Trius
Waiting on Maitani
Which means ... ???
Al Kaplan
Veteran
The Leica cameras and the three part turn-to-open cassettes were designed by Leitz to work together. Film in preloaded 35mm cassettes wasn't available. What is amazing is that the various camera manufacturers were able come up with cameras that all were capable of using the same size cassette so that the now common felt lipped cassette worked in such a wide range of cameras. Ilford made a really heavy duty and well designed snap-cap cassette. They sold "daylight refills" consisting of a plastic spool with a 36 exp. length of film and a black paper "leader" atached to the film tongue. You could reload your cassette and pull the black paper through the felt light trap until the film leader appeared. These also worked in Leica, Nikon, etc. cassettes as well as cassettes from Ilford, Agfa, Gavaert, Ansco, DuPont, Ferrania, Adox, etc. Kodak marketed 27.5 ft. "bulk" rolls that were pre-cut with leaders and little tongues that would fit in the slot of Lerica and other brands of film spools. Each leader was connected to the next tongue by a narrow piece of film, easy to tear off in the dark. It gave you 5 rolls of 36 exposures, and while on a per roll basis was more expensive than buying 50 ft. (yes, they made those too) or 100 ft. rolls it was still a lot cheaper than buying factory loaded cassettes.
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Rob-F
Likes Leicas
Well, well, look who is posting here on RFF! It is a very good article, Josh. I discovered it a day or two or three ago and enjoyed reading it. I used to have a IIIf red-dial (#685475, if anyone wants to sell it back to me).