Hello there

I just developed two black and white film rolls. That was a painful experience, because of my bad choice of film:

👿 The Lucky SHD400 is too thin, curling on itself like crazy, slipping on the reel.

🫤 The Lomography earl grey 100 is a bit thicker, better catch on reel’s sides and locking ball.

I wish next rolls will be easier to feed on the reel, any advices ?

Until now nothing beats the Kikipan 320. But it’s not produced anymore.

Asking AI seems only to praise most expensive films, not sure if it is true or biased.

Also I tired asking on the mastodon and associated platform first with not much luck.

Hopefully lemmy is better suited for that kind of open question ?

  • Hyacin (He/Him)@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    5 days ago

    I’m not sure if they’re thick, but I’ve done a couple flavours of Ilford, and a LOT of Flic Film UltraPan 400 as I bought a HUGE bulk reel and loader to make my own rolls. Neither seemed abnormally difficult? Just the roughly expected amount of difficult at first, as I had never done any of this before! Once I got the hang of it though it was pretty smooth sailing.

    • Ⓜ3️⃣3️⃣ 🌌@lemmy.zipOP
      2·
      5 days ago

      With a total of 4 films developed at home, with bergger one monobath, I haven’t mastered anything yet.

      But those last two rolls were almost impossible to load. I will get back on this thread to tell you guys if they were damaged or scratched, I hope not.

      • Hyacin (He/Him)@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        iirc - I learned the whole thing from Analog Resurgence’ video on the subject - he recommended something for practice… I can’t remember if it was, the ends of rolls, or, like, already developed strips (seems kinda dangerous so probably not) … or … maybe it was in the bulk loader video he had the suggestion and I adapted it to practice the development rolling process too or something …

        I feel like I can remember sitting on the couch with my hands under a blanket or something (I’m sure it wasn’t real film so no concerns about spoiling) and just doing it over and over without being able to see …

        I really wish I could remember, but it was a couple years ago now. I guess the long and the short of it though was that practice did indeed make, well, ‘better’, lol. Honestly not sure how much luck I’d have if I tried today as it has been so long, but at the time I was banging out at least 1-2 rolls per week for a good 3-5 months and got pretty ok at it.

        Helped of course doing the bulk rolls, because I could literally just spool up a 12 shot roll or whatever, go for a five minute walk and shoot the whole thing with no remorse of waste (as I may have with 24 or 36 shots) and then do my thing!