Was debating whether to post this at this time or not, but processed a 36 exposure roll of 135 in mine this afternoon, and there were “issues”.
First the upside: The unit is very well made, as are the packaging and instruction materials. Everything fits together very well, much nicer than my Rondinax. Chemistry pours into and out of it cleanly, no drips. Gasketing around the knob used to rotate the film in solution is well thought out and appears to be of high quality..again, seems nicer than the Rondinax. It doesn’t leak through there, and I was using a 14 minute development cycle. Not a drop of liquid escaped, and I was using the full tank option with intermittent rotations. Reel looks to be well designed and solid.
Everything seemed like it was working perfectly, film fits nicely in the funneling device with no binding. Get it started onto the reel, then snap the lid on. Continue rolling film onto the reel until the knob stops turning, meaning you have reached the end of the film in the canister, then push the blade up to sever the film (which also works very smoothly and cuts cleanly), then roll the last bit of film onto the reel and pour in the developer. Pour out developer when done, pour in stop, etc, as per usual. There are not that many places for user error to intrude.
This first roll, however, was ruined because the film wound into the reel, one circumference worth, then the rest of the roll just piled onto the top of that first bit of film, around and around, tightly lumped together. There was no way to know this was happening from the outside, as it all felt pretty smooth, turning the knob on the outside. If I am loading a plastic Patterson reel in the darkroom, and it binds, I can tell, and just pull it out and start over. Here, it all felt fine, rolling it on, but the film was just piling on top of the first layer of film, outside the reel, so only the first 12 inches or so of film actually fed into the channels of the reel, so that is the only part of the film that ever got developer, etc, onto the emulsion. So, I got maybe 9 shots, and the rest was a mess, basically, with no images.
What I did get looked excellent, and I just used the same intermittent agitation scheme and times as I usually would.
So, what went wrong? I am guessing, hoping, it was due to a less than optimal amount of curl on the end of the film which caused it to bind once it got part way into the reel. This film was from a Nikon F2, which like a Leica may give you a film end which curls “the wrong way” or has a kink at the end. I tried to cut most of that off, but I didn’t cut the leader back far enough into the film strip that it had a nice gentle curl to allow it to slide into the tracks in the reel smoothly. (Though I would have had no trouble, as it was, loading it onto a Patterson reel.) They do make allusions to being careful about this in the manual, so am hoping that is it, as I am not sure how many shots I am willing to lose until this works itself out.
Not wanting to be unnecessarily negative here, just reporting. I will double check the reel tomorrow to make sure there are no burrs along the tracks which might have caused the film to stop feeding in. Will just run an exposed roll of dry film into it by hand and see if anything binds.
Looks like a nice, well thought out, and cleanly manufactured system, if it works. Seems a lot nicer than my Rondinax, I can say that much. And the results were nice on the frames that the chemicals could reach, though I haven’t scanned them yet.
Hoping Godfrey and others have better luck with their first rolls.
I will post later with further results as they happen, one way or the other.
