Re: WTB: 120 slide film cheap

[Paul Talbot <ptww@xxxxxxxxx>]

Richard Rylander wrote:

> I suppose the lens quality in the Sputnik doesn't make the change in
> thickness/pressure plate position (120 with paper vs 220 without) an
> issue, but aren't you concerned about extra scratches showing up on the
> unprotected back of the 220 film?

Bingo.  There were scratches on the first roll I tried.  I did
not notice them when viewing the images, but I could see them
when holding the slides at a certain angle to the light.  For
those of you who were at the Green Bay convention and looked at
my MF demo images, some of those were taken with the 220 from
Freestyle--including the one that, um, blew everyone away (and
received multiple purchase offers, and was in fact purchased by
a very insistent collector).  So the scratches are not fatal.

> Maybe a little extra sanding along
> the film path - particularly the pressure plate - is needed.

Not having any of the skills of all y'all clever and handy
types, my first approach was to use double-sided tape to attach
some 120 paper backing to the film pressure plates.  That may
have worked out for one roll, but I confess not having any
specific recollection of my first test with the paper in place.
More recently, I stupidly went ahead and shot more 220 in the
Spud after noticing that the paper on the left door had a whole
lot of splits at the left edge.  Those splits apparently caused
some pretty extreme scratching.  However, I did not notice the
scratches until after I had looked at all the images, and just
happened to hold one slide at that magic angle to the light
again.  My guess is that the relatively low magnification used
to view MF images makes the scratches far less noticeable in
the viewer than similar scratches would be on 35mm film.  Still,
I should have trimmed the "split ends" off the paper, or just
removed it altogether before shooting this time.

Paul Talbot