Feasts of Yesteryear

Guirim, Cumbiem Morod

2nd January 1966

Preparing for the feast

of Holy Name of Jesus - 

at the Chapel dedicated to St. Anne.

BACK IN TIME

The chapel is white-washed. Decoration seems to be in progress. Atop the folding ladders is your sincerely in favourite checked blue shirt, assisted by two other young guys. One of them is Sikander (a.k.a. Shiko). The holes for the poles were dug by none other than Benit Titi, God bless him too. The white lace curtains and linen drapes were kept in a special steel trunk at Beatrice Mana's house in immaculate condition. The camera that I used was a Samoca II, made in Japan. The slide film was Kodachrome 64 ASA 36exp. The transparencies could be projected on the wall. The slide film was processed by Bombay Film Colour Labs at Dadar 47 years ago.

Kodachrome colour reversal film from Eastman Kodak was a process-paid film available in the 1960’s in Indian sub-continent and in the Middle Eastern countries. During my years in Goa and Bombay, I sent my film to the Bombay Film Laboratories at Dadar in Bombay for processing in slides; and when I worked in Dubai, I sent them to Hemel Hempsted Labs in the United Kingdom. In later years I got the slides developed at the United Film Laboratories in Ajman, U.A.E.

The trend of colour slides declined over the years, and finally disappeared from the scene.

The added joy of taking pictures using colour slide films was that one could have a slide show for family and friends to watch at home by using a 35mm film slide projector. Thus one could not only have personal projection of slides at a evening get-together with family and friends, but could also have prints made from the slides as well if required. Though the cost of making this choice was expensive, it was fun as a hobby. The reason behind this extra expense was due to the fact that the colour labs had to first make a negative from the dia-positive slide, and then make a colour print from the negative.

The advantage of using slide film was the clarity, a balanced skin tone and general fine picture quality. The benefit of using medium speed 35mm 64ASA was less grain, resulting in exceptionally sharp pictures.