Solving a Found Film Mystery

Christmas in Detroit, 1948.  Shot with a Kodak Bantam Special on
Kodachrome, ASA10.  I am pretty sure that a flash was used here.

In 2018, I ended up with a small box of found film that my now-deceased friend, Marc Akeman had picked up at a Detroit area estate sale a few years earlier. Marc was always adept at finding estate sales and auctions and buying box lots of photographic items that eventually ended up in his basement. After his death in 2018, I spent some time organizing his photo gear estate for his family, and it wasn't until then that I realized he had hoarder tendencies.  I imagine that he intended to do something with all of the found negatives, slides, and prints that were still in the boxes he purchased them in, but he never had the chance.  I sorted out out a few things from one of the boxes - Kodachrome slides, black and white negatives, and some rolled up developed films, since it was obvious that they had a Detroit mailing address, and were from before 1950.  I'm always keen to see old Kodachromes, and I could see that there were quite a few boxes in the lot.

Of course, in my own life, I was preparing for a move to North Carolina, leaving Ann Arbor behind after 38 years, since my wife and I had retired from the Univ. Michigan.  Those finds via Marc went into a small box labeled "Found Film" and it was not until recently that I started going through a few of them.  Aside from one roll of medium format black and white negatives definitely of the NSFW genre, the remaining images are of post-war middle class Detroit family life, 1947-49.  

Same Christmas tree as above

I scanned in a Kodachrome slide for a Christmas-theme Instagram post, and realized that it was shot on 828, or Bantam film.  I was curious if the photographer had used a Kodak Bantam Special for the Kodachromes (Bantam film gives only 8 exposures on a roll), as the images were far better than a cheap bantam camera. Tonight, I was going through the earlier b&w scans, and voila! There were several black and white shots of his Kodak Bantam Special in a chair.  So, I found the camera that the photographer used.  I don't know what he used for the medium format, but they are 6x9 cm, so very likely a folding Kodak of some sort.

Still-life with Bantam Special.

I'm posting several of these b&w images along with the Kodachrome slide.  I'll eventually scan the other slides, but I may end up using a DSLR since the slide carroer for the Epson V700 crops out part of the image. The Bantam slides are larger than standard 35mm, even though they are in 2x2 slide holders.  All of the b&w images are from medium-format negatives.

Photographer's father?  Detroit News, Jan 17, 1949

Musical family

Finally, here is a wonderful example of the Kodak Bantam Special, photographed by me.

It's really too bad Kodak didn't make this a 35mm camera. It's design, by Walter Dorwin Teague, is an Art Deco wonder, and if you can respool 35mm with an 828 backing paper, you can still make use of it.