[tclausen]

You know, it was a little presumptuous of me to bloviate on the subject since I am only used to working with stainless reels / tanks. It could very well be the Paterson system could accommodate 220 -- good catch!

You are very right that it is hard finding stainless steel reels/tanks for 220, that much is sure.

Here's from the horses mouth on the Paterson:

http://www.patersonphotographic.com/patersondarkroom-details3.htm

[revdocjim]

I've seen 220 stainless steel reels at my favorite used camera shop but they are quite rare. It doesn't matter to me though as they looked to be much harder to use than 120 reels. I have gotten to the point where loading exposed film on 120 reels in the changing bag is second nature and I almost never have any trouble. I definitely cannot say the same about loading 35mm film onto reels!

[Ivan J. Eberle]

Re: the above assertion that there is a film flatness issue with the 16 shots on 120 inserts as with the P645 and P645N (and the NII without the custom function enabled). Who else has experienced this besides Pal Jensen? Enormously popular, there have been more Pentax 645s of all versions sold than any other MF SLR save the original Hasselblad and the Mamiya RZ67. They all use the same holders. If there was a film flatness problem it would be all over the net. This one fellow Pal who posts here makes this claim; when pressed on it awhile back, IIRC admitted something about using an old worn insert.

The best reasoning for the custom function for fifteen frames is it correlates to fitting 3 rows of 5 negs per 3-ring PE binder sheet (which will hold only fifteen 645 frames).