Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/09/10
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At 9:38 PM -0700 9/10/01, Ted Grant wrote:
>Sonny Carter wrote:
>>>> Anyhow, I had just loaded (successfully) a fresh roll of
>> Velvia 36 exposure in my M6, and before I went out, I got a
>> call that I needed to shoot some color neg. Normally, that
>> would be easy; get the other camera. But my CL was off
>> getting a little touch-up, so I carefully rolled the film
>> back, a little too far, and into the cassette.
>>
>> No problem. I've used one of those dandy little retreivers
>> for many years, successfully dozens of times. Not this
>> time. I concluded it was the little accordian folds that
>> kept it from doing the trick.<<<<<<<
>
>Hi Sonny,
>
>Right on my man. Those little folds will screw-up the retriever thingie
>everytime, well OK 99.999999% of the time, as the film must lie flat inside
>the cassette for the retriever to capture the leader tongue to pull it out.
>
>When you put the crimps in the leader it doesn't lie flat and the puller
>can't grab onto the film. Just one of those life things that drives you
>crazy when you least need any more heavy duty pressure. ;-)
>
>Best thing? Rewind carefully if you need to save the roll, other wise just
>wing it to her and rip it right back into the cassette. :-)
>ted
>
>Ted Grant Photography Limited
>www.islandnet.com/~tedgrant
Boy oh boy, is this ever getting complicated.
Loading film, I drop it in (M4 through M6), pulling the leader out
far enough to touch the other side of the take-up chamber, and
through the middle of the tulip. I have the back flipped up to feel
the film onto the sprocket, close the back, put on the bottom and
wind, watching the rewind lever. I do most of this without looking,
which is also good practice for the IR film. No crimping or anything
else. Just like in the diagram, except I pull it through the tulip to
the opposite side. Misloads are about 1:1000, which is a lot less
than all the autoloading Nikons and Canons etc, which collectively
I've probably loaded a fair bit more of than Leicas. I find loading
M4-6 Leicas faster and more positive than loading any other 35mm
camera. Try loading IR film in the dark into Widelux or Horizon
cameras, or IR film into 120 cameras!
If I have to leave the leader out (which I try to avoid, as this
easily introduces disastrous errors) I listen. Actually, you can feel
it if you are careful.
Extraction with the little commercial extractors is about 99% if you
follow the instructions and haven't done anything funny to the leader.
Loading film onto SS reels is straightforward and clean as well. I
snip off the leader; it might not be exactly at right angles but it
gets very close after a time.
Do it a number of times; do it in the dark by feel and shortly it
will be second nature.
- --
* Henning J. Wulff
/|\ Wulff Photography & Design
/###\ mailto:henningw@archiphoto.com
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