I have some film I'm going through, about six banana boxes developed over the last 20 years mainly, getting them all finally scanned. I find that I am getting pretty good at dating the rolls that went unmarked, at least to the year, by using the color scheme of developing company, e.g., blue print envelopes next to other blue print envelopes from 1997 must mean these, too, were developed in 1997, or darn near. Also, I find further clues to season on some photos, so I can usually narrow it down for example to 1997 Spring <subjectname>
which is a great start, and enough to make me happy.
However, I'm coming across some that are proving to be really confusing, or too time-consuming to date the ways I'm going about it...
Example Scenario for me
I'm looking for resources, specifically on this one Costco envelope. I have about 20 of them, and they have dates and a number on the bottom, such as 028 03/11 002 39 273 R ADM $4.14
and I believe that's a date, March 2011
. However, it would make more sense to me if that was actually backwards and read as November 2003
because that would make a lot more sense when it was processed.
There are other number sets all over this envelope, even more cryptic.
So that's my example.
Questions What kind of resources are out there for dating the film? e.g., can I look on the back of the print, and find some list on the internet that catalogs these details to date them, or are there other means?
Does anybody have any good links to share that might be helpful?
One complication Most envelopes don't have the numbers on them, mainly just the ones that are envelopes inside envelopes, if you are lucky enough to have kept those, which means this question might be dependent on some old goodie site, that archives scans of photo envelopes themselves. Might we get lucky?
Note I would be happy to provide scans of my envelopes for the community, if there's a destination for that type of thing.