120 film

DaireQuinlan

Anyone here any experience with using 120 film ? The reason I'm asking is that I've had for a while an old Kodak pocket camera ( produced originally from 1915 to about 1920 !) which used to belong to my Grandad. I discovered recently that it actually takes bog standard 120 roll film ( which I -also- discovered has been in continuous use since about 1901 which is pretty amazing ! ) . So I was thinking of running a roll through it and see what comes out the far side.

I got an old repro of an instruction manual for a similar model, which has instructions as to loading the film which seem a little dodge. Apparently you can load 120 without a dark room ? as long as you take care to do it in subdued light to avoid fogging the very edges of the film. Would a roll of 120 actually survive this ?

D.

Fajitas!

Sure does. I use it every now and then.

jaqian

Great. I thought it had to be loaded in a DR as well. That will save a lot of hassle.

magicbastarder

DaireQuinlan wrote:

Apparently you can load 120 without a dark room ? as long as you take care to do it in subdued light to avoid fogging the very edges of the film. Would a roll of 120 actually survive this ?

oh yeah, it would no bother.
120 film is actually quite cheap these days - between 2 and 3 quid for a roll of neopan. getting it printed might be another matter - i just go for dev only, but i've a scanner capable of scanning 120 film.

DaireQuinlan

Fajitas! wrote:

Sure does. I use it every now and then.

Excellent ! So there are a couple of caveats mentioned in the (80 year old !) instruction manual, essentially to try and keep the film as tight as possible on the spool when trying to load or unload and so on. Does modern 120 film still have backing paper all the way down the back of the film ? The pocket kodak has a window on the back intended to read out the frame numbers on the backing paper. Someone suggested that the backing paper doesn't exist anymore so that the window has to be made light tight.

Fajitas!

Yep, has backing paper the whole way, and some even has a sticker, so you don't have to lick the tab at the back.

Isn't the future great?

Valentia

Don't worry about the light. I have loaded hundreds of rolls of 120 in every lighting situation and never had a problem. I have a Bronica ETRSi which should really be dragged out of retirement (after a service). Lovely camera and 15 shots per role because of its 6x4.5 format.

DaireQuinlan

Cool. I'm looking forward to trying this. I suppose I could get a decent medium format camera, but its actually more the idea of taking shots with the same camera as my grandad was using almost a century ago is what's driving this. By expensive to process BTW, how dya mean expensive ? 10/15 euro expensive ? more ? I was planning to get geared up in CameraExchange on georges street. Prints aren't that important, a scan would be better. Anyplace offer scans with development ?

The camera has 2 shutter speeds (1/25 and 1/50) and a variable aperture from f7 to f45 or thereabouts so I reckon a bit of guesstimation is in order here with regard to taking the shots. I don't know if those f-stops even correspond to modern day ones (although Kodak apparently came up with the idea in the first place aswell so they might do) . Oh the thrill of experimentation :-)

Roen

Best of luck, I have a dark bag/changing bag I used to use for large format, if you're worried about fogging you could have it as I no longer have any use for it.

DaireQuinlan

Thanks for the offer Roen, looks like I might be ok though. If I consistently screw everything up I might get back to you on that

punchdrunk

that person is talking about 220 film,which is the same thing as 120 only with double the number of shots cause there's only a few inches of leader then no more backing until the very end of the roll,making it tricky to use
go into the camera exchange on georges st.we had a cellar full of the ilford stuff last summer,should be going dirt cheap!