Exposure question

[Scott Morrison]

I shot two reels of 200T today on my Canon Autozoom 318 and the first reel exposed all the way to the "exposed" notch, the second one however doesn't seem to have shown the same notch even though the metre (I'm not so sure what it's called) did go all the way to 50 feet or "F" for Finished. Should I relax and assume that it exposed fully/almost fully like the first reel of film?

[Scott Morrison]

Is it possible for the footage counter to run to 50 feet even if the film itself got stuck/jammed and stopped running through the camera?

[Samuel Berger]

Is it possible for the footage counter to run to 50 feet even if the film itself got stuck/jammed and stopped running through the camera?

The "footage counter" doesn't care what happens to the film, in most cameras it just calculates how many times the roller has rolled over and translates that to used footage. But it has no real connection to the cartridge. If you open the cart slot door in some cameras it will just reset to zero even if you only have 3 feet of film left. So if your film jams but the camera keeps turning, the counter will keep going.

 

It's like those fake, placebo "progress bars" in the internet which are just animations that don't really represent any real progress.

[Scott Morrison]

Yeah I was imagining that might be the case then. I've given the notch a clockwise spin and done the "sharpie" test and the film seems to run without jamming now. I'll give it another try with shooting it as I recon less than half actually ran through and I'd hate to waste that amount of film, thank you for the help :)

[Simon Wyss]

Super-8 users, to pound a cartridge once on each side dryly before inserting it into the camera. This helps uncinching the film coil and the bendings.