Resurrecting My Dad’s Pentax 645 – Part Two – Loading 120 Film for the First Time Ever!

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If you’ve been following along, my Dad died in early 2023 and I recently inherited his Pentax 645 Medium Format film camera. In the last installment I cleaned the camera up, discarded the batteries from the early 90’s (!) and cleaned up the heavily corroded contacts in the battery holder. I finally got the camera to power on but was waiting on some film to actually test it out.

I had ordered both a roll of cheap black and white film and a roll of Kodak Portra 400, both from Amazon. They were both supposed to be delivered today, and my plan was to use the black and white film to make sure the camera actually worked, and then shoot that roll and switch to the Portra once I was sure the camera was gonna work.

As per always, Amazon disappointed me and delivered the Portra, but the black and white Fomapan Retro said “Delivery by today at 10pm” until about 4pm when it said “lmao jk maybe Tuesday”.

I was faced with a problem, should I test the camera with the Portra 400 or wait for the sacrificial film? Well, patience is not my strong suit, so I loaded up the Portra and after fighting with it for an embarrassingly long time to get it loaded, it worked!

The camera advanced the film to the first frame, and appears to function great! I’ve shot about half the roll now and it seems to be working 100%, totally unbothered by its 30 year nap under my dad’s bed. I’m gonna finish this roll and the B&W roll pretty quickly and send them off to get developed so I can actually be sure it’s functioning, but things look promising. Here’s a video of me struggling to load 120 film for the first time and also my daughter doing an ollie on her scooter, as is tradition.