Film dispenser

[Sv Bell]

Is there on the market some sort of film dispenser, allowing us to keep large spools of 2000' film stock, and transfer lengths of 100 ft on a smaller spool for shooting?

 

Occasionally I see good deals on larger film cans but my camera only use 100 ft spools so I was wondering if there's a way I could buy these large reels, and conveniently transfer on 100ft spools.

 

sv

[Kenny N Suleimanagich]

You can do it with rewinds in a darkroom.

[Sv Bell]

Do rewinds measure the length of film?

Of you just fill the target spool with a random length and it doesn't have to be exactly 100'?

[Brian Drysdale]

Rewinds just rewind, if you get a new 100' spool of stock from Kodak you can check the lip remaining of the spool walls. You can then feel what is correct in the dark when the spool is full. It's rather tactile process..

[Jesse Andrewartha]

If you're winding 16mm onto daylight spools, then it's 43 winds = 100ft.

 

-Jesse-

Edited September 13, 2016 by Jesse Andrewartha

[Sv Bell]

Good to know!

Thanks!

 

sv

[Simon Wyss]

You can buy yourself a synch roller with foot counter.

Remove the counter from its housing and redraw the figures with

luminescent paint. Also repaint the 0 on the sprocket tab.

 

Then, the paint acitivated, you can read the exact length

pulled over the roller in the dark. That’s how I do it.

[Pavan Deep]

I use 16mm in cameras that take 100ft daylight spools, but I always buy 400ft lengths. To make spooling easier I have made system based around a 400ft magazine from a CP-16 camera. The advantage is that the magazine has two separate compartment. I have made a light tight chamber with a footage counter.

 

The process is simple I load the fresh 400ft in the dark then feed it to the second chamber via the light tight chamber and the footage counter,from now I can work in normal daylight and can easily wind all the film to the second chamber. After this I set the counter to zero and replace the empty core in the first chamber with an empty 100ft daylight spool and wind back 100ft.

 

Pav

[Gregg MacPherson]

Pav, is your footage counter sprocket driven, or is there a little arm with a jockey wheel riding on the roll? A jockey wheel counter is not much better than our gloved finger checking the roll near the edge of the metal spool.

 

If one is rewinding onto metal spools, 100' or 200', it's fairly easy with practice to get the film length about right. Does the length really need to be perfect? I say no, but we all may feel differently.

 

One thought that keeps recuring to me from the various versions of these posts, is that people's fingers are much less familiar with handling film than they were in the days when almost everything was cut with a work print. Sad to see these skills lost, but they can be learned quickly.

 

EDIT: It is quite a cool DIY idea to use mags to re-spool film. On proviso that there is no scratching or other risk. If one does use sprockets in the footage counter system, maybe that is ok if there is zero chance of any damage or alteration to the film perfs. For 16mm, we only have one perf per frame, yes?

Edited September 14, 2016 by Gregg MacPherson

[Simon Wyss]

My fingers are still familiar with photographic film, magnetic film, magnetic recording tape, auxiliary stocks, pressure sensitive tape, and more. The reason for my setup was that I imported Fomapan R 100 into my country and sold it. In the beginning, the film was available in 2000-ft. lengths as 35-mm. and as 16-mm. stock. When I once measured a 400-ft. portion to discover that its length was 406-20, that is 406½ feet, I felt miserable. Some time later FilmoTec of Wolfen stated that they snip their darkroom portions to the nominal length. What a pity!

 

When I purchase a 200-ft. portion of any film stock I want to be able to use 200 foot, so there must be additional length for threading up the camera. The price is given, the quantity of material should, too. They print a friggin’ figure on the label.

[Pavan Deep]

In my system the mechanical counter is sprocket driven and it is accurate. The CP-16 magazine is ideal as it has two separate chambers and it doesn't have the little arm with a jockey wheel riding on the roll like we see on many other film magazines.

 

Pav

Edited September 15, 2016 by Pavan Deep

[Sv Bell]

OK so I headed to Ebay, and ordered a basic Craig rewinds. I should have the pair in hands next week!

I'll wind my own 100ft spools... and try to roll the spool in the right direction.

 

Out of curiosity, what does it do if it's not rolled in the right direction? Like, if the film's base is out, facing the lens, and emulsion is 'inside'...? I suspect it gives a ghosty image, soft focus and hazy edges, something like that?

