One-Minute Reads about Film Photography

The 35mm film canister foibles and how to avoid them.

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I have read many posts on Reddit analog community subreddits with photographers showing canisters of 35mm film with the leader still coming out, and asking if anyone can tell if this film has been exposed or not.

Ahh, the foible of not marking the film! But an easier and more foolproof solution is to wind the film completely into the canister when finished. Most autowinder cameras will do this, but some are set to leave a small amount of leader out. The leader can be pulled fully into the canister by hand winding the spool of the canister. Manual rewind is simple enough to pull the film all the way into the canister.

Now you have a film canister with no film protruding. No chance of making a mistake about if it has been exposed before.

The reason you may want to leave the leader coming out is to ease the process of spooling the film for developing. While this may sound easy and practical, there is another reason not to do this, and that is the film passing over the light trap again, in the opposite direction, which can introduce scratches to the film emulsion if there is even a small amount of dirt (other Reddit posts asking where these scratches came from!)

Film canisters are easy enough to open with a bottle opener, so consider that option and you are removing two potential problems.

• gregory gammon / www.vinylfye.com