[Leica] casette question

[msmall at infionline.net (Marc James Small)]

This is clearly a Leica Cassette.  Canon later "borrowed" the design and
produced this for use in their cameras up to their R series SLR's and later
RF's;  production ended around 1980.  Leitz supplied these cassettes (for a
price, of course!) until their demise in 1986.  The LTM cassette is just a
Charley Hotel too long to work in an M camera, while the M cassette will
work in both, so these are the more desireable of the two.

Their is a vastly superior design of a somewhat similar cassette for use on
Zeiss Ikon cameras.  This was marketed until the demise of camera
production by Zeiss Ikon in 1971.  And, as was the case with the Leitz
cassette, another firm borrowed the design though, in this case, it was
Nippon Kogaku, who continued to produce a Nikon cassette into the early
1990's.

The Zeiss Ikon cassette is vastly easier to use but, in the end, both are
substantially better than commercial film cassettes, as they allow
no-contact exposure of the film.  That is, the film does not pass through a
felt light-trap, as it does in the normal Agfa-designed cassette but,
rather, passes through an open gate on the cassette, a gate opened by the
operation of a lug fitment on the baseplate of the camera.  Zeiss Ikon went
farther than Leica and allowed double-cassette usage -- that is, you could
use a Zeiss Ikon cassette for both the film and take-up spool, allowing you
to switch films in mid-stream by opening the back and replacing it with
another emulsion, albeit you would lose the three or four exposures exposed
by this.  (Opening the back turns the lugs which would close the cassettes,
so the film stored in each was light-tight.)

I have a lot of both kinds of cassettes and love them -- and Watson
bulk-loaders can handle both of them.  But most commercial processors have
never seen the like and, thus, you are, in the end, reduced to using them
only for emulsions that you are willing to process yourself.  These
cassettes are pretty bullet-proof but I did have a Leitz cassette destroyed
by a local lab.  I tried to warn the clerk but she assured me that the
processor knew what she was doing.  I tried to give instructions but ... it
did not take, and I received back a developed roll of film and a cassette
with a sprung spring..

(The result was that about a year later I received a slew of Leitz red
plastic camera stands, the sort of thing used by camera stores to show
their wares, dating from the middle 1960's, and these are MOST highly
appreciated, as there will never be a run of these available and, who
knows, I might even have use of them at a camera show to display some LTM
camera or the like.  And the clerk, the then-manager of the store, and the
processor herself are still clients of mine, so, sometimes, holding your
peace is a wise idea.)

In 1995, my late wife and I went to the Beach with our kids.  I took dozens
of rolls of film, and all of it in Leitz cassettes.  We got home late
Sunday evening and I developed every Schwarz/Weiss and C-41 roll myself by
the following Wednesday and  had every strip reviewed and prints made
within a week.  The Kodacrhome rolls I shot (two?  three?) were sent off
and received back a week later;  these had been reviewed and
Cibachrome/Ilfochrome prints made by me within a week after their return
and within three weeks of our return from the beach.  God, but I wish I had
that energy today!

Marc



msmall@infionline.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
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