 

sv

[Jesse Andrewartha]

You'll be filtering the image through the antihalation backing (or in the case of colour neg, through the remjet), so it'll mostly be very underexposed... just remember to wind the film completely onto a reel, then back onto your spools to ensure correct winding. Make sure you lay everything out in an 'easy-to-feel-\' configuration before you go lights off!

 

Keep in mind, though... you're loading daylight spools, so you will see easily whether your film is wound correctly.

[Gregg MacPherson]

All that the camera cares about is that the emulsion is at the front, the lens is trying to focus on that plane, and the perfs are on the correct side and that the edge numbers or bar code are not in reverse order.

 

None of this is hard to organize.Give it a go.

[Sv Bell]

Learning curve, learning curve!!

 

OK here's where I stand. Tonight I attempted to re-spool a 400 ft onto the 3.5" 100 ft spool using Craig rewinds. First thing I noticed once I open in the dark the brand new 400 ft can: the film is on a core. Don't laugh, I'm new to this! :D

 

I was pretty disappointed and tried to figure how I can work it out. I ended up putting back the 400 ft in its light tight can. I'm missing something, some sort of reel I can open and load the core into, and mount it on the rewinds.

 

Now my question is: where do I find these reels to load the core? I looked on Ebay but I'm not quite sure what it's called, what to search for...

Any hint?

 

Thanks folks!

[Gregg MacPherson]

Learning curve alert..! Scarey, but you will be OK.

 

Any new procedure at this stage you should first try with junk film, with the lights on at first. Then in the dark.

 

Normally you use a "split spool" to hold the 400' roll. As you probably now guess, it opens (unscrews) so you mount the roll on the side, there is a pin that fits into one side of the core, then screw it back together.

 

I've seen split spools on eBay cheapish. Find the right person and they may give you one.

 

Once you are expert with your fingers you can do it without a split spool, just holding the roll between your fingers and sitting it on the spindle or the spindle hub on the rewind. No poop, I used to do it. Faster too. A 200' short end one can just hold the roll with ones fingers in the core. I am boasting for sure, don't try this yet.

 

Some white cotton gloves like the neg cutters used are good, especially if you are new. But truth is, once familiar, I didn't always use them, and had no problems.

[Gregg MacPherson]

Bear in mind that you need to spool the film twice if you want the edge numbers in the correct order and the perfs on the correct side.

 

Camera original from factory is by default B wind. If you look at the roll, emulsion in, ready to shoot, with the leader facing you, pointing to the ground, the perfs are on the right.

[Sv Bell]

I did check with a short length of re-spooled film, how it will line up in the camera, and noticed I'd need to spool twice to have it correct. Thanks for pointing it out!

 

I just bought off Ebay one of those "Split reel" so next week I should be all set. I don't know if I will be repeating this process until I get familiar enough so I do it right off the core, but until then, I know it will be easy with the split reel.

 

Thanks for your input!!

[Gregg MacPherson]

If film is scarce or expensive, and one has an artistic or arcane/aestheic connection with the process, then one may need to practice to feel intuitively connected, like doing Tai Chi or Karate.

[Sv Bell]

Correct. Though I think film is not really more expensive than digital when it comes to filmmaking.

But that must have been discussed and debated over and over in other forum's treads! :D

[Gregg MacPherson]

SV, the rest of my post (an edit) got lost in the fog of the edit time restriction.

[Alessandro Malfatti]

I see I'm late to the party, but if anyone still would like to know split reels are available at Wittner Kinotechnik www.wittner-kinotechnik.de although they're very expensive, 169€ for the 120m/400ft one, and 220€ for 300m/1000ft.

[Aapo Lettinen]

as suggested you can use daylight spools for measuring the 100ft loads. but if using cores and winding exclusively with them you can still use daylight spool flanges as a measuring tool if your rewinder has square axels: drill the attachment points of the flanges open so that you can disassemble the daylight spool, then attach one flange to the rewinder and after that, the core adapter.

 

I have made my rewinder out of old Zeiss Ikon Moviscope winders but you can surely find something suitable from eBay for reasonable price :)

[Sv Bell]

Wow Wittner Kinotechnik sure is expensive... But it's brand new so I guess it's the normal price. I bought my 7" split reel off Ebay for $25. Not new but in perfect working condition! :rolleyes: