[Leica] Rapidwinder and film mis-advance/loading....

[Austin Franklin <austin@darkroom.com>]

Has anyone ever found that the film load has not loaded properly with the 
Rapidwinder?  I know it is claimed that the 'basket' isn't necessary, but I 
never had a mis-loaded roll in hundreds of rolls without the Rapidwinder.

I shot a roll last week at a very important event.  I noticed at the end of 
the roll, that the roll didn't stop...  I thought it just could have been 
the perforations on that last frame were torn through from the force of the 
Rapidwinder, so I just rewound the film, and put in a new roll...  Well, I 
was shooting this morning, and noticed the rewind crank was moving only a 
little....but not spinning as it should.  So, I tightened up the film with 
the rewind crank, so there would be no slack in it...and shot another few 
frames...again, little movement...  I opened the back, and found the film 
had not advanced at all!  It was in the take up spool fine, but the film 
was sitting too low, and the perforations were not in the cogs...so no 
advance.

I'm going to take the 'basket' off the original bottom, and put it on the 
Rapidwinder.  This is the first roll of film in over 25 years of 
photography that I have ever had an advancing/loading problem with.  I 
think to claim you don't need the basket is possibly bad advice, at least 
for me it was.