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Mistake while bulk loading film

garpet

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Sep 12, 2025
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Boston
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So I'm not the most careful person in the world, which has caused me to load 100' of black and white film into cassettes... backwards. is there anything I can do to fix this other than taking each roll out and re-rolling it?
 
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This isn't too big of a deal. If you are working in a changing bag I would just take a blank cassette and wind fr9m 9ne to the other in the bag.
 
mshchem said:
This isn't too big of a deal. If you are working in a changing bag I would just take a blank cassette and wind fr9m 9ne to the other in the bag.
Click to expand...

well, there goes my night
 
When you say "backwards, do you mean that you have loaded it with emulsion out, or do you mean that you have the spool in the cassette the wrong way?
If the latter, things may be better than you think!
 
MattKing said:
When you say "backwards, do you mean that you have loaded it with emulsion out, or do you mean that you have the spool in the cassette the wrong way?
If the latter, things may be better than you think!
Click to expand...

The emulsion was facing the wrong way :/
 
I don't know when I last screwed up bulk loading. I know I keep an old roll of Fomapan as a reference cassette just to make sure I'm winding correctly. When working with actual three dimensional objects sometimes you need a do over. It happens
 
mshchem said:
I 5hink this is how Harman invented RED.
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If it was color film id happily call it "experimental," but I don't think people like the look as much with black and white
 
I thought I'd bulk loaded Adox HR-50 wrong when I realized that all of my negatives have numbers are upside down, counting from high to low.

I'm guessing they expect a different way to load, or perhaps a mistake on their end? Probably not, but I found it odd.
 
garpet said:
The emulsion was facing the wrong way :/
Click to expand...
Count yourself lucky that you realized before shooting all that film and scratching your head at seeing some very weak exposures.

mshchem said:
This isn't too big of a deal. If you are working in a changing bag I would just take a blank cassette and wind fr9m 9ne to the other in the bag.
Click to expand...
Definitely!
 
koraks said:
Count yourself lucky that you realized before shooting all that film and scratching your head at seeing some very weak exposures.


Definitely!
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yea, I'm glad its a fixable mistake lol. It's my first time bulk rolling so I should expect some growing pains and all. I'm glad I second guessed myself and double checked
 
Learning involves making mistakes; don't sweat it.

When bulk rolling, I always do only a few rolls at a time; usually 5-6 or so. The bulk roll stays in the dispenser in the interim. Works fine for me, and the advantages are:
* You build a routine quicker this way as you get to practice a little more often
* A rolling session isn't as long and tedious
* You can correct systematic mistakes
* You can make a small test roll whenever you need it
* You could even get away with just a handful of reusable cassettes

There's something to be said for cutting up the whole bulk roll all at once as well, of course. But the batch-wise fashion has always worked best for me.
 
yea this is my plan from now on once I'm done shooting these rolls, for some reason I just got paranoid about leaving film in the bulk roller. What's annoying is I remember thinking it was backwards when I started rolling and flipping it, and also rolling half of it, thinking "I should wait to roll the rest" but then deciding to just get the whole thing over with because "well I'm half way done already, might as well"
 
One great thing about loading your own cassettes is one can load 20 exposure rolls. 36 exposures is just too many in a lot of cases. MHOFWIW
 
I like 25 exposure rolls.
But the last batch of negative holder pages I bought were a great deal because they are 7x4 = 28 negative pages, so may standard may change .
 
MattKing said:
I like 25 exposure rolls.
But the last batch of negative holder pages I bought were a great deal because they are 7x4 = 28 negative pages, so may standard may change .
Click to expand...

I liked 30 for 5x6exp strips. Fits on a 8x10 with room for when you get a 31st frame!

On another point, I have LPL bulk loaders... don't think you can roll it wrong unless you load the bulk loader wrong (if that's actually possible)
 
How is it possible to load the emulsion backwards?

I understand upside down, but backwards against the bulk roll bias, that's a puzzler?
 
I'd be interested in knowing what bulk loader was used here. I use Watson 100 and Alden 74 loaders. If I put the bulk roll in the loader backwards I would see the dull side of the film up as soon as I opened the hatch to trim the end of the film. If I put the cassette in the loader end for end the film path would be very odd and the crank could not turn the spool of the cassette. But I think putting everything together properly and simply turning the crank backwards would indeed load the film inside out.
 
If you were feeding the spool chamber with the bulk roll turned 180° (the film coming off from the underside of the 100' roll) I can see how it could happen.

When playing with actual 3 dimensional objects s**t happens.

The joy of when things work if that much sweeter.
 
Update: turns out I also put the spindles into the cassettes upside down, which means that instead of respelling all the rolls I can just flip the spindles! turns out two wrongs make half a wrong
 
Yea, this. except what happened was I loaded it the correct way, then remembered being told that the emulsion was the 'stickier' side of the film and after lightly feeling the end of the roll and thinking I had loaded it in backwards the first time, flipped it
 
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