Bulk film roll: how to load film without a loader?

Well for me my favourite two film accessory's are my changing bag and my bulk film loader.

MartinP said:

They are popular because they are an extra bit of gear that you can baffle ordinary people with. Gear-worship should stop.

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They are not used to baffle people but just to load film safely into a film cassette which it does regularly, accurately and with no scratches, still if knocking nails in a wall with a big hammer is your thing........

Bulk film loaders vary in quality as well as price. A good used one is a worthwhile investment for anyone intending to shoot much 35mm film. I saved a lot of money over many years by reloading hundreds of 35mm cartridges. One tip: use film loaders in total darkness to avoid exposing the tail of the film. Some loaders have frame counters. With more basic loaders one can count the turns of the loading crank. However, the number of turns does not equal the number of frames. Use strong tape with good adhesive, and wrap it around the core of the spool so you can attach it to both sides of the film. Some cartridge spools have a slot that retains the end of the film without using tape.

Agulliver said:

Just be aware that you will either need to spool off the entire bulk roll in one session, or you will need to repackage the roll in it's protective bag and box each time you use it. This can lead to scratching the film and as others say your number of exposures per roll will vary....but it is an option.

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Never ever had scratches.
If you keep the bulk roll from unraveling, as in that dish I proposed.

I don't put my bulk loaders on display, they live in a drawer under the bed. They are, however, practical pieces of kit that I use regularly. I generally have two or three different films on the go....currently my three loaders have HP5+, Fomapan 100 and Kentmere 400 in them. Never had any scratches, I find them quite easy to use. For the record I have a Watson 100, a Prinz 66 (rebadged Watson 66 I think) and a "The Daylight" which is the simplest of the three. None of them causes any problems, and as well as meaning I can roll a few films without getting out the changing bag they are secure ways to store my bulk rolls.

It's certainly not strictly necessary to use one, you can go in a dark room (proper darkroom or your windowless bathroom) or a changing bag and roll a few cassettes off a bulk film...but it's probably more fiddly and risky if something goes wrong and you cannot count frames. It all depends if it's important these things are.

A bulk loader is certainly the way to go. All but the very cheapest accurately keep track of the number of exposures. The also protect the film from finger prints, scratches and dust.

David A. Goldfarb said:

I was on a research fellowship in Poland in 1989. There was hardly anything in the photo stores except for bulk rolls of high contrast copy film--perfect for copying books and documents, which I needed to do. I got old reusable cartridges from a film lab, put two pieces of tape on the wall of the bathroom just like your East German bathroom, and measured the film in the dark on the wall using those pieces of tape, and loaded the cartridges. The lab that gave me the cartridges processed the film.

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Oh wow, how cool is this? Side note: i just measured my wingspan, its around 1,65m which is the equivalent of 36 exposures

The more I shoot 35mm, the more I come to appreciate the old 20 exposure rolls. Since I use the (7 rows of 5, 35 images) NegSavers, bought in bulk for quite cheap originally, actually shooting 36 exposures is an inconvenience. 20 exposures is about 26 inches, doable in a changing tent-- no closet needed!

Just today I found my old lost photo notebook (covering 1972-1977) - it seems the average number of frames I loaded onto the roll was 18.

Having done it both ways, I'd say it doesn't make much of a difference. It was possible to mess up with the bulk loader, but once you got the hang of it, you could avoid exposing or scratching film with it, and the same could be said of just marking two spots on the wall. I think it was faster and easier, actually, to use the two spots on the wall, presuming you have a dark enough room for it. I would use a long enough piece of tape to tape the film to the wall and then attach it to the spool with the same tape after cutting the required length.

Quick one: if i use bulk film, could i simply use an empty used film cartridge as a solution for cameras that may "need" DX coding?

Yes

As these are nowadays hard to open and to close again, you'll have to tape the new film to a rest of the the old one hanging out of the slit.

You can also purchase DX coding labels. Even if you don't bulk load, these are handy for things like tricking your non-adjustable 35mm P&S to push film and such.