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400ft spool -> 100ft spool


Marco Leoncino

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1 hour ago, aapo lettinen said:

What do you mean by it being "loosely winded"? 

When you lift the film out of the bag, it can shift pretty easily. It's not "tightly" wound enough so if you were to hold the edge only (not saying this is a good practice, only using it as a repeatable example) the center would start to fall down. I'd say 50/50 the center would start to fall out on NEW rolls of film. I mean, I load around 10 - 20 loads of 16mm and 35mm a month on average of NEW stock and I've found it does vary. Some batches are fine, nice and tight, other batches are pretty darn loose. 

Edited by Tyler Purcell
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1 hour ago, Gregg MacPherson said:

Sorry, but there is an odd disjunction in play here between what is actually known and what might be assumed, inferred, guessed....or heard from others. I think one needs to be clear on these differences. Those who promote confusion between those things may attract extremely adverse reactions. 

I'm sorry, but the only disjunction here is propagating silly useless techniques that nobody in their right mind would use. The only inferred thing is that people would trust or listen to anything you say over someone who literally spends every day working with film and has a nearly perfect record in terms of cleanliness. 

1 hour ago, Gregg MacPherson said:

The feed roll can be held between the fingers, with the finger tips touching the core, the juncture between thumb and first finger only touching the cell side of the film very rarely, and just on the edge of the film. Actually, that should be quite obvious.

Yea you have to touch the edge of the film to keep some tension on it, so the take up isn't loose. Yea that's not something I'd ever do when loading, too risky. 

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Those that know you and love you on the forum will figure out what's important. (cue sarcasm). As I thought I described, ones finger tips touching the core can provide the needed film tension. An easy thing to know directly, to just try, if one is not entangled in experience that is a near miss to factual reality.

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8 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

When you lift the film out of the bag, it can shift pretty easily. It's not "tightly" wound enough so if you were to hold the edge only (not saying this is a good practice, only using it as a repeatable example) the center would start to fall down. I'd say 50/50 the center would start to fall out on NEW rolls of film. I mean, I load around 10 - 20 loads of 16mm and 35mm a month on average of NEW stock and I've found it does vary. Some batches are fine, nice and tight, other batches are pretty darn loose. 

Luckily no one handles film rolls like that so it should not happen in real life. In the case of a total newbie one would learn from single try that that's not gonna work very well  :D 

the palm technique is much better anyway. In the case of the outermost film layer falling off to the side when winding it, yes it of course can happen but you will usually hear it and can always try and feel if there is any extra mess where it shouldn't be.

out of curiosity, were they factory new rolls or clearance stock? Did you track the batches? Older vs totally fresh?

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I use a rewinder which has friction adjustments. I can just tune the friction when the feed roll starts to get smaller so that the film is wound relatively tight but does not slip on either rolls during the process. I don't need to touch the film to control friction so will get less static as well

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2 hours ago, aapo lettinen said:

I use a rewinder which has friction adjustments. I can just tune the friction when the feed roll starts to get smaller so that the film is wound relatively tight but does not slip on either rolls during the process. I don't need to touch the film to control friction so will get less static as well

Can't adjust friction if your supply reel isn't physically attached to the rewinder as in pictured in Gregg's video. 

I have friction adjustments as well on mine, I think they're pretty important. 

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2 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Can't adjust friction if your supply reel isn't physically attached to the rewinder as in pictured in Gregg's video. 

I have friction adjustments as well on mine, I think they're pretty important. 

Why one would not attach a screw to the outside of the 1" core so that it would grab the slot on the 2" core the film is on? 

Then one WOULD HAVE the friction adjustment magically enabled and it took one minute to do ?

I personally use the Arri core adapters on both axles so the cores fit to them and can use the friction adjustment.

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Aapo, I think there are a few camera manufacturers that had bobbins, core adapters. Some just had little spring loaded balls that pressed onto the core, which worked regardless of whether a ball sat in the slot in the core. One here has the balls and a little spring designed to sit in the slot.

I know the rewind set in the pic/video looks mickey mouse, but it is small, easily portable, very handy. Improvised dark rooms can be set up quite easily.

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Thoughts regarding static exposing film.

One could do some tests for this.  In a dry environment, after eyes have sensitized in the dark, rewind a junk roll of unprocessed film and try to see the static. This may help to show what makes it better or worse. Ideally the stock is the same as to one you want to protect.

 

With a short length of unexposed, appropriate ISO, B&W camera stock spliced at the end of a junk roll, rewind that and process it as neg. Examine with a loupe.

 

Finally, ideas from our computer friends....I now have an old heavyweight workstation PC with 12 RAM slots. I bought a static earth wrist strap. The engineers almost laughed at me, but I wonder if one could use this idea for respooling film. It's just a conductive connection between your wrist, your body, and earth. I don't think that the earth connection needs to be to the metal rod in the ground that your house or building uses, just something big and conductive. For the RAM I think it was clipped to the computer case. So some interesting isue to sort there.

 

The tech issues on respooling, static and so forth have been covered before on the forum. Was it Dirk De Longe (sorry on spelling) who may have volunteered some of the actual facts....

 

And actual facts...are valuable.

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More on static while re spooling film. There are a few worthy old threads on the forum. Find them with google more easily.

Search......"cinematography.com respooling film"

Dirk DeJonghe is always worth reading...

.....https://cinematography.com/index.php?/topic/63513-spooling-down-your-own-film/page/2/

......scroll down to the last post.

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12 hours ago, Gregg MacPherson said:

More on static while re spooling film. There are a few worthy old threads on the forum. Find them with google more easily.

You'd only get a spark with plastic reels. Since the entire industry uses metal reels, it's basically impossible because they pretty much disperse any static electricity. The only times I see sparks is when I'm moving film and out of static bags. 

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Not sure if I am adding anything here... but having done this about a billion times for myself and Cinelab customers..

In the darkroom(s) we have (All Hollywood Film Co. winders) a drop split reel on the left and a shaft on the right all are grounded.

I put the 400ft core on the left drop split reel and wind it onto a screw apart split reel on the right shaft HFC winder.

Then I flip the split reel from the right to the left winder and wind down each 100ft daylight spool.

The HFC winders have a tension adjustment on the top and I also think keeping a thumb on the split reel for tension is OK.

I don't see any static sparks in the darkroom as the HFC winders are metal and grounded.

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