Why bottom loading?

wlewisiii said:
If I'd have my druthers, just give me a digital. :cool:
Click to expand...
Yeah, if you're going to shoot film in the 21st cent. then you've already made peace with inconvenience. It hardly matters any more which design is more handy than the other, no press photographers are losing shots because their Rolleicord is slower to load than a Rolleiflex
 
WoodallP said:
Replying to myself. All this is in the past anyway. My M10 is a bottom loader and it’s quite quick as long as I can get the batteries. Any old camera we have is just what we chose to live with and use. I prefer to use one of my Barnacks to my M10, just because I like it.
Click to expand...

By your definition all legacy film cameras are bottom loaders considering where the two 1.5v button cells go!:)
 
Last edited:
I would like to add that the rewind on the Leica I may be the slowest as the shaft does not extend to make it easier. It seems like it takes about 100 partial turns to get the film back in the can. Looks like I loaded my Barnacks about 40 times last year but I only got 1 roll through my Leica I, partly because I baby it. But I don't mind the slow rewind as it fits my way of shooting. And, like some of you mention, I manage to find somewhere to sit if it's even a curb to reload my Barnacks.

I have already shot two or three rolls in my Leica I this year as I am doing my part to celebrate the 100 years. I also just got a converted I, now a I (C). It takes other lenses but the rewind was not modified into a telescoping one.
 
Tom Abrahamsson told me he rewinded his Barnacks by spinning it over his head. I am sure he was kidding.
 
agentlossing said:
5) Germans over-engineer stuff.
Click to expand...
We're talking about bottom-loaders, not Contaxes or Contaflexes. The Leica is pretty crude compared to the absolute over-engineered nonsense the lads at Zeiss put together over the years!

Rayt said:
I shot with a IIIf for a year some 20 years ago and my best loading time was 45 seconds while walking with the camera around my neck. I used the card method. The last time I tried to load a IIIf I couldn’t do it. The film kept getting caught and I ended up cutting the leader. I have a IIIG coming so practice practice practice.
Click to expand...

If you're using a business card (or a card of any kind), you're doing it wrong. That's why it takes so long.

Cut the leader of your film before you leave the house (all my rolls of 35mm, bulk or commercially loaded, get the long leader - every camera can use it), and it's a pretty quick process. Unhook the baseplate, hold it in your mouth or pocket, remove the take-up spool and push the leader into the flat spring, slot it into the camera, quickly check the sprockets have engaged, replace the baseplate.

I just timed myself loading a few different cameras at my desk, with each time including getting the film out of the canister to begin.

Leica III: 26 seconds, start to finish.

Removable back Contaflex: 31 seconds.

Swing-back SLR, here represented by an Edixa-flex: 50 seconds. The film came unhooked from the take-up spool the second I tried winding on, and I had to do it again.

The biggest difference with every system for me is how well the take-up spool grabs the film. I'm sure everyone here has at some point in their lives had the utter nightmare of getting to "41 shots" on a 36 exposure roll because the film has unhooked from the take-up spool, and you didn't think to check the rewind crank after loading it. I've never had this on a bottom-loading Leica (but I have, in all fairness, had it on a Zorki 5 with a particularly knackered take-up spool), but it's happened on multiple SLRs a few times. I just don't trust 'em!
 
You're doing it wrong if you need that long on a flip back. Stick in take up side, Advance it to wrap the film around it. Pull across and tuck into it's hole and push down the rewind, close the door, tighten the rewind quickly, advance twice, start shooting. Old journalist method.
 
Ko.Fe. said:
...

Obviously, you haven't repaired any bottom loading camera.
Click to expand...
And for good reason :)

But on a serious note.. checking shutter speeds on a Barnack without pulling it apart is decidedly less attractive than on a camera that allows see through.
 
maigo said:
As the owner of three different generations of BMW 5-series, you have my vote.
(E34, E39, E60)
Click to expand...
Yeah, you open the hood and the engine does look ike the holy grail 😂

In comparison to a japanese car that just works where form follows function (but their body work is „paper thin“ and relatively quickly starts to rust).
 
santino said:
Yeah, you open the hood and the engine does look ike the holy grail 😂

In comparison to a japanese car that just works where form follows function (but their body work is „paper thin“ and relatively quickly starts to rust).
Click to expand...

