Traveling with bulk film but only 10 canisters

[Moriturii]

I'm thinking of buying bunch of bulk film because I am thinking of traveling for a long time. Problem is though, I don't know what I would do with the film I have shot that would be in the 10 film canisters I have, because I need to empty them and put more film in you know.

What is a good idea in this situation? Take out the shot film that are in the canisters and put them... where exactly? Maybe put them back into the tin can that the original bulk film comes in? (while the undeveloped film is in the bulk-loader of course)

All during this I will be traveling mind you, out in no-mans-land.

 

[MartinP]

I considered something similar on a (very) long cycle tour a few decades ago. I ended up loading all the film before leaving and taking it with me. I then posted (registered post) back the cassettes occasionally, when I had a padded-envelope full, as this seemed a better option than having it knocking around in damp bike-bags for several more months. Of course, this was long before all the x-raying and scanning was thought to be necessary. Basically I didn't solve the problem, just sidestepped it.

If you are going to re-use the cassettes very often it could be worth finding a dozen of the metal Leica ones, as they don't use a felt light-trap which could easily hold grit without you realising it, and therebye trash a lot of rolls.

Actually, are you going to load the film with a bulk-loader? You can fit nearly fifty cassettes in that amount of space - about two and a half 30m rolls of bulk film . . . .

 

[keytarjunkie]

Well, as long as you have some sort of darkroom bag, you could do what most 4x5 shooters do with exposed film - put it in a light-tight box. If you have an empty 4x5 box lying around, that would work fine.

 

[menos]

There has been circling an interview with an Indish photographer lately, who described his travel with Henri Cartier-Bresson during his time at a university project in India.

He described in the interview the procedure, to unload film canisters with exposed film and reload them with fresh bulk film within a changing bag in the hotel room.
This might be, what you want to do.

 

[Ronald M]

I would worry about damage to rolled up exposed film. How you get it thru an airport is beyond me.

I think that is why they make SD cards.

 

[kully]

Why not go to any local shop doing C41 processing and ask for the empty canisters. You'll get a big bag, throw away any which are damaged or not nice looking and fill up the rest with your film, taping the bulk film to the little bit of film sticking out of the empty canister?

 

[johannielscom]

its easy enough to carefully open the empty canisters from the local shop with a bottle opener and taping the bulf film to the spindle.

I re-use my canisters 3 to 8 times before throwing them out permanently.

 

[maddoc]

I would go the way using reloadable Leica cassettes if I could buy them cheaply (On ebay they go up to $50 for a single canister ...) You would need a changing bag and also a Watson B66 loader to be able to load the old Leica canister in daylight. Depending on how much film you are going to use it might be the safest way, if you also store the exposed film in metal canisters with screw-cap.

 

[thegman]

Kind of sounds like an accident waiting to happen to me. I'd skip the bulk loading, and just use regular rolls of film. Not sure what the price difference is, but I doubt it's worth the hassle and the risk of something going wrong.

 

[Moriturii]

Arg, bulk film, kentmere 400 to be specific is SO CHEAP that it's super tempting, but it's a 50/50 shot with going with just a couple of bricks of tri-x or something instead...