automatic sheet film loader

[Jon Miller]

To whom it may concern

I'm interested in 4x5 photography; however, I dont like the idea of loading indi vidual sheets of film into holders in the dark. This sounds very tedious, time c onsuming, and dusty. I have an idea for a device that could load sheet film auto matically into a custom film holder. The device could hold up to, say, 100 sheet s, and it would only need to be loaded once in the dark. The problem is that I d o not have the money or the technical knowhow to construct a protype. If you hav e either, then perhaps you could contact me and we could work together to build a prototype.

Thank you

[james norman]

jon - check out the kodak readyload system. i believe fuji offers a similar system.

[Ellis Vener]

Somebody tried this about ten years ago but it didn't work. Bob Saloman has the details as his company was looking into distributing it. Check the existing threads for info on a 4x5 motor drive.

Fuji does make a system similar to the Kodak Readyload system. Fuji calls theirs Quickload, and my experience is that is much faster and much more reliable than the Kodak system. Some people have better luck than I've had with the Kodak in terms of reliability but the Fuji is still faster to use. The biggest drawback of the Fuji Quickload system is the limited number of fi lm types availible: no black & white (if you are in the US) and possibly no color negative as well.

[Michael_527]

Actually, Fuji has a product very similar to the old Grafmatics and it holds eight sheets of film. It's called the Quickchange pack film holder. Unfortunately, they don't import it to the US, so the film packs are not available here.

I think eight shots to a pack is about as many as I would want anyway. Any larger number and I would want to process some of the shots, but the pack would still have unexposed film in it.

---Michael

[James Chow]

Someone once told me that Fuji once made some Grafmatics holders. Anyways, although I can buy either the quickloads or quickchange here, I prefer the quickloads, as it simplifies submitting individual sheets for custom processing. With quickchange, you still have to buy a dedicated quickchange holder for 20,000 yen or so and then the quickchange cartridges. You can reload them yourself (a little tricky). There's a frame that fits around 3 sides of each sheet of film. The sheets merely lay on top of each other in the cartridge.

[Jeff Stange]

I am relatively new to 4 x 5- only abount six months and the people in this forum were excellent in guiding me to 4 x 5 instead of medium format. One of the things that I thought would annoy me was loading "these sheets". I was greatly mistaken- Fuji ready loads are extremely quick and easy. After very little practice a traditional film holder is extremely quick- I usually load my film holders in front of the TV with my changing bag and can easily do 10 holders in 20- "mindless" m