To read contents of an index without prolonging a waiting time up to the completion of the automatic loading operation of a film by reading contents of the index by a detecting means while the operation of feeding the film from a film cartridge is executed.

The drive of a fork and a film take-up spool is started by a motor control circuit 38. Thus, the film is first extruded from the film cartridge loaded in a cartridge chamber by the fork. Then, a bar code encoder circuit 36 reads and inputs the bar code signal of a disk detected by a photoreflector 19. It is discriminated whether the brightness and darkness signal of a bar code is present or not based on the bar code signal, thereby inputting time information such as the prescribed number of film frames and film sensitivity based on the detected bar code brightness and darkness.