Baker's Dozen

I recieved a Balda 120 folder for my birthday. Nice camera but winding film takes a bit of getting used to. It has a combination mechanical counter and shutter interlock. Basically the film wind knob is turned backwards before forwards and winding on film. Red window is just for first frame.
Well with my first fil I got a bit mixed up and checked the window and the film did not seem to be moving forward a full frame. On my first film only six pictures were OK and another four were overlapped in pairs. At lest the shutter worked and it is light tight.
Carefully read downloaded instruction on line and decided to set start just before first 1. This i did and the winding procedure was working. When I got to 12 I took the picture and wound on to take another, which I did. I had my suspicions. confirmed when the processed film was found to have 13 perfectly useable square images. They are pretty close together, but no overlapping. There is certainly enough room on the film for 13 exposures.
So has the film gotlonger over the years? Is it just to provide sufficient to cover errors? or is it avoiding 'unlucky 13'?
Anyhow it is now lucky 13 for me.

Congrats to your lovely Baldix, congrats on getting 13 shots per roll !
Film was way thicker in the older days.

Your Baldix probably caused fits to those who mounted 120 slides back in the day .
120 film is made to a specified size and length, and the cameras are/were designed to accommodate that. iThere is enough built in room to ensure that very few cameras have problems with the first or last frames being only partially usable, or problems with frames overlapping.
In addition, some cameras have slightly larger film gates than others.
As a result, it is not unusual that your camera can squeeze an extra frame in, when everything is done just right!

When 120 cameras use the red window, film length was pretty consistent. With auto advance, the spacing would vary from on make to another, and they padded 120 film a bit to ensure it worked with all makes.

It was classic student practice to squeeze a 13th frame from a Hasselblad C12 back (pre-A12), if you started the 1st frame right at the tape, you could reset the counter after frame 12 and get one more shot on the film. If you were too early, you could loose part of the 1st frame, and if you were too late, the 13th would leak off the end of the film. But with practice, you could consitently get 13 frames on most films.

Question is: where's that 13th frame going to reside in the negative sleeve?

Theo Sulphate said:

Question is: where's that 13th frame going to reside in the negative sleeve?

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It is a bit of a squeeze. However the pages are about the same width of 6 35mm frames. This helps on V30 scanner where I scan 120 film in two passes and fit together in Photoshop Elements panoramic feature. 4 frames fit nicely.

MattKing said:

Your Baldix probably caused fits to those who mounted 120 slides back in the day .

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They are pretty close and could be tricky in card mounts. However maybe the designer was a user of glass mounts and then they would be fine.
I think I still have some glass slides up in loft and some outdated Fujichrome so I will give it a try.