Inert Ramblings

At some point in history, someone who works in the photo industry came up with the absolutely brilliant idea to start pasting paper strips to the edges of negatives. Not only would this make handling delicate films easier and more efficient, but lab technicians no longer had to be trained in the imperious art of common sense and assiduousness.

No, the paper strips made things so much simpler, and each lab used a special feeding system that would utilize this groundbreaking technology! As word spread around that adhering a paper strip to the negatives meant that untrained monkeys could now be hired to run pharmacy photo labs, everyone unhesitatingly jumped on the bandwagon. Unfortunately, no real standard was masterminded and dozens of such feeder systems were devised to make handing negatives easier.

That’s a pretty ugly baby you’ve got there!

One of the most bewildering functions performed by these strips is the act of depositing white adhesive marks all over the emulsion of your negatives! If only I had come up with such an efficient method of destroying irreplaceable memories, I’d be rolling in the dough right now! But no. Some no-talent ass clown beat me to it and is now profiting from my misery as I discover face after face in my photo collection smacked with the ugly stick of adhesion.

Proprietary what?

As if the destruction of negatives wasn’t enough of a bonus to convince an avid photographer to utilize this system, turning negatives into proprietary masters should definitely convert anyone over to the darkroom side! For over a century, the 35mm standard has been used and basically guaranteed that any strip of 35mm film could be printed by anyone with basic darkroom equipment.

But now, a permanent randomly-sized tumefaction has been been added to the film strip to make normal printing and scanning procedures obsolete. Like any other cancer, attempted removal of the tumor could result in the destruction of the host. Successful removal still leaves behind a malignant gooey virus that spreads to any surface that touches it. Emulsion. Lenses. Fingers. Prints. Envelopes. Nothing is safe.

And, for anyone who’s never worked with film before, the solvents required to remove the adhesive will permanently blemish the surface. Why is no project ever simple?