Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/01/17
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]on 17/1/00 3:02 pm, Robert Meier at robertmeier@usjet.net wrote: >> so where's the Leica advantage here, beyond the security of the merely >> theoretical? > > Theoretical, my foot! I used reloadable cassettes for years and found out > that they can scratch the film in every conceiveable way -- front, back, > parellel lines the whole length of a film, single scratches for single > frames, even slanting lines. I bought every brand of cassette, cleaned them > with compressed air, kept them in a dust-free drawer, kept track of how many > rolls went through each. They still almost all developed scratches. I used to get bad scratches with reloadable cassettes. It turned out that they came from the LOADING process, rather than the cassettes. I never did work out the mechanism, but they seem to have disappeared for the moment. However, the point about the tail of the film getting exposed is an important one. One way round this is to load the film in a darkroom, which is actually very easy once you get used to it. However, there definitely is a point at which the savings are outweighed by the hassle. I'm about 50:50 with selfrolled and prerolled film right now, but it's only going one way. - -- Johnny Deadman photos: http://www.cinematic.freeserve.co.uk music: http://www.jukebox.demon.co.uk