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Notches on bottom of 120 negative


kelly_hicks1

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I just recently purchased a Minolta Autocord CDS III and noticed that

at the bottom of each frame of the negatives there are two small

rectangular notches (one on each side). Is this normal on certain

tlr's to imprint notches on the film? Or the result of improper film

rolling in the camera itself? I have heard that Blads may do this

but have never heard that Autocords do.

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I ran a lab for nearly 30 years and never saw notched 120films. Also, I used Blads for 2 decades, and many of my clentsused Autocords....never a notch. What brands and types offilms are you using? Do you find any film particles in thecamera when unloading?
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Some photographers notch their cameras (if the camera is not itself notched) in order to identify the camera that was used. In Magnum photographer Abbas' book <i>Return to Oapan</i>, everything is printed full-frame with the border, and the photographs have one of two distinctive notch patterns. Obviously he used different cameras.

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I have two cameras from the same manufacturer with notched film gates. They are different bodies and have different notches, and I assume if another body came out, it would have a different notch.

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One of my Mamiya Press backs is notched, and an RZ I rented also had notchs - in both cases crudely filed by a previous owner. The point is, as pointed out, to tell what back a given image came from. This saves a great deal of guessing when a light leak, spacing problem, etc. comes up.
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Hasselblad does notch its backs. Their notches go on the side of the frame, though, not the bottom. My A-12's have two notches about 3/16" apart, centered on the right (rewind key) side. They are small grooves, just large enough to find with the edge of a fingernail.
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Technically off topic, but at the other end of the size scale Minox has notched its film gates since the Model C (beginning late '60s or early '70s.) The C, TL and EC models that I have used have notches in different places around the gate, making it easy to identify which type of camera took a particular negative ("easy" being a relative term, considering the size (0.8 x 1.1cm) of the negative.)
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