I used to do a lot of bulk loading B/W and more recently did a lot of Kodak
Slide dupe film. I
never owned a bulk loader, so I just used to spool out enough film to reach
between my extended
arms, which is very close to your height (6' in my case) I often reused old
casettes rather than
use the reusable ones. Easy to get free from local 1hr film shop. Takes a
little care to open so
you can reclose effectively. Some casettes have a slot with one way catch,
others just attach
film with masking tape. I typically use masking tape since it is easy in dark,
if you measure and
precut pieces..
With care in handling you don't touch the emulsion except at very end. My
costs in the case of
the Ektachrome copy film were a bit less than half the equivalent individual
packaged cost, and I
got one batch of film, so no problems with ASA and color variability, batch to
batch that this
film otherwise suffers from.
If you take your hand loaded film to a commercial processor you need to control
your length more
accurately, and you need to use a casettte which matches the emulsion so the
machine can read the
barcode etc correctly. Also you need to keeep the length of the attachment
tape short, inside the
cassette at the end, so the machine does not get loose bits of masking tape
when it cuts the film
near cassette lip! If you do a bad job you could trash a batch of film in the
machine so be super
diligent. Most shops will not handle hand loaded film for this reason, unless
they know you. They
are often even more worried about your putting motion film in their chemistry
which trashes the
developer.
Regards,
Tim Hughes
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