Loading the Film on the Reel in a Darkroom

Video Transcript

" Hello! My name is Jeff. I want to show you how to get your film started; of course, you are doing this in the dark, so you can’t really see. There are a couple of types of reels that I use. One of them has a little clip here that you’ve got to force the film under and the other type has a couple of pins that grabs the film by the sprocket, which is the kind of prefer. At any rate, you feel those in the dark and you just stick the film in there like that and you get it going. You use your fingers as a guide. You slightly cup the film as you are turning it and you can tell if you get off and it kinks, it stops rolling so you just back roll it a little bit and just keep going till you get it all on there. It ought to be kind of loose; you don’t really pull on it but you can feel the film actually kind of has a little slide to it on the spool, so you know that it is right once you’ve got it rolled up. If I am only processing one roll and I’ve got a 2 roll can, I drop an empty in there to use as a spacer and then drop my film in and put the lid on. At this point, I can turn the light back on. Now all this I’ve had to do in the dark. "