Marking Film Leader by Scratching

[marcusk]

<p>Hi,<br>

I'd like to mark my rolls by scratching a number into the leader. <br>

I wonder if anyone knows if this will work.<br>

I have 4 rolls prepared.</p>

<ol>

<li>I marked two of them by scratching a number into the emulsion side. (Not all the way through the emulsion).</li>

<li>I marked the other two by scratching a number on the base side. </li>

</ol>

<p>*I did this a little way past the "tongue" so that it doesn't get trimmed off during processing. <br>

I plan to shoot these rolls in the next week and have them developed at my local lab, so I'll have my own empirical evidence soon, but I'm sure I'm not the first one to want to permanently and integrally mark their film.<br>

Thanks,<br />Marcus Kaneshiro</p>

[leicaglow]

Sure it will work. On b&w, and color neg, the leader will be black with you marking transparent where

you sceaped off the emulsion. On transparency, it will be aittle more difficult because theeader is

clear.

[john_stockdale2]

<p>I wonder if the lab might trim off your marked part of the leader thinking thatvit's just waste.</p>

<p>If I need to mark a roll I photograph a handwritten note on frame 1 or the last frame.</p>

[larrydressler]

<p> Leaders are waist. I know as I ran a mini lab and we just trashed them It is not worth saving then it is not worth saving now if you send out..</p>

[marcusk]

<p><strong>Michael</strong>, hail to a fellow Oregonian! Thanks for the quick response. I haven't shot transparency, yet, so it hadn't even occurred to me that that would be an issue. Hmm...that means I might not have a good all-purpose solution.<br>

<strong>John</strong>, I hate the thought of spending a good frame on ID, but I guess if my little experiment doesn't pan out...<br>

<strong>Larry</strong>, I am worried about this as much as I am about it not making a readable mark. I currently stick to 2 labs. One for color (they're ridiculously cheap) and the other for black and white. The lab I use for black and white leaves a good amount of the leader on, so I'm hoping I have a good chance with them. On the other hand, the place I use for color is much less predictable. It's a different person running the machine every time I go in there. I dropped off 2 rolls today and I explained what I was trying and the guy who took my film put it on some kind of template and said that if he did the processing, it was likely that he would not cut off my marks. crossing my fingers.<br>

Ultimately, I'd like to develop my own film so the length of the leader will be under my control (at least for B&W).<br>

Thanks to all of you for your input! I'll let you know how it turns out. </p>

[glen_h]

<p>I remember that Kodak processed slides always came back with a little piece of leader, including the splice onto the next roll. But not all the way to the tongue. Negatives that I remember were usually cut into strips of four, the first including a little before the first frame. <br>

I think in both cases, the splice has a sequence number to match up to the customer. <br>

It should work, but mark as close as possible to the cassette.</p>

[chris_waller]

<p>As John says, shoot something on the first frame that will identify the roll.</p>

[craig_shearman1]

<p>I don't see why it wouldn't work provided that they don't cut off the leader. But if you're talking about slide film that gets mounted when it gets developed, that significantly increases the chances that the leader will be cut off and discarded. <br /><br />More to the point, why are you doing this? Back when I would occasionally do school groups and you had to keep track of which roll was which because different people ordered different packages this might have helped.</p>

[marcusk]

<p>Hi <strong>Craig</strong>, I shoot in fits and starts, and there are times when I'll bring 10-15 rolls into lab at a time. They usually require me to put each roll in it's own envelope so simply I put a number on the envelope and when I get it back (in the same envelope), I know which roll it came from. As to why I number the rolls...I'm a newbie so I like to keep track of when, where, how, and if there are any special requirements (like sending someone a print) for each roll. If I can't see the forest for the trees, Please enlighten me!<br>

I've decided that I will eventually want to develop my own film (B&W at least) and when I started to look (ha ha) at unloading the film in the dark, I realized that it would be hard to keep track of which roll was which. If each roll had an integral mark, I wouldn't have to worry at all.<br>

<strong>Results so far</strong>: I put 2 rolls of color print film through my "scratch a number in the leader" process. At the last minute I decided to scratch the number on both the base and the emulsion side with the point of my pocket-knife. Scratching the emulsion side definitely worked better. I've got 2 more rolls of film queued up to test this (B&W) and I'll let you know how that goes, too.<img src="https://www.flickr.com/photos/52399920@N00/15331161341/in/set-72157647535876169" alt="" /></p>