Film transport problem w/bulk loaded film

[oftheherd]

My son-in-law has recently purchased a nice Canonet QL 17 III. It works well and he likes it. Except for loading bulk film. Commercially loaded film seems to work OK. TMAX bulk load seems OK. TX400 causes problems. About frame 6 or 7, it will no longer pull film through the camera. Sometimes by playing with it, it will work a little longer, them stop transporting the film again. I tried it with my Canonet QL 19, and the same problem occurred. He has been using plastic film cassettes.

He seems to think the TX400 is thicker, and when he used a sacrifice roll, he noted that the film seemed to curl longer, that is bigger around inside the take up area, pushing up the Canonets QL pressure plate.

Doing a search, he found this RF thread: http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5764
where James Burton, also using plastic cassettes, in posts 6, 20, 22, and 25, talks about the same problem. He seemed to have problems with both a Canonet QL 17, and an EOS300. RayPA in post 8, mentions no problem, but mentions using metal cassettes.

Has anyone else had such a problem? Was there a solution other than not using that camera and film combination? Are metal cassettes better for any reason? Does James Burton's solution of waxing the end of the reels sound plausible?

Thanks for any replys that help or may help solve the problem.

 

[taskoni]

I am using metal and plastic cassettes with Tri-X and never had this problem.
Are you using a bulk loader or you wind the film on the spool by hand?
May be you are loading the film a bit too tight.
Also, are you storing the film in the fridge? If you do, you should wait at least an hour from taking it out from the fridge to loading it - sometimes the humidity cause the film to stuck when rolled.
You can also try to load let say half a roll and see how it goes, if there's no problem you might have had loaded too long piece.
I am winding film by hand and was loading as much as 43 shots in plastic cassette with no prob, but now I stick to around 34-36 shots.

I hope this can help.


Regards,

Boris

 

[zerobuttons]

I haven´t had problems with TX400 in neither factory- or bulk-loaded cassettes, regarding winding the film in camera, but I have noticed this:
1) TX400 curls a lot, but it seems to me that bulk-loaded TX400 curls even more than TX400 that came out of factory-loaded cassettes.
2) With TX400, the phenomenon of the film getting harder to wind on as one approaches the last few frames, is far more noticeable than with any other film I have used.
I have used both plastic and metal cassettes.

In your situation I believe I would bite the bullet and test cassette after cassette in the Canonet, and wind back any problematic cassette and try it in another camera (preferably of a completely different type).

 

[oftheherd]

Thanks Taskoni and zerobuttons. I will pass it on.

Also hoping for more replies from people who have experienced the same problem, and their solutions.

 

[oftheherd]

I guess it helps to be an engineer

I guess it helps to be an engineer

Well, my son-in-law got his QL III 17 working. Something he had read somewhere got him to thinking about the rubber grips that rotate with the QL mechanism. He took a wooden pencil with an eraser and cleaned the rubber pads. His sacrifice 24 exposure film worked perfectly. It took one more cleaning to get a 36 exposure roll to work. So, for any future readers, if nothing else works to cure the problem, try that solution.

My son-in-law is now looking forward to using the camera on a pending trip.