battlefield, giving the Revere a great chance to strut its oft overlooked stuff. Once I had run the full length of the roll, I quickly sealed up the exposed roll in a light-tight canister and sent it off along with a few others to my favorite lab to give them "the honor" of developing this groundbreaking roll of film.
But here's where that "meaningful changes" part comes into play. A few days later, I got an email from the lab asking for some guidance. They had tried several times to load my special roll of 127 onto the reels with no success. It seems that when I cut it, I slit the film too narrow to fit into the preset reels. They could send it to a dip and dunk lab or send it back. After a little bit of thought, I chose the latter. This was just the impetus I needed to perform an even more meaningful experiment: developing my own black and white film.
I'd done some degree of film developing 25 years ago, but most of my darkroom experiments were largely more geared towards printing. Still, I recalled the general work flow of film developing and thought I could handle it. But I would need a few things to get this experiment underway.
I decided that a bottle of New 55's R5 Monobath would make the ideal gateway back into the world of the darkroom. I combined this with a second hand VR developing tank with an adjustable reel (that I could squeeze down to a width a bit narrower than 127) as well as a few other items such as clips, thermometer, and some mixing containers. It was now time to get off the ground and give it a try.
Loading the film reels was a royal pain, and I eventually had to concede and split the super long roll of 127 in two. Thus, my hope of a really long roll of 36 continuous 127 exposures as a cover shot for this article was dashed. The good news is that the experiment worked...well mostly. The film didn't always sit on the reel right, and I was very rusty about loading it. As such, some of the film came into contact with adjacent film in the reel, keeping it from developing properly. Then there is the matter of the exposures themselves.
The Revere seems to be an interesting beast - sometimes it takes flawless photos, and sometimes, it just doesn't seem to have the proper registration. Add in a film that lacks a paper backing, and things just get a little, well weird. Just how you may ask. Tour the results of this loooooong roll of 127 yourself, and you shall see!
The super long roll of negatives was supposed to be the cover shot for this article, but since the roll was split before developing, that never happened. Instead, I present the first exposure of this roll of "327" film.
