Negatives from the Original 1888 Kodak Camera

I’ve been digitizing negatives for over 15 years and collecting them for almost 40. I have never seen any of the original Kodak camera negatives, so when I recently looked at an auction website for old negatives, I found a “lot” of negatives that had many typical rectangular acetate negatives, but also some that appeared to have a round image, I was both excited and somewhat skeptical.

First, I want to give you some background information. George Eastman is very similar to Henry Ford. Henry Ford didn’t invent the automobile but made it available and affordable for the general population. George Eastman didn’t invent photography, but he did make photography affordable and something the general population could enjoy.

“You press the button, and we do the rest.”

Let me take you back up and give you some important information regarding the original Kodak camera when it was introduced and released in 1888. The original camera was made by Frank Brownell for Eastman Kodak and introduced in June 1888 until the end of 1889. The concept was very simple. When you purchased it, the camera was loaded with 100 images. Their slogan was “You press the button, and we do the rest.”

After the photographer takes all the images by pulling a string to cock the shutter, then advancing to the next frame, all you need to do is press the button, and the camera exposes the film. After all 100 images were taken, you’d send the camera to Kodak, where they would process the film, make prints, reload the camera, and you had another 100 frames. At that time, the cost of the camera was $10.00. The processing, printing, and reloading of the camera was $25.00. If the customer wanted to print the photos themselves, Kodak would return the negatives and give a fresh roll of film for $2.00.

Prior to the original Kodak camera, the photographer base was generally men who would have to sensitize the film or glass plates, process the film with chemicals, and print the photos. But because of this process, the camera became very popular with women, and estimates are that within the first ten years, Kodak sold 1.5 million cameras due to this new and much easier process.

The area on the camera where the film was exposed was round and measured 2 5/8″ across. Here’s an example of the first Kodak camera, along with the back of the camera, where the film was loaded and unloaded by the Kodak factory in Rochester, NY. I have owned and seen many photos from the original, but I’ve never actually owned or seen negatives from the original Kodak cameras.

How I digitize negatives

My current process is photographing the negatives on a light box with my Nikon D850 attached to a reasonably basic Kaiser copy stand. I mask the area on the lightbox using black masking tape to ensure the camera meter gets the correct settings for each negative. I keep the negatives flat using a piece of glass taped on one side of the lightbox so I can easily open the glass. I photograph the negatives using aperture preferred metering settings and set my lens to two stops below the minimum aperture, which is generally the sharpest setting.

After photographing the negatives, I put them in Adobe Bridge to rotate and batch rename before I put them in Adobe Lightroom Classic. In Lightroom Classic, I either use Negative Lab Pro to reverse the images from negative to positive or apply an inverted curve to all the images and tweak them individually before exporting them back into the folder with the negatives.

The negatives purchased

Let’s jump back to how I acquired this set of negatives. I won the auction for a very reasonable price. This particular lot also included a negative album with other rectangular negatives and a printing block, which I wasn’t too excited about. Once I received the negative lot, I noticed the negatives I was mostly interested in were in a square envelope with printing on the front.

On the very Top is written No. 82. 85 Kodak Negatives. Name: E. Balback Jr. Address: 73 Passaic Ave. Newark, NJ. Finished Oct 14, 1889. On the side, it’s written 24 Failures. Opening the envelope, I took out the negatives and started digitizing them to find out what was on them, along with the other rectangular negatives in the negative album.

The rectangular negatives in the album have notations of “Ore & Bullion” New plant, Bay Plant, Ore & Bullion Old Plant, and Misc. Photos with notations on each of the pages. My favorite is the Misc. page with “Blue” auto after smash-up and Grey auto views. Here are some of the photos from the rectangular negatives.

Doing some research on E. Balback, he was President of Balbach Smelting & Refining Company (also known as Balbach and Sons Refining and Smelting Company), the second largest metal processing enterprise in the US until it closed in 1920.

They manufactured copper and were the first electrolytic refinery, which was helped by the invention of the telephone and, later, electricity. Edward died in Dec. of 1910, and the company was passed on to his son-in-law, who closed the plant in 1920 to be closer to where the ore was mined.

Here are images of the factory from the rectangular negatives.

Here are some of the images from the Kodak circular image negatives in the lot. Many are on a ship, along with images of Newark, NJ, from 1889.

Thank you for taking some time to look over this post. You can see more of my images and other historical images on my website.

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