Daniel Pietzsch

Bulk Loading Film

I’ve discovered bulk loading of film for myself. It’s like rolling your own cigarettes – but for film. I think. Because I never smoked.

Anyhow, I do it to save money. Others do it to be able to fill canisters with a different number of frames each roll. But I don’t do that.

Rolling your own is more time consuming than simply buying a pre-made 35mm canister. Plus you need to factor in the costs – albeit small – for the machine you need to be able to load the film in the first place. So, I would only recommend it to people who shoot film frequently.

But if you do, it’s well worth it. From where I buy, one roll of HP5 bulk-loaded is approximately €4 instead of €5.40¹ when bought standard. Furthermore I get to shoot cheaper films even cheaper. I recently shot a lot of APX 400. Bulk loading this brings its price per roll down from €4.50 to approximately €2.60. And that’s a nice price for a roll of a good black and white film.