Lubitel 166B + Found Film

I bought a Lubitel 166B on ebay recently, shipped from Ukraine. Nice looking little camera...heavier and more solid that I expected. I've read mixed reviews, but most of the negative remarks came from "real" camera users, as opposed to toy camera users.


I haven't used it yet. Figured out all the little levers on the front, but I'm not sure how to focus yet. Turn the knob, I know, but it's hard to tell what's going on in the viewfinder. And there is a little magnifying glass that you can use with the finder...no idea. There are a few good Lubitel sites on the web, so it won't take me long to figure it out.
The best part, though, was finding a roll of film in the camera!


I assumed it was black and white, and developed it with Diafine for 4 and 4. It's very thick film and has an old film texture to it. I think it was actually color, though it wasn't orange like other old color film I've developed with Diafine. The images were pretty vague and funky, and the film was close to opaque, so I'm thinking it was color film. No lab I know would risk developing it in their chemicals not knowing what kind of film it was, so I would have used Diafine regardless. I pulled these three off of the roll. One was fairly visible, the others were very faded. All were of a family in a living room.



Not sure why some of it is positive and some negative. Here is the last shot converted to black and white and inverted:


Pretty psychedelic shots! Looks like it could be in the late 1960s or 1970s? Hard to tell for sure. I always wonder what happened that someone shot a roll of film and just forgot about it until it's pulled out 30 years later.
Can't wait to try it out for myself!