[Leica] Re: Leica cassettes

[dlridings at gmail.com (Daniel Ridings)]

On 6/29/06, Lawrence Zeitlin <lrzeitlin@optonline.net> wrote:

> Leica admits that standard commercial film cassettes are perfectly
> satisfactory. All of Leica's other film cameras use standard commercial
> cassettes. There is little justification for using the Leica cassettes
> unless you reload stamped metal cassettes over and over. Porters sells
> heavy duty stamped cassettes for about $1 which will tolerate repeated
> reloading.

Hi Larry,

For me, there is one good reason for using them. I bought a IIIc
recently for sentimental reasons. But despite the motivation for the
purchase, I actually use it.

It is fairly useless with standard commercial film cassettes. They
slide down, the film leaves the tracks and the corners are very
unsharp and distorted, with any lens, because of the lack of film
flatness at the film plane.

The metal cassettes are, as you point out, longer, so they don't
rattle around in the IIIc's chamber. Film stays right were it is
supposed to.

The alternative is to pile up some padding on the locking mechanism on
the bottom plate; enough padding to shove the modern, standard,
cassette up into the film chamber and hold it there.

Low tech.

Best,
Daniel