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The Last of the Classic Film Re-Spoolers

Here's an improbable story from B&H Photo about a mostly forgotten service and skill, re-spooling film to fit forgotten and discontinued formats. If you have an old Brownie or Leica and need color or black and white film, you might be out of luck shopping the shelves of your local convenience store. But B&H has your back with film spooled by hand by Dick Haviland working out of his historic barn in Rochester, New York.

"In 1990, Haviland was able to talk Kodak into selling him rolls of opaque backing paper that he could cut to size. Lacking a truck and forklift, his contact at Kodak arranged to have “the boys” deliver the rolls to his shop. The good news was that, because they couldn’t figure out a way to bill him personally, he could have the paper free of charge. The bad news was that this most likely would be the last roll he would receive, since Kodak would no longer be making backing paper for medium-format roll films. He was fortunate to find a firm in nearby Rochester that could precisely slit the backing paper to size, along with a local screen printer who could print the backers using artwork Haviland designed for the project."

Read more at: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/photography/features/dick-haviland-last-classic-film-re-spoolers