Problems with Rollei 6003 film advance/Konica film??

This past weekend I was shooting a wedding for another studio. They had given me 20 rolls of Konica SRG 160 to work with. Well, I noticed that instead of dropping in my preloaded insert, and hitting the shutter release ONCE to advance the film to the first frame, I had to release the shutter TWICE. "No big deal' I thought, "I've had to do this before on occasion.." Toward the end of the night I had some terrible trouble with film advance! I had to hit the shutter button TWO, THREE, times. The film advance seemed all messed up, I swore at the god of Rollei SLR's ("Should've bought a @#$%!!@ Hassy!" I mumbled...) In short I was only getting 7-8 exposures on a roll (God I HOPE so!!) But now, HERE'S THE THING!!! The next day I checked all my inserts (I have three) and with the spools from the Konica film, they seemed to turn "harder"- I grabbed an empty spool from either a roll of Ilford or Fuji (what I normally shoot) and it seemed to turn in the insert abit "smoother".

So, fearing the worst (sending the camera to Marflex, where they'd tell me I needed to have the entire film transport mechanism replaced at acost of $7 million) I loaded a roll of XP2 into the insert that was in the camera (and I had had trouble with that insert) and loaded the camera and hit the shutter release....

AND THE CAMERA SMOOTHLY AND INSTANTLY ADVANCED TO THE FIRST EXPOSURE!!!! Film went smoothly through the roll and rolled up to the end.

My Question:

Has anyone else noticed a film advance problem with any films in their High-Tech Rollei's??? This may have really screwed up a wedding job. Could the spools on Konica film be "different"? I can't see a difference, but they "feel" different when I try to roll them with my finger on the insert. I welcome any comments; for now I will not use Konica in my Rollei for important jobs until I can do some tests! Too bad, it's very decent film and usually at a very attractive price....

Bob Keene

I think a lesson for all of us to learn is sticking with known film brands especially with wedding situations where you don't get a second chance. I have a Rollei 6008 and been using Kodak films for all of my shoots - so far no problemo.

BTW- I got the film back from the lab, and indeed, there were some MAJOR problems. Some rolls only had 6 images, there were overlaps and thank god I shot alot of film. Some images were unsavable; really too bad in a wedding situation. I had someone from Germany contact Rolleitechnic and ask on my behalf what the hell could've happened (I don't speak German) and the answer from the factory was that they COULD adjust something (a "mashwenz" or like that) too accomedate the Konica film- I decided the heck with it; I'll go with the films I KNOW work fine. Lesson learned: Test films before shooting an important job!

Bob