![]() The savings vary by film stock, and of course, the size rolls you load, due to the leader/trailer overhead I mentioned above. But that said, I still find the ability to load shorter rolls of any length I choose to be very convenient indeed.Īs suggested in the headline of this article, in most cases, you can save a considerable amount of money bulk loading - often 50%. Factoring-in the leaders and trailers needed, there is overhead (i.e., wasted film) on each roll, so the longer the rolls you load, the less waste there is. But often, for me, 15-exposure rolls is a sweet spot. Many older cameras’ film counters are marked for the previously common 20-exposure rolls, so I sometimes load 20-exposure rolls since it’s a convenient match for the markings on such cameras. To be honest, I shoot enough different cameras that getting through even 24 shots on any one of them can be challenging. These days, virtually all 135 films are available in 36-exposure rolls, most of them only in 36-exposure rolls a relatively small selection is available in the shorter 24-exposure rolls. There might well be others, but for me, there are just two reasons to bulk load: War surplus film was readily available and cheap, and virtually all the mainstream film stocks were quite commonly available in bulk rolls too. While cameras still existed that had to be bulk-loaded, ads from the 50s (see below) positioned bulk loading as a cost-saver. The 135 cassette was cleverly designed to fit early Contax and Leitz cameras, among others, but it wouldn’t be long before it was widely accepted, with new cameras being designed specifically to use it.īy the time the 1950s arrived, photography for the masses was already well underway, numerous 35mm cameras existed, and the post-war economic boom only propelled it further. When Kodak introduced 135 roll film in 1934, it was the first time that pre-loaded 35mm film for still photography was made available, and once it was, loading one’s own film into a cassette or magazine became unnecessary. Thus, the first bulk loading was done purely out of necessity it was the only way to load film into the cameras. No, 135 wouldn’t come onto the market until later.Įarly 35mm cameras like the Leica Ia from Leitz (introduced to the market in 1925), and the Contax from Zeiss Ikon (1932), used a proprietary film magazine instead, and photographers had to load their own films into the magazines in their darkrooms. When 35mm still photography first became popularized in the 1920s, there was no 135 film - 135 being the roll designator that Kodak assigned to the combination of 35mm film stock inside of a standardized metal and/or plastic cassette, the sort that virtually all of us are familiar with and still use today. buying those cassettes pre-loaded with film as is most common today. The term is somewhat self-descriptive, I suppose, but bulk loading is the process of taking large rolls of raw, unexposed, unpackaged 35mm film - generally supplied in 100 foot (approximately 30m) rolls - and winding a length of it into a 135 film cassette (a/k/a cartridge or magazine), vs. After diving-in head first and becoming quite a convert, I present this article with everything you need to know about the practice, including why you should consider it, and how to do it. But, 70 years later, there are still good reasons to do it, it’s just that few people know about it, and the options might be narrower these days. Photographers were far more DIY then than now, there was such a thing as “war surplus film,” and there were good reasons to bother with it. In the 1950s, bulk loading was probably at its apex. (Unfortunately, bulk loading will do nothing to help medium format shooters.) ![]() (Would we really do that?) Another is to explore bulk loading of film - a practice for users of 135 (i.e., 35mm) film. Whether you believe that story or sense opportunism, it doesn’t matter: film photography is getting more and more expensive, nearly every day. And as is customary for companies recently, they’re all blaming COVID-19 and supply chain difficulties and their own rising costs as the reason. It’s not just Kodak Ilford has raised prices, as have secondary brands like CineStill, Lomography, Adox, Foma and others. As I write this article in November 2021, film photography blogs, podcasts and social media are abuzz about rumors (or promises) by Kodak to raise prices on film again in January 2022 - the latest of a seemingly endless series of increases.
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