I have had four rolls of 110mm in my darkroom for the last number of years that I have needed to develop, but, as I do not have a 110mm reel, nor have I yet got around to making a DIY reel, I have been reluctant to fiddle with them. There is a link to a Lomography guide below as to how to make one. Whiles reading a post a while ago, the author mentioned sticking the 110mm film to the end of a piece of 35mm, this was a theory I wanted to test, so given that I cleared my film development backlog of 35mm and 120mm, I thought I would give it a try. Recently I came across an old camera in the house that had a disc in it, and I added that to the pile of film to develop as well.
My first observation during this experiment is that 110mm film is absurdly long. The second observation is that it is very easy to get the film out of the canister, I had originally wondered did I need to use a bottle opener to open the canister, but, then I realised that was needed to do was to pull the black piece of paper that was peeping out from inside the canister, as the black paper comes out, it pulls the exposed film with it.
I stuck one roll of 120mm to a piece of 35mm and put that on the reel, however, it was very tricky to try and stick the second piece of tape to the two films, so I left the second piece of 35mm out. This meant that I had to try to develop the film, whiles it was wrapped around the centre core of the reel. This, unsurprisingly, did not work. The film just stuck to itself and it resulted in no photos. The good news is that the 110mm stayed stuck to the sticky tape, I was not sure that it would once the whole lot was in the chemicals.
Inspired by a Twitter conversation I had, a second roll was wrapped around the central pillar of the development tank, this also failed in a major way, and just stuck to itself. Due to the age of the film, it was super curly which meant that I could not just let it float in the chemicals, which had been my previous idea.
The disc also failed, as I had just left it in the development tank, sitting on top of the reel that held the first roll of 120mm film. At least now I know what not to do, and until I acquire a dedicated reel, I shall leave the other two rolls in the darkroom.
The disc was easy to open, as you just needed to bend it a small bit and the shell popped open, thereby allowing easy access to the disc inside.
The unused 110mm in my film fridge that I want to use, will stay unused until I have a have a way to process it.
https://www.lomography.com/magazine/241548-how-to-make-a-fully-functional-110-film-developing-reel
Gallagher Photography 