My film spooling was backwards for 2 years until a lab in Portland caught it

I develop at home and always loaded my 35mm onto the reel with the film curving inward. It worked fine most of the time, but I kept getting these weird light streaks on the edges of maybe 1 in 5 rolls. Last month a guy at Blue Moon Camera watched me load one and said, 'You're fighting the curl, flip it the other way.' Turns out the film should curve with the reel, not against it. I tried it on 3 rolls of HP5 since and the streaks are gone completely. Anyone else spend months blaming their chemicals for what was just bad loading?

1 comments

1 Comment

dixon.iris3d ago

Three rolls in and I still catch myself curling it wrong, muscle memory is brutal.