Efke 135 Film

[AnalogueNewbie]

Has anyone had problems loading Efke 35mm film onto processing reels? This was my first time using one, having only ever used Ilford previously, and had no problem loading them, even loading one about 30 minutes before the Efke without incident. The Efke film jammed for no reason and took four attempts to load on!

 

[srs5694]

See (there was a url link here which no longer exists)

 

[Rick A]

Odd, I've just experienced the opposite. I load Efke all the time, but just had one roll of FP-4+ that wouldn't load ona SS reel for anything, started out just fine, then about half way in all went awry, fought me to the bitter end. After it was out of the can I saw the problem. It was a roll that had spent too much time in the camera and had a flat area starting to develope from sitting 3 months of being idle.

 

[vedmak]

Has anyone had problems loading Efke 35mm film onto processing reels? This was my first time using one, having only ever used Ilford previously, and had no problem loading them, even loading one about 30 minutes before the Efke without incident. The Efke film jammed for no reason and took four attempts to load on!

may I humbly suggest for you to try metal reels from Hewes, not to say that there is anything wrong with Paterson tanks.

 

[R gould]

Make sure that the patterson reel is completely dry, and if you still get problems "Grease" the reel by using a pencil inside the groves, going around each side with the reel seperated, I do this every few films and I Never get problems loading any film 120 or 135, they all go straight in,Richard

 

[fotch]

Dry your reels or go stainless steel.

 

[mhcfires]

I have been using Ekfe KB25, developing it on stainless reels. I still have one old Nikor reel, one newer Hewes reel and two ?? reels. No problem loading onto either the Nikor or the Hewes, but I do sometimes have a problem with the other two. My big problem is the excessive curl of this film. After putting the negative strips into the PrintFile sleeve, I make a gentle reverse curl and put the entire sleeve into a paper towel tube. This seems to tame the curl.

 

[AnalogueNewbie]

Thanks for the advice. I suspect it might well have been a tiny bit of water under one of the ball bearings. Remarkably, given the abuse required to get the film on to a roll and into a tank, the negatives look to have come out quite well, if a little dense.

 

[GrantR]

Tangentially related, has anyone else noticed that the Efke KB25 base seems a lot sturdier than it has been in the past? I normally bite the film to get the leader and center column off, and this newer base seems much more tenacious than previous incarnations.

 

[AnalogueNewbie]

I did notice that the scissors I used to cut the Ilford FP4+ with ease took a bit more force to cut the Efke...

 

[wblynch]

I find that trimming the leading corners off the film I'm loading (1/8" or so, at 45*) makes it go onto the plastic reels much more smoothly.

 

[AnalogueNewbie]

Just to follow up, I processed a roll of the ISO 50 and used a blow drier on the reel and it went in more smoothly than anything i've ever used

 

[cmacd123]

Tangentially related, has anyone else noticed that the Efke KB25 base seems a lot sturdier than it has been in the past?.

I understand thet they are now using polyester base. It is almost impossible to "Tear" polyester.

 

[RobertV]

Efke indeed changed to Polyester base for about 2 years ago. Polyester you have to cut with a scissor. Your reel has to be dry too. Loading Polyester film on a (partial) wet plastic reel is a drama.