Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/02/09
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Marvin, I have been bulkloading films for years. Most of my stuff is done in " store bought" cassettes, but occasionally I bulkload stuff. Mainly when I can get strange and weird films from my movielab pals. Thank good for the heavy use of bl/white in the rock videos. This always ends up benefitting me, 1000's feet of various movie stocks. Kodaks Super XX, Agfa's now discontinued AP 250 ( wonderful, old style bl/white, great midtones, somehow made everybody look like Marlene Dietrich). I have a very simple system for bulk loading, my darkroom is really well sealed against stray light, and I grab the end of the film, pull it out so that I barely can hold it between fully stretched out arms, cut it off and spool it on to the centerspool and load up. Gives me between 37-39 exposures per roll. I have made a little device, similar to the Leica Handwinding stick ( which I use for my Leica cassettes) that holds the spool and that you just "spin" to spool up the film. The Leica reloadable cassettes are great, but they require some dexterity to use and with some of the new film bases, Tech Pan in particularly, it is almost impossible to rip off the centerspool when you load the developing tank. High risk for sliced fingertips when you are trying to cut that film with a sharp blade in total darkness. My friends knows of my affection for strange films and I have been given all kind of emulsions, a russian aerial surveillance film ( you couldn't tell an outhouse from a tank with that one!!), a chinese positive black/white stock that still insists on turning out as a negative, several 100 ft of a Kodak film, designed for shooting computerscreens, the worst case of misnamed film, a Russian 64 asa black/white named " Chernobyl" !!!! ( it obviously means black/white in russian, at least thats what I am told) and the aforementioned moviestocks. I shot a lot of tests with the Rapidwinders and go through a lot of film that way, this experimenting keeps me from getting bored. Whenever I try a new film. I try to get at least 100-200 ft of it. It sometimes takes that long to figure it times and developer combinations. There is a substantial saving too with bulk loading. I usually load up the whole supply at one time and try to shoot it fairly quickly. 400 ft of moviestock gives me about 68-69 rolls and that lasts maybe a month. Another factor to take into account is the fact that 100 ft of film in a can is less bulky than 16-17 rolls of loaded cassettes. My frezeer at the moment has about 4000 ft of movie stock in it, 2-300 feet of Fuji Presto 100 and 3 cans of 150 ft length of TechPan. That occupies less space than 2 boxes of 50 rolls of TriX. I buy the empty reloadable cassettes. 100 at a time and use them 5 times and chuck them out. To much chance for scratches after that. The FILCA style cassettes are great, but requires custom modifications to the rapidwinders and I have a couple of these for myself, but they are not "commercially" available. The Leica cassette is also too heavy for large quantity of film. Imagine going on a trip with 50 or 100 of these!!! For travel I rely on my TriX in Kodaks own cassettes, although i would like to see Kodak supply TriX the same way Ilford supplies its HP5+, in a simple plastic pouch. The plastic filmcan is a waste of material, I rather have the foil pack and a corresponding price cut. Tom A