Bought cheap Darkslides with free film?

[NickMurray]

Well, they were a Christmas present in honestly! The Mother was nice enough to invest in getting me my own monorail; which I'm still rather giddy about! I've used them plenty before at University but that's a different story from the real world.

Upon unboxing the Darkslides, I asked if she had bought them with film in them, to which she said no, nor had she had any put in. So when questioned about how it all works when I pulled the slide out to demonstrate... I'm sure you know what happened!

So after ruining that neg, I put all the slides in a changing bag to have a check and all the slides are fully loaded! I asked my mum how much she paid for the slides and she said they were £5 each and she got the 6th free for buying 5... I'm not the greatest with prices but £25 for 6 dark slides and 12 slides of film seems a bit too good to be true?

I typically shoot on my Hasselblad so I'm not too knowledgable in the world of large format, as much as I am keen to get involved! Could somebody tell me if this is the norm?

- Sorry for a possibly long winded story

[BrianShaw]

Well, congratulations. Generally, though, film is not bought "with" film holders, but bought separately and put into the film holders by the user at about the time of use. I think what you ar referring to is some old film that was loaded by some prior owner of the film holders. since you have no idea how that film was handled (someone before you or your Mum may have opened those holders too!) you might want to plan on just throwing that film away. It may have been exposed.. or it may not have been. There is no way to tell except to process it and find out.

[Alan Gales]

I agree with Brian but you might want to keep a couple of those sheets of film to practice loading the holders in the dark or your changing bag until you get the hang of it.

[Noah A]

If you're on a budget and want to try the film, just pull out one sheet (in the dark of course), try to figure out what kind of film it is from the notch code and process it. That way you can find out if the film is any good and/or if it's already been exposed.

Congrats on the new camera and welcome to the forum!

[Steve Smith]

It's not foolproof, but if the black side of the darkslide is facing out, it's likely that the film hasn't been exposed and if the white side is facing out, it's likely that it has been exposed.

This is the convention which most people use... but some do it the other way round!


Steve.

[Michael E]

but some do it the other way round!

Everybody I know, for example...

[Corran]

Yeah I thought the convention was the other way 'round.

White/silver = unexposed.

[DrTang]

Everybody I know, for example...

I was gonna say


I learned it white/silver = unexposed...black = exposed


as long as you're consistant with it though

[Steve Smith]

Oh yes. I do it the other way round too!!!

I must proof read my posts!

White = ready for light, dark = ready for darkroom.


Steve.

[civich]

Or: White - seen the light.