Auction website is wrong on flown Mir 35mm film?

[apollo16uvc]

There is an auction website claiming these are original flown 35mm slide strips used on the Mir space station.


But Kodak Gold 100 (Kodak stock 5095) is a negative stock, not a slide stock. If the above images were really taken on it, they would be NEGATIVES, inverted.

Kodak: http://www.taphilo.com/Photo/kodakfilmnumxref.shtml

5095    Kodak, color negative, process C-41, Gold Plus 100, ASA 100, standard base, ~ 1996    GA    C-41
5095    GOLD PLUS 100    GA    C-41

So what is going on? I want to bid on them, but this makes me think they are copies.
(slide film is also called transparency film, or E-6 film.)

[Trebor]

Someone also seems to have written on them, Which seems a bit of a careless thing to do to me. Unless they were copies....

[Kiwi]

There is an auction website claiming these are original flown 35mm slide strips used on the Mir space station.

But Kodak Gold 100 (Kodak stock 5095) is a negative stock, not a slide stock. If the above images were really taken on it, they would be NEGATIVES, inverted.

There's definitely something odd about what's being offered. I strongly doubt that it is original colour slide film, but it's also odd to see a positive image on colour negative film which has a strong orange base-colour.

The white hand-written numbers indicate that what we are seeing in the picture is a paper "proof sheet" or some other positive image made from negatives. But the black writing over the images was possibly written on slide film. Maybe the image is a sample of what the actual slides look like, and maybe not, too. You would really need more information.

Recently I heard of someone much younger than me calling slides "negatives" so it wouldn't be surprising if someone else did the opposite. This ancient technology is very confusing, y'know. 

I've just gone backwards through my 1990s and 80s 35mm colour negatives. Around the mid-90s I shot on Kodak Gold 200 which grain-wise was just as good as the older 100 and gave me an extra stop of exposure, but I found eventually found some I shot on Kodak Gold 100 on 25 April 1987 - Anzac Day.

On the top above the perforations it says "KODAK GA 100 5095", and running between the top perforations is a magenta line. The line between the bottom perfs is green, and the final computer figures at the bottom look like a blue-grey to me, but my eyes are far from perfect and the true colour is also disguised by the heavy orange base-colour. Can't see the negative numbers, because I always obliterated them and hand-wrote my own with Pelican drawing ink.

If you have the time, look at JayUtah's profile and see if you can contact him directly. He's a very active photographer, so is likely to be able to give better advice than I can - I've been out of the photography trade since 1989.

Smartcooky will also turn here up sooner or later. He's in the trade.

I wouldn't bother too much about the writing. If that's a date on the second line - 15 July 1993 - it could be quite useful.

[apollo16uvc]

Do yours look like the inverted picture of the slides (or negatives) from the auction?

[Kiwi]

Not exactly the same - mine have the different colours (magenta and green) between top and bottom perforations, and also have the strong orange base-colour.

But I just noticed that the auction ones say "GOLD 100-2" which might indicate a later improvement from the original film. Assuming they were indeed taken in 1993, there are six year's difference between them and mine.  I recall that Kodak often made subtle improvements to a film and changed things outside the image area before they gave it another name. They might have also changed the same marginal details for films that sold in different parts of the world.

It's a pity that the wording over the last two frames is not English - if it was we might be able to easily tell if it was written across the gap between the two images, and if so, that might indicate that it was indeed written on original slide film. But it also looks as if it was written with some sort of calligraphic pen, which in my experience was hardly possible. Writing on film with an ordinary pen was difficult and a sharp nib could dig into the film and when it released itself could splatter ink over the image.

It was a dodgy business. IIRC there was some not-too-professional numbering of Apollo 15 black-and-white negatives which led one hoax-believer to claim he was looking at studio lights above Hadley Rille. We blew that idea out of the water.

Then there are the early poor-quality Apollo b&w prints which made me think there was a very sloppy darkroom worker who either had a dirty enlarger lens and/or smoked in the darkroom. Many of those prints are in Michael Light's famous book, Full Moon.

Can you query the seller as to what exactly is being sold and why the images are shown on negative film? Are they selling original mounted slides (probably not), strips of original unmounted positive film, strips of original negatives, or strips of copy negatives?

Hocking off a few dozen copy negatives of original positive film, thanks to Glasnost and the demise of the Soviet Union, might be a lucrative business.

Sorry I'm not much help - I'm trying to accurately recall things I haven't dealt with for nearly 30 years. I hoped that those who are possibly more up-to-date like JayUtah and Smartcooky would come in and lend you their knowledge.

[apollo16uvc]

Hello everyone.

Sorry for the commotion I have caused. I just read the auction again and I misread the slide part. Nowhere does it say it are slides. Just: Mir Pair of Flown and Signed Color Film Strip Prints"

"Pair of flown color film strip prints from a Soyuz/Russian Mir Space Station from 1993, 8.75 x 2.75, each signed in ballpoint by Vasily Tsibliyev of Soyuz TM-17. In overall fine condition. Accompanied by a letter of authenticity. From the collection of aerospace memorabilia specialist Ken Havekotte.
This item is Pre-Certified!

Please contact us for pricing on a third-party full letter of authenticity."



Here is an attached letter of authenticity:

[bknight]

Hello everyone.

Sorry for the commotion I have caused. I just read the auction again and I misread the slide part. Nowhere does it say it are slides. Just: Mir Pair of Flown and Signed Color Film Strip Prints"

"Pair of flown color film strip prints from a Soyuz/Russian Mir Space Station from 1993, 8.75 x 2.75, each signed in ballpoint by Vasily Tsibliyev of Soyuz TM-17. In overall fine condition. Accompanied by a letter of authenticity. From the collection of aerospace memorabilia specialist Ken Havekotte.
This item is Pre-Certified!

Please contact us for pricing on a third-party full letter of authenticity."



Here is an attached letter of authenticity:

I hope you Russian(?) is good enough to translate the document to ensure descriptions match.

[onebigmonkey]

I worked out that one of the words right bottom right is photograph, or a word very like photograph

[bknight]

From the shape of the writing, it may not be Russian, perhaps Ukrainian or Georgian.  I am not not an expert but I have worked in Russia, Georgia and The Ukraine some 17+ years ago.

[apollo16uvc]

Anyways the film is coming, real or not.

Expect some gorgeous 20megapixel scans with my professional Nikon Coolscan 8000 ED (Which is a massive beast of a scanner by the way)

if you want any of your space-related film scanned, I will be happy to do it for you! You just have to pay shipping and I will send you TIFF files.

I can scan 6x6 medium format slides at 64 megapixel, 6x7, 6x8 and 6x9 at even greater resolutions. (Size matters with film)

[Kiwi]

Anyways the film is coming, real or not.

Film? I read the description in reply No. 5 as follows:-
'Pair of... strip prints... 8.75 x 2.75... signed in ballpoint...'

8.75 x 2.75 [inches] is about the right size for a contact print of two strips of 35mm film with six frames on each strip. Film usually can't be written on in ballpoint.

And earlier in reply No. 2 was my impression that '...what we are seeing in the picture is a paper "proof sheet" or some other positive image made from negatives.'