I don’t shoot that much 110 film – I shot 3 “rolls” in 2019 – but I do go through a roll once in a while. The thing that’s really keeping me from shooting 110 film, is the developing prices, I’m not a fan of paying 65 Dkr (around $9,75) to get a roll of 110 film developed, especially when I can develop 35mm, 126 and 120 film – I’m not a fan of paying that amount of money to get those film developed either – at home very cheap.
But it sucks even more to pay for it, when the resolution of the film is worse than those I can develop myself.
The only thing I was missing
From starting developing 110 film myself, was a spool that would take 110 film.
I found – and bought – an old Paterson tank at a thrift shop, first because I thought it looked really awesome. But when I got home at took a closer look at it, it looked like it would be easy to modify it to take 110 film.
And it was, all I needed to do was to remove 8mm of plastic, on top of one of the take up spools, I don’t really have the tools for doing this kind of stuff, so I ended up using an ordinary wood saw to cut of the plastic, a bit over the top, but I didn’t have anything smaller and it got the job done.
But typically me, I didn’t think of make a blog-post about this little modification – properly because I wasn’t sure if it would work or not – before I got halfway into it, so I don’t have a before and after photo of the reel. But it’s a pretty simple hack, I think the hardest part is properly to find one of these old developer tanks, I for one have never see one before I found this one.
In order to get the tank to take 110, you simply cut off the plastic collar on the reel that’s stuck on the center pipe, and then the other reel can get close enough for it to fit
The result is really ok, and cheap
In my search on the World Wide Web for a before photo of the reel I could use in this post – never found one – I came across two other modifications for 110 development. You can find them here and here. Both of these uses the new Paterson tanks for their modification.
The lock that keeps the reels from sliding from each other, when you use it for 35mm or 120 film, doesn’t work when with the 110 film. It’s no biggie, I just have to be extra careful, that the reels don’t slide from each other – and making the cap wider – when I’m rolling up the film.
I hope this was a bit useful for you, if you are planing on developing 110 film yourself.
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