[Dug]

The "Signature" film is from a company called Seattle Film Works (now renamed Photoworks(?) for reasons that will become clear below), who used to sell the respooled movie film and require that the film be returned to them for processing. This was because running the ecn II film through a standard C-41 machine would gum up the machine when the backing dissolved and deposit black goo on all the other rolls running through the machine (!). I do not know whether this is true or not, but all photofinishers policed their incoming 35mm cassettes to see if they were the dreaded Seattle Film Works film. SFW later switched to C-41 film stock, but the die was cast, and photo finishers would not develop rolls of their film even when clearly labeled C-41.

What would lead a company to do such a thing?? Why would people buy into it?

FREE FILM!

The deal was that you would get 2 rolls of film in the mail FOR FREE, and you send them back in a little pouch and get prints AND slides from the same roll! I caught the Seattle Film Works Free Film Fever, got back a set of really washed-out looking prints AND slides, and was immediately cured.

However, my bout of Free Film Fever recurred after they switched to sending FREE C-41 (!!) This led to making requests for free film (which was C-41) and using a photo finisher who would process the C-41 film even though it had the dreaded SFW label that others would not touch. The photo finishers who managed to process E-6 (slide) film in their C-41 machines were good candidates for the SFW C-41 film. But that is another story...

It appears the whole scheme started to fall apart after they started distributing film (for free) that could be processed by anyone and trying to convince people that they HAD to use SFW processing services.

The whole sad story can be found in the archives of photo.net (ahh the pre digital days of photo.net (1996), with Mr. Greenspun spinning yarns and folks coming out of their caves to club each other over the head with their Canon v. Nikon debates).