That's bad news! I bought two large boxes of them about 7 or 8 years ago and I'm still using them.@Tel when did you order plastic cassettes from Freestyle? I prefer them as well, but the latest batch I got about 6 months ago and the quality was atrocious - they were shedding bits and pieces of their light seals like crazy, I figured the debris may damage a camera shutter. So I settled on the combination of these and these. They're about the same, a bit annoying to deal with snap caps, as you said, but at least they're well-made.
Any recommendations for where to acquire good quality film canisters would be great appreciated.
That is almost funny. You are still saving $50 by rolling your own HP5+. It certainly isn't as much as it used to be but that still is not bad for a very small amount of manual labor.The savings sure are not as good as they used to be. Twenty rolls of HP5 36exp. are $140. A bulk roll is $90, or 64% of the price, with all the problems associated with load your own already mentioned. Back in the day, early 70's I shot Tri-X and only from bulk. I would buy a roll and used Kodak Snap Caps empty cartridges. Never used a loader, just spooled out 5 feet and rolled it up. Would usually load the entire bulk roll in one sitting. Had two Olympus Pen F half frame cameras to feed. If memory serves I saved at least 60% over factory loads.
Not funny, just risk vs benefit equation. I already have a bunch of metal cartridges bought 20 years ago from Freestyle but if starting out it is not so simple. As stated some of the new plastic cartridges are junk. And the metal ones I have have to be handled carefully as the ends have become looser. (Although they always had a tendency to pop off if dropped.) For my situation today, not shooting even 1/10 what I used to, just buying factory loads makes more sense. Certainly if the OP is shooting a lot of film and is careful of dust or other problems of reloading, then yes, every savings adds up. But you have to shoot quite a bit to amortize the cost of film and cartridges over time. Also, you are right about us old timers, we just loaded by hand sitting in the darkroom. Some loaders waste quite a bit of film in leaders. We were cheap old guys and squeezed out every frame, and with me that was half frame. I’m 71 now but up to perhaps 15 years ago all of my B&W film was from bulk. Didn’t even even consider factory loads unless I wanted to try out some new film.That is almost funny. You are still saving $50 by rolling your own HP5+. It certainly isn't as much as it used to be but that still is not bad for a very small amount of manual labor.
Leica, Zeiss and Nikon metal cassettes are obviously the best way to go if you own one of the cameras that will accept them . But they are also a lot more finicky about which manual loaders they will work in. Some will load them but won't close the cassette inside the loader. The solution is to open the loader. cut the film and then close the cassette by hand in a changing bag or in a darkroom.
Of course you can easily do it by hand without a loader. Go in the darkroom, pull about 6 feet of film off the spool (about the spread of your arms), tape the end to the film spool and then roll it up. Once it is rolled up on the spool you can insert it into the cassette shell and, voila, a roll of film. I'm pretty sure this is the way most of the old timers loaded film back in the early days of Leica screw mount and Zeiss Contax rangefinders. Remember to use your cotton gloves or you can end up with fingerprints on your film.
The metal or plastic general use cassettes are much easier to load but may have other problems in use. It isn't the perfect way to save money but once you get things sorted out it is very nice and you can save money. Just like everything else in manual photography, practice makes perfect.
Obviously your response was based on your personal situation and I can understand it. It certainly is not as convenient to load your own and at this point in your hobby it no longer makes sense for you. It is true that the savings are not fully realized if you are not shooting very much 35mm film.Not funny, just risk vs benefit equation. I already have a bunch of metal cartridges bought 20 years ago from Freestyle but if starting out it is not so simple. As stated some of the new plastic cartridges are junk. And the metal ones I have have to be handled carefully as the ends have become looser. (Although they always had a tendency to pop off if dropped.) For my situation today, not shooting even 1/10 what I used to, just buying factory loads makes more sense. Certainly if the OP is shooting a lot of film and is careful of dust or other problems of reloading, then yes, every savings adds up. But you have to shoot quite a bit to amortize the cost of film and cartridges over time. Also, you are right about us old timers, we just loaded by hand sitting in the darkroom. Some loaders waste quite a bit of film in leaders. We were cheap old guys and squeezed out every frame, and with me that was half frame. I’m 71 now but up to perhaps 15 years ago all of my B&W film was from bulk. Didn’t even even consider factory loads unless I wanted to try out some new film.
Also it didn’t bother me to waste a few frames if I was in a hurry to see something I had just shot, I’d snip off the exposed frames in the darkroom, load them onto a reel and reload the rest of the cartridge.
Now days the only thing I load myself is 16mm Minolta cartridges and Minox cartridges. You can still buy preloaded Minox but they are very expensive and I can reload for a dollar a roll for 30 exposure rolls.
You can find Nikon AM-1 film cassettes on eBay and if you do not have an F2, you can find them on eBay also.
I would take one-hundred feet of 35mm film and roll my own. One-hundred feet would usually give me about 19 rolls of 36-exposure film.
Nikon AM-1 Film Cassettes by Narsuitus, on Flickr
AM-1 cassettes ... $77. Rare to find them under $50 a pop
You can reduce the number of fogged frames when using the Watson/Alden type of bulk loader by doing certain parts of the process in a darkened room.@Huss it's actually even worse because you're not getting 19 of the same 36exp rolls from a 100ft roll. Stock 36exp cassettes regularly allow for 38 exposures, but if I bulk-load 19 cassettes, it's more like 34 reliable exposures per roll, because some of the "tail" will be fogged. Also depends on the type of a bulk loader, in my case it's the Watson/Alden drop-shaped type. If the goal is to get the same 37-38 reliable exposures per roll, I think 18 is a more accurate number.
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