Reload-able Cassettes for M2

<p>Hey guys, so I'm buying some bulk film gear for my M2 and I was wondering which cassettes (metal or plastic) are best for use in an M2. The price difference is negligible so purely based on function, which is best? I'm buying all the gear from adorama. I'm buying the square adorama bulk loader and Tmax to fill it with. Any thoughts on the matter would be appreciated. Thanks guys.</p>

<p>~Andrew </p>

<p><a href="http://www.rogerandfrances.com/photoschool/ps%20how%20load%20bulk.html">http://www.rogerandfrances.com/photoschool/ps%20how%20load%20bulk.html</a></p>

<p>Plastics have givin me problems in all my M & R cameras. The film will not advance past 6 or so. Kalt metals work fine.</p>

<p>The best is IXMOO reloadable brass cassetts for Leica M up to early M6 models. You need the bench winder and ABLON trimmer to do it right. The ABLON is for getting the insertion point perfect, you can trim the exposed end any which way.<br>

Tom Abramson has avideo on youtube on how to do it with a hand winder.</p>

<p>The base plate latch opens the cassette door inside the camera so the film touches nothing. You will get no scratches ever.</p>

<p>The problem is it took me months of very creative searching and a good deal of luck to find 40 cassettes. </p>

<p>Andrew, If you are processing your own film don't pry your factory cassettes open with a canopener before loading your reels. When you rewind the film in the camera stop rewinding just after the film lets go of the advance spool. Tear the film leader off so you know the roll has been exposed. When you are in the darkroom simply pull the film from the cassette to load it on the reel. Then cut it with about an inch left at the end. You will then have a cassette that you can use over and over again. When loading from the loader simply tape the new film to the old leftover inch from the cassette. This way you will never have a cassete pop open if you happen to drop it on the floor. Then crank away.</p>

<p>The camera-specific cassettes with concentric sleeves and no felt are the best by far. Re-using felt-trap cassettes will almost inevitably lead to dirt in the felt, and thus scratched film.<br>

The IXMOO Is the "right thing" to use in your Leica M2.<br>

I use the earlier Leica cassettes in my IIIa. My Canon IIF and IV-SB2 use one type of Canon cassette, and my Canon 7s uses another type of Canon cassette. There are also specific cassettes for the Contax II models, and another for the Nikon rangefinders and F.</p>

 

<p>What Robbie said.<br>

You can also go to any lab that processes 35mm C41 and ask them to give you any old film cassettes from film they've just processed. These should have a tongue of film sticking out of a decent cassette that's seen one use and is now about to be either garbage, or at best recycled. If you ask them to save them for you, pretty soon you'll have all the cassettes you could want, for free.</p>

<p>I am able to reload Leica felt-free cassettes with an ordinary Watson 100 bulk loader purchased in the 1970s. (And still available, I think.)</p>

<p>If you can't find Leica cassettes, the regular metal reloadable cassettes are better than plastic. The plastic ones have end caps that remove with such a slight twist that the danger of accidentally spoiling a roll of film is too great.</p>

<p>With ordinary reloadable cassettes (not Leica), it's safe to use each one about five times. After that, throw it away before the felt wears out. You can keep tally on the cassette label.</p>

<p>One drawback of using reloadable cassettes is that you can't keep shooting pictures until the film stops. The last couple of frames will be fogged if you attached the film to the spool in room light. In other words, there is an unusable "leader" at BOTH ends of the roll, not just the front end. You must stop shooting when the frame counter reaches the number of frames you loaded into the cassette. To avoid this problem, you can try attaching the film to the spool in the dark, but it's tricky. I don't think it's worth the trouble.</p>