Bulk loading and re-usable cassettes - film sticking on re-wind

I loaded my first re-usable cassette( Jessops plasticand brand new) last week, using only 12 frames in case anything went wrong. Well, it did. Loading didn't seem to present a problem but re-winding did.

My pentax MZ7 has a mid-roll rewind button( the re-wind is battery operated) which I used. On factory cassettes I can allow it to automatically re-wind at the end knowing that I'll get 12/13 shots on a 12 frame cassette but on a self load I couldn't risk this as the end of the cassette might have been exposed.

So after 12 shots I pressed the re-wind button and everything went well until frame 5 when it stuck. Despite several attempts to re-start it I had eventually to resort to opening the back under a jacket, eventually managing to free the film and had to re-wind it into the cassetteby hand. I then put in a factory cassette.

I developed tonight and had managed to save 6 shots. There appears to be nothing wrong with spacing or sprocket holes or film tongue which I had to shape. I had even checked to see if I could pull out the tongue of the film from the cassette to feed into the reel as I would normally do with factory cassettes. This worked fine although I did notice that turning the spindle by hand while the cassette was assembled was stiffer than it is on a factory cassette.

Has anyone had a similar experience and if so how did you rectify it. I had wondered whether if due to the stiffness of the spindle it had proved too much for the battery to re-wind. The factory cassette rewinded perfectly tonight and there is no sign of the battery failure signal in the information section.

I examined the cassette I had used and it looked fine as well. I want to re-load another 12 shot film tomorrow and use it up close to home so if it sticks I can return home and release it in the darkroom. However this is not a practical long term solution.

Advice from anyone who has had this problem would be welcome but advice from anyone who uses self loaded bulk film would also be appreciated. I have a 17 metre roll in my bulk loader and need to fix this problem asap.

Thanks

pentaxuser

I don't know what these cans are like but any chance you put it together upside down? If you have a factory load of film compare the curve of the film leader.

Nick Zentena said:

I don't know what these cans are like but any chance you put it together upside down? If you have a factory load of film compare the curve of the film leader.

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Thanks Nick. Could you expand on this? Do you mean have I re-assembled the cassette with the spindle at the opposite end to what it should be. Well, no I don't think so. It seemed to fit the loader snugly and the camera and looked exactly as the other cassettes look which have yet to be taken apart.

Not entirely sure what you mean about comparing the curve of the film leader. Once the cassette is loaded then I had to cut the film into a longish triangular shape to enable it to engage with the camera take-up spool. This has to be cut so the sprockets on the tongue of the film are at the bottom and it was cut this way. On closig the back of the camera the film engaged just as factory loaded cassettes do. So the loading process worked perfectly. Could this have been OK while not being compatible with the re-wind?

Or am I missing the point you are making. Can you expand if I haven't covered your point above.

Thanks

pentaxuser

pentaxuser said:

Thanks Nick. Could you expand on this? Do you mean have I re-assembled the cassette with the spindle at the opposite end to what it should be. Well, no I don't think so. It seemed to fit the loader snugly and the camera and looked exactly as the other cassettes look which have yet to be taken apart.

Click to expand...

Ya it's possible to put the thing in upside down. You can still fit it in the camera but the film doesn't have a proper path.

What I mean about the leader is take a factory loaded can and take the one you loaded. If you did it right the leaders should point the same way. If you did it wrong it'll be pretty obvious when you compare.

I've not had this particular problem.

One problem I have had occasionally with bulk film is the cartridge being so tight that film advancement is a problem. In autowind cameras, I occasionally have the camera be convinced that it's on the end of the roll. (This also happened with a factory-packaged roll of Efke 25 but it's far more common with bulk loads.)

The rewind problem is puzzling.

Did you tape the film to the spool? If you use too much tape, the glue can get on the case and bind things up. I haven't used the refillable cassettes in quite a while. I go to the local pro lab, and they give me empty 35mm cassettes for free. There is about 1/4 to 1/2" sticking out of the cassette. I tape the bulk film to the 1/4", put it in the loader, and wind it up. I put a piece of tape across the splice on both sides and trim the sides even with a pair of small scissors. Works for me. Cheap (free!) too.

I have experienced this problem more than a few times, My Voigtlander R2 is the worst offender. Sometimes the cassette will rotate slightly in the camera pushing the light trap toward the camera back. This will cause the film to bind on rewind. This is because the film path is no longer parallel to the guide rails. The only solution appears to be that one make sure that the cassette is properly oriented in the camera before closing the back. To do this the film should be tensioned slightly and be resting flat on the guide rails and not bowed away from them. I hope this makes sense. I would be easy to show but is hard to describe.

pentaxuser said:

I had even checked to see if I could pull out the tongue of the film from the cassette to feed into the reel as I would normally do with factory cassettes. This worked fine although I did notice that turning the spindle by hand while the cassette was assembled was stiffer than it is on a factory cassette.

Click to expand...

(Emphasis added.)

This is almost certainly the source of the problem, although it's not an exact cause. Perhaps the spindle inside the cassette is too big and is causing friction, or maybe the opening to the cassette (through which the film runs) is too tight and is causing friction. If you've got multiple cassettes, you might try a couple more (just load a small amount of film to test the force it takes to pull the film out and then wind it back in). You can try swapping spindles around to see if that'll improve matters (even from single-use commercial cassettes).

