The roll of film I found

StewartR

StewartR

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I mentioned this elsewhere, but if it all goes horribly wrong it will deserve a thread of its own, so here we go.

At the end of our holiday last week we were clearing out the hire car - checking all the door pockets and storage cubbyholes to ensure we hadn't left anything behind - and we found a 24-frame roll of Fujicolor Superia 35mm print film in one of the less accessible recesses. We assumed that it had been accidentally left there by an earlier hirer of the same car. The film is fully rewound into the canister so presumably it has been exposed.

I took it in to Snappy Snaps the other day to get the film processed. My plan is to see whether there's anything that looks like it might have any value to its owners, and if so to try to track the owners down via social media.

After I took it in, one of my friends mentioned that something similar had happened to Dave Gorman and suggested that I really out to look into it. The story is that a couple of years ago Gorman found a film camera on Brighton beach. He blogged about it here. He resorted to getting the film processed in the hope that he could track down the owners, just as I'm hoping to do. But it turned out that all the photos were pornographic. He did a segment about this in an episode of 'Modern Life Is Goodish', which is available to view online here - the bit about the camera runs from about 17:30 to 22:30 and it's very funny. (The bit about the porn magazines and the shredder which occupies the first 10 minutes of the program is also very funny.)

The thing is, it turns out that the camera he found on Brighton beach was about 22 years old and costs a fiver on eBay - so it's quite plausible that it was planted there as a practical joke. So now I'm wondering who on earth leaves a roll of exposed film in the bottom of a door pocket in a hire car, and what's going to be on the pictures?????

I'll let you know.
 
Or contact the hire company who will have details of the previous hirers.
 
Stewart

I surmise all sorts of stuff gets left behind in hire cars but the fact you had to rummage deeply does not say much about the hire company valeting.

I wonder how long the film had been sculling around in the almost inaccessible recess, when was Fuji Superia last sold or is it still on the shelves???

Also where was the hire, UK or abroad?
 
Box Brownie said:
Stewart

I surmise all sorts of stuff gets left behind in hire cars but the fact you had to rummage deeply does not say much about the hire company valeting.

I wonder how long the film had been sculling around in the almost inaccessible recess, when was Fuji Superia last sold or is it still on the shelves???

Also where was the hire, UK or abroad?
Click to expand...

Still easily available.
 
Box Brownie said:
Also where was the hire, UK or abroad?
Click to expand...
We were returning the car at Los Angeles International Airport.
viv1969 said:
Or contact the hire company who will have details of the previous hirers.
Click to expand...
But they won't share those details with me, so essentially I'd be giving them the film and asking them to make the effort to return it. The employees I spoke to at LAX didn't seem to think that was part of their jobs and I didn't think trying to push the issue was likely to be productive.
 
StewartR said:
We were returning the car at Los Angeles International Airport.
But they won't share those details with me, so essentially I'd be giving them the film and asking them to make the effort to return it. The employees I spoke to at LAX didn't seem to think that was part of their jobs and I didn't think trying to push the issue was likely to be productive.
Click to expand...

No, you could retain the film and the rental company could contact the previous renter.
 
Somewhere on earth possibly is a 36 roll of Agfa slide film I used in my OM10 when touring Zimbabwe including Victoria's Falls etc in 1985 that I would dearly love to be re-united with but fear I sadly won't :-(
 
Box Brownie said:
I surmise all sorts of stuff gets left behind in hire cars but the fact you had to rummage deeply does not say much about the hire company valeting.
Click to expand...
Dealers are no better, I've several CDs in my collection that were found either in the head unit or had slipped into the back of the glove box of various cars I've bought. The apprentice at the first place I worked bought a used base spec Astra/Corsa and found it came complete with a flick-out extendable baton concealed in the steering column (from the logbook history we guess it was an impounded vehicle used as an unmarked car for a while) - when we talked about it in the canteen after he'd shown us it seemed that personal documents and keys were things a few people had found and returned via the dealer, and in one case items of underwear. And with MPVs having umpteen cubby holes under the seats/mats/etc. I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't becoming a more common occurrence.
 
Alastair said:
Dealers are no better, I've several CDs in my collection that were found either in the head unit or had slipped into the back of the glove box of various cars I've bought. The apprentice at the first place I worked bought a used base spec Astra/Corsa and found it came complete with a flick-out extendable baton concealed in the steering column (from the logbook history we guess it was an impounded vehicle used as an unmarked car for a while) - when we talked about it in the canteen after he'd shown us it seemed that personal documents and keys were things a few people had found and returned via the dealer, and in one case items of underwear. And with MPVs having umpteen cubby holes under the seats/mats/etc. I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't becoming a more common occurrence.
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It's called "part ex gold" or "valetors treasure" in the motor trade

Sadly you are as likely to find a 30 year old Val Doonican's Greatest Hits cassette as anything of any value lol.
 
On that note, we once found a tape of The Wurzel's Greatest Hits jammed in the cassette player of a hire car in Greece. Our children claimed it for theirs, until it eventually had an 'accident'.
 
I wondered where I had left that :-)
 
The question is will this topic have to be moved to the NSFW once the film returns? :whistle:
 
When I was a teenager in the 70s I had a roll of film developed via a postal service. The excitement as I opened the envelope... well the first photo, I had to rotate around and around to work out what it was... a close up of a couple copulating :eek::eek: A quick skim through the rest of them and they were all pornographic.

On returning them, they duly sent my correct photos. I'm convinced they were deliberately mis-sent as a joke. My own photos were not nearly so exciting, but I was really glad to get hold of them.

When my Dad asked me what they were of, I said 'oh just someone's holiday photos'
 
Bebop said:
When I was a teenager in the 70s I had a roll of film developed via a postal service. The excitement as I opened the envelope... well the first photo, I had to rotate around and around to work out what it was... a close up of a couple copulating :eek::eek: A quick skim through the rest of them and they were all pornographic.

On returning them, they duly sent my correct photos. I'm convinced they were deliberately mis-sent as a joke. My own photos were not nearly so exciting, but I was really glad to get hold of them.

When my Dad asked me what they were of, I said 'oh just someone's holiday photos'
Click to expand...

We had a lodger 30 years ago when we still lived in London, relatively newly married, her husband was completing 3 months basic training in the army before he got accommodation and they would be able to live together again. She asked if I could get a film processed when I took mine, and after I collected them I just looked at the first image - some tanks in a field - to confirm they were hers. Passed the packet over, she eagerly started flicking through, then quickly became the kind of angry that's fuelled by embarrassment - seems he'd been taking pictures while she undressed, telling her that "the camera was empty" - and she'd not expected to see (or for anyone else to either) those images.
 
Ha ha can't wait to see how this goes. I've bought preowned memory cards from places like Cash Converters before that have had some of the original owners images on. Some that should have been deleted before selling the card....
 
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