Dear lowly and humble photographic servant In Re: Your Vast Experience With 120 And 620 Film Photography And All Things Photographical..."

Begins a letter from a Miss laanba of Houston TX, (I continue) "I have so admired for these many months your photographic skills and technical wizardry and how you put photographic prowess above all else, even in lieu of personal relationships and friendships, and now I must ask "Perchance can you roll me some SWEET 120 Film onto 620 spools and mail them to me post haste?"

The answer dear laanba is sadly "no."

HOWEVER...let me show you something. Below is a 120 spool from the Kodak Brownie 2 (now drop down with me one frame)

And HERE is a 620 spools from any of the many 620 cameras I picked up for TtV photography.

NOW...if you look at exhibit 3, you'll see that many years ago those rat bastards at Kodak simply changed the size of the spool so that 120 spools wouldn't fit into 620 cameras. The ends are a bit too big, and the spool of the 620 too small.

There are a few options here. I read that if you have plastic 120 spools, which is how it's sold today, you can clip them with nailclippers and get the 120 spool to fit into a 620 camera. HOWEVER...(Again with the howevers?) I'm pretty sure the different diameter of the spool will throw off the frame when you try to advance the film. I'd waste some film and show you but I waste enough already anytime I try to use it.

BUT given a darkened closet, the one where one might hide skeletons, unnatural sexual preferences, or thousand dollar per hour prostitute habit, you can unroll 120 film to your hearts content and grope around and simply reroll it onto the skinny little 620 spools. Then you can send it in to be devloped that way or wind it back onto 120 spools when you are done. I've found that even more than sending back decent prints, photo shops are more than happy to mail you back your spools. ALWAYS GET YOUR SPOOLS! ALWAYS! 120! 620! Doesn't matter! Just get them back!

And now, to practice identification of said spools...

The Thing of the Moment's 120/620 Spool Identification Quiz®!

No cheeding!

Answer key: 620, 120, 620, 620, 120, 620, 620 and Bonus: The standing spool to keep them from rolling off the desk? YES! 620! See? Not hard.

Getting the film developed properly? That's how you say. a little bit more the hard.