If you can't seem to improve matters, then you might just have to ditch those cassettes. You could switch to another brand of plastic cassettes, metal cassettes, or single-use cassettes (as ricksplace suggests; Dead Link Removed). I've used all of these types of cassettes and all of them have their advantages and disadvantages. I believe there are long threads here on APUG about their relative merits and demerits. FWIW, although I've never run into the exact rewind problem you relate (most of my cameras are manual-rewind models), my impression is that plastic cassettes do generally present more friction than metal ones, so if your camera's motor drive is weak, you're better off with metal cassettes. Also FWIW, I've used two types of plastic cassettes: generic ones sold by B&H and the ones in which some Svema FN64 film I bought off eBay was delivered. The latter are slightly superior, IMHO, although the difference isn't a big one.

One more question and related suggestion: What sort of batteries are you using? Rechargeable batteries, although they work fine with most cameras, may give you a little less "oomph" when it comes to the hard work of winding and rewinding. If you're using rechargeable batteries, you might be able to work around your problem by switching to alkaline batteries. Lithium cells may do even better.

Thanks all for the suggestions. Gerald, I think you may have the answer. I am no engineer but the on-wind worked fine which I suspect it would have, even if the cassette wasn't lined up flat with the backplate but the re-wind at a slight angle might be too much for any battery and especially for one that is a few months old.

Your suggestion has prompted me to think back and I now re-call that the factory cassette which replaced the re-usable one prevented the camera back closing until I noticed that it hadn't seated properly in its place. Maybe plastic cassettes are even more prone to incorrect seating than metal factory ones.

srs5694.It could be a battery problem( they are lithiums) as well but if the solution is to change the batteries sooner then it'll soon negate any savings on bulk loading. The pentax MZ7 is one in which batteries normally last quite a long time.

I am going to load again, fire in the darkroom with the cap on then try re-winding. If it works then I'll simply use a film retriever and shoot the same roll properly.

Carrying a changing bag all the time isn't really a satisfactory solution in my opinion.

pentaxuser

When I experienced the problem I mentioned, the wind on was not particularly harder than usual. However, the rewind certainly was. In each case, when I opened the back after rewinding, the cassette was always rotated a bit.

Gerald Koch said:

When I experienced the problem I mentioned, the wind on was not particularly harder than usual. However, the rewind certainly was. In each case, when I opened the back after rewinding, the cassette was always rotated a bit.

Click to expand...

Gerald. Same in my case. Wind-on is no problem. Good as my word in my earlier post I tried another 12 frame load tonight and did my best to ensure that the cassette was flat. I then tried to fire 12 shots with the cap on. I have only done this once before when I changed from B&W mid roll to a colour film and then back to the same frame plus one on the B&W roll. As I recall it the wind-on then worked quite quickly but tonight I had to it press the shutter then switch off and then back on to move the film on each time. There must be a way to wind on a film without exposing it as I did in the example above. I couldn't find anything about this in the manual.

Does this difficulty in getting it to wind-on without exposing the film indicate that the batteries are failing? Anyway when I pressed the mid-roll rewind the screen indicated that it had fully rewound but on opening the back in the dark the film was still across the pressure plate. A second attempt then rewound it fully.

Does this suggest also suggest failing batteries? In a way I hope it does as new batteries may then be the cure.

There could be an issue with the cassettes but as they are new and Jessops must have sold 1000s over the years I doubt that they are faulty. If they were faulty then presumably Jessops would have a lot of complaints and withdrawn the product.

Thanks for staying with me on this.

pentaxuser

Did you remember to put your camera on manual exposure when you were advancing the film through (and trying not to actually use it)? It could have thought that the room was very dark, since you had the lens cap on, and trying to do a very long exposure to compensate...

Jim. Hadn't thought of that. Mind you I don't think I thought of that last time when it worked OK( whatever it was I did then). So I move the lens from the A position to one of the manual apertures and then fire. That presumably disables its attempt to do a long( in fact infinite) exposure. Have I got this right?

Thanks

pentaxuser

pentaxuser said:

There could be an issue with the cassettes but as they are new and Jessops must have sold 1000s over the years I doubt that they are faulty. If they were faulty then presumably Jessops would have a lot of complaints and withdrawn the product.

Click to expand...

The cassette doesn't operate in isolation. It interacts with the film loaded into it and with the camera. It's entirely possible that the cassette design is fine in 99% of cameras and with 99% of the film on the market but that you're using a combination that doesn't work well. For instance, unless the cartridge really jams hard, a cartridge that produces stiff rewind is likely to work fine with a manual-rewind camera -- the user will just wind a little harder. If your camera happens to be a little less able to rewind tough-to-rewind cartridges, it'll give problems with that particular cartridge.

It's also possible that the cartridge is simply defective -- from a bad lot, or even just a single defective cartridge.

Either way, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of cartridge problems. Because you specifically said earlier that this cartridge felt stiffer than others when you rotated the spool by hand, I strongly suspect that this is at least part of the problem. This isn't to say that something else (rotation of the cartridge in the camera or weak batteries) isn't a factor, too, though. Problems like this sometimes occur because of a combination of causes, not just one.