I had been hearing about reloading old 126 format cartridges with 35mm film to shoot in obsolete cameras, but was not brave or crazy enough to attempt it until now.

Someone recently gave me an unopened box of 35 year old 126 Kodacolor and I tried it out. I went online for research, shot the roll in a Ricohflex 126-C, cracked the cartridge open in my dark bag with minimal damage, but the film inside was too old or degraded to give usable results when developed.

Going through my shelves I tried various 126 cameras and settled on this fairly high end Yashica EZ-matic from circa 1966-1967. It can advance 35mm film despite the extra sprocket holes, two full careful strokes cocking the shutter with reasonable spacing. Working by touch in the total darkness of my changing bag I took about half of the original backing paper (which gave me numbers in the window as frame guides) and cut off a fresh length of Fujicolor 200 in 35mm and rolled it into the cartridge with the paper, closing it up with bits of Scotch freezer tape.

I had Caffenol developing in mind so I rated the ASA 200 Fuji film @50. First frame was a practice shot in our front elf garden. The remaining 10 frames were captured at St. Martin's churchyard in High Ridge.

The camera felt perfect in my hands and performed flawlessly in a full manual mode. Back home I popped the cartridge open in the dark bag, spooled it into my Paterson tank, and developed with my normal Caffenol recipe, all with safe ingredients from the grocery store.

Results exceeded my expectations.
126 is by design a "square" format, but with the extra row of sprocket holes on the 35mm filmstrip, and the way the film is held in place in my Epson scanner, square did not really work out. I cropped each frame a bit to what I liked best for the subject.

Please click on thumbnails to see enlarged.
All images are ©2021 E.J.Kowalski.
Thanks! Ed