35mm Sprocket Holes / Discuss

alspix    says:

Relying on a number of turns of the wind-on knob to work out how far to wind between frames causes a few problems; at the start of the roll you need more turns than the end of the roll obviously. Here's a little trick that's worked well and allowed me to (most of the time!) get the frame spacing correct.

Find a piece of thin, flexible but quite stiff plastic, ideally slightly curved e.g. a plastic yoghurt pot. Cut a strip around 5mm wide, 25mm long. Shape the end to a rounded point, and bend the point into a slight hook. The idea is to position this little hook so that the hook drops into and rides out of the sprocket holes on the back of the film. The hook makes a little "click!" as it does this.

I have had sucess taping the plastic to the casing of the film canister so it goes into the sprocket hole as the film comes out of the canister, and also with the plastic taped to the inside back of the camera in exactly the right place so that it goes into the holes when the back is put on (taking care it doesnt push the film inward too far) Getting this right takes a lot of patience, (and testing - keep winding some film out/pushing back into the canister til you get it working right) but hopefully you will find a place that works for your camera and wont have to do it again.

Now when you wind on, put the camera to your ear. Yeah I know, you already feel like a bit of a dick out in public with your plastic monstrosity, and now you are listening to it like it's a radio - but hey! As you wind on you can (hopefully) hear the plastic clicking into the sprocket holes. Count the correct number of clicks (I use 13 for a 6x6 and 9 for a 4x4) and shoot the next frame!

Like I said it takes some effort to get the plastic "finger" located just right, the correct "hook" on it etc so that you can actually hear it click, and if your camera has a wind on ratchet that clicks loudly anyway then this might not work at all!
Posted at 1:47PM, 22 November 2005 PDT ( permalink )