Can I do cassette-less loading of 35mm if I work with a changing bag?

[Donald Qualls]

That's interesting, I haven't encountered old Chinese film, but I have purchased Soviet Union 35mm packaged in foil with no cassette. They were doing this into the 90s before their dissolution.

I understood this was done so the (cash-strapped) end user could reuse their own cassette without needing to buy a bulk loader and 30.5 (or even 15+) meters of film. The assumption seemed to be that if you shot 35mm, you had at least a crude darkroom available to load the film into a daylight tank and reload your cassette.

 

[MCB18]

I understood this was done so the (cash-strapped) end user could reuse their own cassette without needing to buy a bulk loader and 30.5 (or even 15+) meters of film. The assumption seemed to be that if you shot 35mm, you had at least a crude darkroom available to load the film into a daylight tank and reload your cassette.

I’ve talked to someone that used to live in Ukraine during the 1980s/90s when they were growing up, and while this is kind of true, it’s also not. Here in the west cassettes were basically disposable packaging, but in the USSR they were all reusable, because stamping metal was relatively expensive. When you bought a roll with a cassette, you were buying the cassette too, which made it more expensive. If you have ever looked on eBay at old reusable Soviet cassettes, most of the time they actually have the price of the cassette stamped on them.

So, rather than being sold in a cassette, most film was sold as a refill that you could just plop into the cassette, and you could easily do it in a closet. Closer to the end, you didn’t even need to do it in the dark, there was an opaque piece of paper wrapped around the film that when you put it in the cassette and pulled out the paper it would give you the film, and all of this could be done in the light. Pretty ingenious solution if you ask me.

 

[Donald Qualls]

Pretty ingenious solution if you ask me.

Nice way to make things more accessible on a budget. And daylight loading cassettes! I presume those included a spool inside the film roll, else you wouldn't be able to rewind to unload the camera in daylight...

 

[MCB18]

Nice way to make things more accessible on a budget. And daylight loading cassettes! I presume those included a spool inside the film roll, else you wouldn't be able to rewind to unload the camera in daylight...

Yes, at some point, they did start putting the film onto the plastic spools. I don’t believe it was always like that according to what I’ve read, but at least from the person that I talk to his memories it was always on the school when they got it.

I actually have a video of me with a daylight reload that I made as a “new format” for April fools this year, I might see about putting it on post YouTube.

 

[loccdor]

The ones I bought which are among the latest made did have a foil covering as well as a black paper covering. They didn't have spools though. That's interesting information about the use of the black paper.

 

[Donald Qualls]

The ones I bought which are among the latest made did have a foil covering as well as a black paper covering. They didn't have spools though. That's interesting information about the use of the black paper.

That's what I understood the Soviet-era reloads to be -- like bulk film, but one roll length only. Still needed a dark back to roll it onto the spool and insert that into the cassette -- spool required to rewind, cassette to allow daylight unloading.