What is the minimum number of times I should wind the lever of an M6 after loading film the standard way (i.e. as per the loading diagram printed inside)?

I'm paranoid about the film leader being fogged and so I usually wind to frame 1. But what is the least I can get away with with fresh film?

A trivial question, but it would be useful to know and not have to think about it ever again :-)

-- Mani Sitaraman (bindumani@pacific.net.sg), November 01, 2000

Answers

The M6 is very frugal with film when loading as you may have noticed when looking at your negs. The frame numbers on the negative strip are usually a half frame behind (frame 2 is 1a on the strip). I am looking at an unmounted roll of Provia F right now and that is the case. I think that this is frugal enough! I would not try to start shooting with the counter at 0. I can usually get 38, sometimes 39, exposures on a roll but am thinking of stoping at 35 as this is easier to store in standard negative files and you do not run into the problem of the last exposure being cut off when getting processed commercially.

Cheers

-- John Collier (jbcollier@home.com), November 01, 2000.

I use to be quite anal about loading my M's, really extracting quite a lot of film, but now I simply engage the leader in the splines of the take-up reel, wind a tiny bit until the upper sprocket hole engage the upper sprocket teeth... then close the back and attach the bottom.

I advance and fire the camera twice from that point. Last weekend I covered an event in town and shot 10 rolls of film, all loaded in quite a rush, so I wouldn't miss anything. On 6 rolls, I had negatives with two perfect pictures of my feet, and on 4 rolls, one total picture with another partially fogged..(By my feet, I mean the ground where I stood advancing the film to my "first" frame.)

I would be very confident to advance and fire the camera twice, AFTER the bottom plate is installed. Even this would more that likely be one more than is needed, but in the big picture (pun intended)... is it worth risking an important shot for one extra frame?

-- Al Smith (smith58@msn.com), November 01, 2000.

Yep. That's about it. Two frames to be conservative. One frame if you like living on the edge and pushing the edge of the envelope.

regards,

Bob F.

-- Bob Fleischman (RFXMAIL@juno.com), November 08, 2000.

Thank you. Two frames it is.

Just to confirm, by two frames you mean

wind-click, wind-click, wind

rather than

wind-click, wind

?

I appear to have lost he ability to describe this process in plain English... :-)

-- Mani Sitaraman (bindumani@pacific.net.sg), November 09, 2000.