Detached Sponge

Sponge, foam, padding; call it what you will. Sooner or later it might detach itself and get rolled up inside your film. This is a pretty common problem - so much so there is a dedicated flickr group. What usually happens is the sponge splits and gets wound onto the film spool. This produces an incredibly fat roll, which could completely overexpose your film. Below are a few happy accidents brought about by the sponge being eaten up by the take up spool.

Using cardboard

The simplest solution to this problem is to use cardboard under the spool next to the missing sponge. To do this, rip a tab off the top of a film box, and fold it in half tightly. Now fold in half again, and wedge underneath the spool as shown below.

How to replace the sponge

If you want to replace the sponge, you can do easily. Start by scraping out any of the old foam with a flat piece of flexible plastic. Now cut up some foam approximately 4.5cm long, by 2cm wide, by 1cm deep. The last step is to warm up a hot glue gun, and then carefully glue the new foam in place. The disadvantage of using foam is that it could come unstuck again and roll itself into your film.

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