Yet, it is only Toyota, which gives 10 years warranty in Belgium. Our family friends in Canada have two Toyotas closer to 20 YO age. Those are not rusty, despite amount of salt and else they dump on the roads of Ontario. We gave Mazda 3 to our daughter in GTA. It is from 2010 or so. Not rusty.
The ones known for rust in Europe are Mazda MX-5. Pitty, I wouldn't mind to get one old one.
 
wlewisiii said:
You're doing it wrong if you need that long on a flip back. Stick in take up side, Advance it to wrap the film around it. Pull across and tuck into it's hole and push down the rewind, close the door, tighten the rewind quickly, advance twice, start shooting. Old journalist method.
Click to expand...
Yep, that's precisely what I did... and, like I said, the leader became unhooked the second I started to advance the film.

There's a recent thread on here about similar things happening with the quick load "petals" on an M4. At least with a bottom loader, once the leader is in the take-up spool, it's really in. I like that certainty.
 
Sounds more like a problem with that cameras take up spool since I've almost never had that happen. I did lose several rolls with bottom feeders till I started a modified version of that - stick uncut leader into the take up spool, wrap it twice, begin inserting the take up spool into the camera, pull enough film out of the canister to slide back along the edge of the film path to where the can drops in and the slide it all down into place. Then put on the bottom plate with my third hand... :devilish: Put a roll of Pan F into my Canon IId the other day like that in anticipation of testing it when I get a really sunny day off again.
 
I think it's happened to me at least once with every SLR I've ever owned - Pentax MX & KX, the Edixa, a Minolta X700...

The absolute worst take-up spool I've ever witnessed is the one in the Contax II, though. That thing seemingly operates on hopes and dreams.
 
Ko.Fe. said:
Yet, it is only Toyota, which gives 10 years warranty in Belgium. Our family friends in Canada have two Toyotas closer to 20 YO age. Those are not rusty, despite amount of salt and else they dump on the roads of Ontario. We gave Mazda 3 to our daughter in GTA. It is from 2010 or so. Not rusty.
The ones known for rust in Europe are Mazda MX-5. Pitty, I wouldn't mind to get one old one.
Click to expand...
The main issue with Toyotas and rust, at least here in the US, are the frames in the late 90s and early 2000s 4Runners and Tacomas. Toyota used fully boxed frames for those vehicles without adequate drainage ports, causing them to rot out. Toyota actually had a frame-replacement program for those vehicles for a while and I've seen the stacks of frames outside my local dealership. My '97 4Runner's frame is still in good shape because I periodically, every year or two, crawl around underneath it with a wire brush to remove surface rust. Once that is done, I paint it, then treat the entire frame with an oil-based rust preventative. I did have each end of the rocker panels rust out, but I cleaned that up and welded in new metal. 225k on the odometer and no sign of quitting. I just drove it 250 miles from my house in Northern VA to my mom's down in NC. I've owned that truck for 23 years.

Chris
 
Because the first part of the Leica to be designed was the cassette.

When the Leica was designed, the only 35mm film was roll-your-own bulk cine film. The requirement was therefore for a user-refillable cassette which was lightproof out of the camera, but allowed free movement of the film once in the camera. This was done by designing a double-walled cassette, the inner and outer sections of which could be moved to either close the gap between the two, with a protruding tongue of film, or open said gap to allow the film to be wound on. Movement was achieved using a key engaging with the base of the cassette. It then became logical to load the film through the base, and use the same action that locked the baseplate in position to open the cassette.

All the above is probably complete ballcocks, but it’s my theory.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom