Color Film Reloading Success: Yashica Electro 35

About 3 years ago wrote about my experience reloading 35mm black and white film. As I have hinted before 35mm is not my favorite film and one reason is there are so many photos on a roll these days with 36 exposures being typical. I have a hard time getting through that many exposures. So when I shoot black and white 35mm film I hand load my Ilford FP4+ with 12 exposures to a roll. Problem solved.

Recently I was perusing Reddit and came across a person who had the same complaint about 35mm film. I explained my solution and pointed him to my blog entry on it. He replied 'What about color?' I thought good point. One cannot find readily bulk rolls of color film like you can for Black and White. (Film Photography Project has some here however the selection is limited.)

I thought a little and replied that one could in theory bulk load from a roll of 36 film. I replied back in this vein and how I would go about it. Later I thought, will all the steps work and can I get it processed at my color lab? So that lead me to trying it myself.

I went to my freezer and found an old roll of Fuji Superia 200 from I don't know when. This was perfect as I didn't care if I ruined it. My plan was to make one 36 roll into two smaller rolls. A bulk film reloader is not needed for this. (I tried to do this in a dark-bag first but the film is way too long and curls like crazy having been spooled for so long. I had to hurry into my dark room to complete the work.)

Take the Fuji film, scissors, a roll of scotch or cello tape, and an empty 35mm cartridge into a completely dark room.
The room should have some means of anchoring the end of the film leader. I used my drying clips in my darkroom. You could probably tape it securely to a wall or cabinet. Anchor the leader and with the lights off strip the film out of the cartridge in one long strip.
With one hand (clean and dry) run it under the film so that the film cartridge can double back on the anchor point.
With the film tensioned your finger will be at about the halfway point. (This was the simplest way I could imagine to measure it.) Cut the film here.
You now have two pieces of film, one attached to the original cartridge, the other to anchor and therefore needing a cartridge.
Respool the film back into the original cartridge leaving a length hanging out for the leader. Later in light you will cut the recess in the end like the original with the scissors so it can be loaded into the camera. Put this aside for now.
Take you empty cartridge and open it. One the anchored film strip find the end you cut and attach to the empty spool paying careful attention to the orientation. The 'long' end of the spool should point up while the film winds over the side of the spool facing you.
Attach the film to the spool with the scotch or cello tape.
Wind the remaining film onto the spool.
Remove the film from the anchor
Put the spool in the cartridge making sure the leader is poking out.
Close up the cartridge.
Turn on the lights.

Now it is time to shoot the film and get it processed. I asked my color lab (Peak Imaging Sheffield UK) if they had a problem taking hand loaded film (Superia 200 in C-41 color negative film.) They replied no problems as long as the film was 36 exposures or shorter. Longer film can break their machines.

I dusted off my Yashica Electro 35 GSN and found it wasn't working. I tried a new battery but to no avail. So now I went into repair mode. I found a good repair website. Dissembled the camera a little found the fault was the wire to the battery contact had broken lose. I soldered it back on and all was good. I had to adjust the rangefinder. Now I would test my film loading and my camera and expired film. I loaded the film and set the speed to ASA100 instead of 200 thinking the film may have slowed with age.

The next weekend we were heading up to North Yorkshire to see my in-laws. We went for a short walk and I rattled off a roll of less than inspiring photos. Sent them into Peak Imaging and some of the results are here. I managed to get 13 full exposures from this roll. I have not exposed the other roll yet. These are quick (and very dirty) scans with very basic color correction. They have the look of expired film which is to be expected and there are lots of dust spots I didn't concern myself with.

The results speak to success. No light leaks or processing problems. Also the camera did well. I declare the film reloading a success.

Yashica Electro 35 GSN

I have to sing the praises of the Yashica Electro 35 again as a good snapshot camera. It is what I call my social camera as it is simple to use and means you are not always holding people up when taking photos. It has its own clever meter and all you do is set the aperture and it selects the shutter speed. This it does electronically in a way that you get continuous speeds from 1/500 second to 4 seconds with no steps between. So in theory it is accurate to small fractions of a stop. It delivers consistently good exposures as a result. There is an orange light that warns when the shutter speed is too slow and the aperture needs to opened up. A red light when the exposure needs a shutter speed faster than 1/500 second at the aperture needs to be closed. The lens is 40mm f1.7.

The post I referenced earlier has many good examples in black and white of tricky lighting.

The shots below are in the order taken. It was late afternoon on a clear day. As the shots progress the sun was setting and the light becoming much reduced.