advancing film - bigger spaces between frames

jordanstarr · May 17, 2007

hey...

i'm just wondering if it's possible to get a professional to modify my contax 35mm slr to advance the film more (is there a simple lever adjusting solution i'm not aware of?). i use borders a lot when enlarging in the darkroom and the spacing is mighty tight so i've cut into the picture a couple times. i'd like the option of big borders too.

thanks...jordan.

Konical · May 17, 2007

Good Afternoon Jordan,

It's probably possible, but I imagine that time and effort required of a camera technician would hardly be worthwhile. If you really need the extra blank space, why not just use the lens cap while shooting blanks in between your user frames? 18 shots on a 35mm roll still doesn't add up to very expensive film cost.

Konical

Nick Zentena · May 17, 2007

Even easier get a Kiev then you can get constantly changing borders -)

pentaxuser · May 17, 2007

You've got a good point here. When you look at the wasted space on a 36 frame film, you'd think it would be possible to increase borders and still allow 36 frames to be taken.

The spacing on my MZ7 means that when cutting the film into strips of 6 frames, I have to be very precise and I occasionally just about clip the edge of the neg.

So, a lot of sympathy from me but not much help in terms of a solution.

pentaxuser

AgX · May 17, 2007

-) Very much out of the blue: let two gears change in the film drive unit, making a new gear ratio and thus gaining broader spaces in between frames.

Keep your camera at home, but leave the home yourself and

-) Get a lever knive (don’t know the right word) make yourself an adjustable plate with pins complementary to the perforation, adhere it to the base plate of that knive, adjust it the way that the knive cuts exactly between the frames… and keep your fingers off that knive's blade.

AgX · May 18, 2007

As there seems to by confusing around what of knife I'm referring to:

I mean a blade with a handle attached on side and a joint on the other by which it is connected to a base which edge forms the counterpart to that blade. Actually a scissors construction.

You'll find it in every graphics shop.

Lee L · May 18, 2007

These are often called a paper trimmer or guillotine in american english. I use a small Fiskars version with a 6 inch cutting capacity for cutting film. That helps a lot with narrow frame spacing.

Lee

AgX said:
As there seems to by confusing around what of knife I'm referring to:

I mean a blade with a handle attached on side and a joint on the other by which it is connected to a base which edge forms the counterpart to that blade. Actually a scissors construction.

You'll find it in every graphics shop.

AgX · May 18, 2007

Speaking of scissors:

You could even fix such an (adjustable) positioning device to a common household pair of scissors.

jordanstarr · May 18, 2007

yeah...i was thinking about just wasting a few frames in between pictures i know for sure i will end up enlarging. however, when i usually find that object, scene, angle, lens, etc. i usually experiment with different filters and depths of field. after that i change lenses and do it all over again. it's not uncommon for me to wrap off a whole roll of 36exp film on 2 different photographic scenes. so doing the spacing thing would get annoying after a while.
i was hoping that there is a sensor i can take off that tells the winder when it's fully advanced one frame. then i can do 1.25 pumps each frame. it's too perfect to be realistic.

AgX · May 18, 2007

That pumping won’t work, you’ll have to do a full swing. You’d have to change gears.
In case of a motorized film transport you’d have to do the same. But there might be (pure guessing) some optoelectronics that read the turns of that pinned spindle somehow. This could be an approach. Or somehow misleading the microprocessor of the camera. The same would have to be done if there was an IR-optoelectronic reading the perforations. But this all is rather out of the blue as I don’t know how modern cameras control film transport. Perhaps somebody else has got a brilliant idea.

I don’t cling to that cutting idea of mine, but I think some control of cutting between the frames would be a good approach. It might be however that I do not really understand your problem. Especially those `big borders´. That other, that language border can be quite annoying sometimes…

John Koehrer · May 20, 2007

To change the spacing on a mechanical camera you're going to have to find someone who has the capability of manufacturing new gears for your camera.
Probably be less expensive to get a different body with the same lens mount.

The optoelectronics used to track film in most of the autoadvance camera simply counts sprocket holes.

Murray@uptowngallery · Jun 18, 2007

Ha!

What you need is a cruder camera (one example given earlier).
Like an Argus C3, where you can unlock the winder and tweak it a little further after it stops, similar on a Kodak 35 or 35RF and most 120/620 folders.

I ran some 220 in a 120 camera and hand counted turns...and got increasing borders because the spool diameter builds up and winds more film for each turn.

advancing film - bigger spaces between frames

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