[vidguy69]

Originally Posted by ModelT

We agree 100%. I believe it was the early 60's when we discovered a Polaroid camera.
To me a Polaroid photo must have the border to look right. I remember some of our oldest black and whites being wrinkled right from the start and having streaks from not rubbing the wax coat on right. Even Polaroids got better when the auto color film came out.
Still at around $5 for a pack of 10 pictures averaged $1 a photo most times because so many came out too bright or dark. With the old cameras there was a BRIGHTNESS knob and I believe a FOCUS. Seems like we were on a light colored beach, in the snow, or in the shadows in woods. The knob was always turned wrong when trying to get a quick booby photo.
A $1 doesn't sound like much today. But I only made $1 or so an hour! Didn't take dozens of the same photo like with digital. In fact a two pack in a day was more than I usually took. Then I fell back with the 110 film camera and hoped our subjects would pose.
Anyway we love these old photos of all kinds. Maybe more will now leave on the boarders and flaws.

Back in my younger days, I managed a couple of photo labs--the 1970's to be specific. One of the labs handled upwards of 2,000 rolls of film per DAY. We had two 8-hour shifts to develop, print, inspect and package the work for a two-day turnaround for large retail stores around the region. Of course, porn would make its way into the mix too, so our inspection included necessary censoring which was quite strict at the time. I had a file cabinet in my office filled with "rejected" prints---although we were required to return the negatives to the owners.

Borders were the thing early on, in mass produced amateur photos processed at labs around the country. You might see a small black mark along the margin in some, which was for the photoelectric-eye on the paper roll cutter to slice the pictures as they sped through a machine. Photo paper came in rolls of up to 750 feet and in the width of 3.5 inches (or other widths for other sized prints.) When the mark was read by the eye, the cutter would slice the paper and the next frame would move forward---all at a very fast speed. Date imprints were also often exposed on the margin to help identify when the pictures were processed.

Then borderless came along and that mark was moved to the back of the print paper and the same process did the cutting. Aging of the old pictures causes the colors to shift and fade, depending on how they might have been stored. Yellowing of the margins on bordered prints are a natural part of the aging process as well.

There are actually programs out there that let people add a "border" to make their pictures look more retro. Fake Polaroids are among the favorites---for whatever reason I can't understand. When Polaroid introduced their first color film in the early 1960's people flocked to stores to buy their cameras so they could shoot their own color porn. I was among the many who owned a number of different Polaroids at the time and shot many hundreds of photos of my first wife, who was a very willing model. Eventually I moved on to processing my own color slides and still have a vast collection of goodies in my secret stash. Many I've shared around the 'net, some even here at OCC.


Just a little history on lab processing from an old lab manager and photographer.