I must be the odd one out ... stainless steel reels are WAY easier than plastic!

I end up with a section of film that was touching so I use my Patterson for doing 35, and SS for doing 120.

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I'm also in this game but I prever also for the 120mm the Paterson reels!
I have the very expensive Kinderman SS but loosed many negs because of touching each other!
I find the paterson totaly intuitivly and never loosed any neg at all with them!

Cheers Armin

I had to resort to plastic for 35mm today. Somehow one edge of a 35mm spool was folded over at the sprockets! I don't know how my EOS 1N RS did it or if I did it somehow when trying to load the SS Nikor reel but it wasn't loading right so I took it off and as I was respooling it into my hand I felt the oddest thing in my hand, bumps on one edge! I tried to load it onto SS again and it just wouldn't go so I dumped it into the steel tank, went and got a black film canister (since I was loading color film which comes in translucent canisters), took the stainless steel reels (Was doing two films) and tank out of the bag, put two Paterson Super System 4 plastic reels and a Universal Super System 4 tank in the bag.

I carefully loaded the strange 35mm film with bumps on the edge. I found the bumps went away halfway through the film strip so I turned it around and loaded it from the good end. It took a few tries but it went on! The other roll went on fine.

I figured the 'bumpy' film was ruined but after processing with Tetenal, 3:30 dev, 6:30 blix, 3 hot washes, stab, cleanup, I opened the tank and the first roll (last one in, the good one) was good and then I took out the 'bad' one and it was good too! The bumps were because the edge of the film with the sprocket holes was folded over! Anyone ever seen that? Somehow it wasn't folded onto the image area and since the reel is plastic it even developed and blixed the folded over area fine.

I must say I changed my opinion of plastic reels for 35mm today. Saved a roll for me! They weren't the most important shots in the world, I was mostly using the rolls to test out the Tetenal powder but I'm happy that they came out anyways. Ruined shots are always sad.

May be I will have to try plastic at some point so I can compare. 5,000+ films 35/120 and never tried.

Had my 11 year old daughter load her first film yesterday in the changing bag. 35. Just told her to pry open the cassette with her fingers, cut the film where it becomes wide, put the holes in the prongs, roll the reel and cut off the film at the end.
Zipper close to open 6:25 min.
Hewes reel.

May be I will be a plastic reel so she can compare - any recommendations?

Katie,
Stainless rules, plastic sucks, no doubt.
That said I am giving plastic a try again for the first time since elementary school.
The plus side to the hassle is with jobo, you can cut your chemistry consumption by half.
So that merits some grief.

Katie said:

In my recent darkroom equipment purchase were about 25 stainless steel reels (both 120 and 35mm size) and 3 or 4 tanks.

I decided to take the plunge and attempt to use SS tonight because I had four rolls to develop and my tiny plastic patterson tank only holds 1 120 reel at a time.

WOW. I went from spending 5 minutes crinkling my film on the plastic to about 10 seconds gliding in onto the SS reel. What a difference...

Just to put it out there - I read many things about how easy the plastics load and what a learning curve it was for SS. Don't be afraid to try it. I am very pleased!

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LeicaM3 said:

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Hewes reel.

May be I will be a plastic reel so she can compare - any recommendations?

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The Hewes (also some were sold under the Kindermann brand name) with the 2 sprocket fingers are the best reels out there. Let her master them and soon the time in the bag will a fraction of that.

She is lucky to be able to be in the darkroom with you. Most kids her age will never know the magic.

My 2 daughters have spent countless hours over the years processing film and making prints with me too. It is great, isn't it!