How bad have you screwed up?

<p>When I first started learning large format, I once - and somehow only once - pulled out the darkslide before I closed the aperture. Oops... I had to reload. Since class was had just begun, my loading was extra slow at that point.</p>

<p>Another great large format goof that I made included inserting the film holder into the wrong end of the camera back. My friend, who has never shot medium or large format and once upon a time shot 35mm but now only shoots digital, caught the error. He was looking at the camera back and goes "I can see light coming through from the other side. Is the holder in properly?" Me: Uhh, I guess not. I'd only been taking all my picture so far like that. Luckily, most of them were fine.</p>

<p>The first roll of 120 that I ever shot, using a Pentax 645, I loaded the film backwards, so that the backing paper got exposed instead of the emulsion.</p>

<p>I bought my first Hasselblad in 1984. A nice shiny new 500ELM. Shot my first roll of my then 3 month old baby daughter. Took the roll in for processing, and the negatives were blank. Turned out I wrapped the roll over the back of the film holder instead of the front where it would get exposed.<br>

 <br>

21 years later, after not having a Hasselblad for over 10 years, I bought a new 503CWX. Loaded the first roll, processed it, and behold, the film was blank. Same mistake as my first Hassy in 1984!</p>

<p>I have done that, too. My Bronica and my YashicaMat are complete opposites. On one you load the film 'backwards' so the black shows and the other you simply pull the film around as you would imagine had you never done it before.</p>

<p>Once I figured out you have to see the arrows point at each other I managed to get it right before messing up. (duh!) But I have had to pop a roll out and reverse it several times when I wasn't thinking about it.</p>

<p>What stories! And such humbleness we learn. Shot my first wedding (as a teen) and set the ASA to 1600 with 125 film. hmm. Said I can develop for it! <br>

Had a bag of 8 rolls of EXPOSED velvia film all wrapped up tight in three zip locks... to be sure... on ice. I did this because I was traveling through Utah and Ariz heat. All ziplocks had holes, thus streaking throughout!</p>

<p>Come on folks those are great but I bet we have better ones... Don't be afraid we all mess up.</p>

<p>In an ill conceived effort to extend the life of my chemicals, I stored the working solutions in some dispensing jugs in my refrigerator. I was a bachelor at the time, so there was no chance I'd confuse the chemicals with the lone jar of mustard I stored in there for some reason.<br>

I threw a party at my swinging bachelor pad with plenty of beer and other intoxicants in the fridge with my chemicals. A girl came up to me during the party with a wine glass filled with "chardonnay" and asked what kind of wine was it. I took a big gulp and pronounced it 1994 vintage fixer. My emergency medicine doctor neighbor was too drunk to recall poisoning protocols. Thought about calling poison control, but just continued with the party.<br>

The girl and I were just fine, but decided to switch to rapid fixer so the smell would be overpowering!</p>

<p>I think I can proudly say that I have screwed up just about everything at least once; with a good many of them two or three times. If it's a dumb error, I've probably done it.</p>

<ul>

<li>Lens cap. Yes, I've left it on.</li>

<li>Open the back of the film camera at the wrong time. Ruined the first roll I ever shot this way. I knew better.</li>

<li>Blank film. About 900 chemistry errors; a lot of them experimental</li>

<li>Forgot to order Dektol. Had a long hiatus from the darkroom; ordered D-76, but no Dektol</li>

<li>Dropped it. I've had so many knocks and pings, I ought to be a destructive tester. If I told you it was durable, please just take my word for it. Have also successfully dropped cameras despite camera straps, tripods, and protective cases.</li>

<li>Pinched my fingers; had the tripod head flop over; only a dummy would adjust but fail to lock. Done it.</li>

<li>Turned on the light in the darkroom. Paper safe open. Done it many times to look at prints in the fixer. Been saved from complete loss of paper stocks because I only keep some in there at a time, and what is in there rides in the manufacturer's black vinyl bags.</li>

<li>No batteries. What kind of dummy would go to a photo shoot, after falling asleep the night before without plugging up the batteries in the charger? Done it.</li>

<li>No film/wrong film/tried to pull a roll early but ruined it/got the film wet; any stupid mechanical manipulation problem with the film. Done it. Just reload and do it again if you can.</li>

<li>Printed on the wrong side of the paper. What kind of idiot would do this? Done it.</li>

<li>Flash synch error. Black curtain marks. Did I read my own beginner photography recommendations? Done it. Half frame errors may have inspired Minox, who knows? Still do this one.</li>

<li>Got tired, and didn't make the picture. "I don't care if I see a @#$%^&*( purple grizzly bear on this trail, I am going home." Passed up many great pictures. Great rule of photography number 1: Actually make the picture.</li>

<li>What is the subject of this picture? Got tired, had no idea, made the picture, even though I knew I didn't have anything.</li>

<li>Did the work, but didn't show the work. What kind of communication has no viewers? Screwed this one up before.</li>

<li>Rained on, salt water on, knocks, pings, general camera damage. Did this one so much, I've listed it twice.</li>

<li>Carried the expensive/bulky/heavy piece of equipment out there; was for some reason too shy to use it on occasion. To remedy this problem, just carry around any unplugged home appliance instead.</li>

<li>Film in the camera, through checked baggage X-ray. Bye-bye film. Camera, did I unload you? Done it.</li>

<li>Didn't think ahead to the next day to keep myself motivated for the groundwork for the next set of projects.</li>

<li>Almost fell of a @#$%^&* cliff/rock/ladder/roof/ledge (hate those manmade objects), laid down in @#$%^&* water/ice/poison ivy/poison oak/mud/nest of ticks, got lost in @#$%^& [name a major city I've been to for the first time], or somehow else put my body, with the camera, in the wrong place at the wrong time, maybe getting the photo anyway.</li>

</ul>

<p>There are others, but I have probably done those, too. Proceed with confidence if you make stupid errors. Mistake-free people are either not doing anything, or not telling themselves the truth.</p>

<p>Reload and make more pictures. J.</p>

<p>Saturday morning, I was walking across the Manhattan Bridge, so that I could shoot the Brooklyn Bridge and lower Manhattan in the morning light. I really wanted to take this on film and went out and purchased some Ektar 100 just for the occasion. I know the Manhattan Bridge has protective fencing, so I brought the camera that has the smallest diameter wide angle lens, which would have the best chance of fitting thru the grating, my Spotmatic SP and the Super Takumar 28/3.5.</p>

<p>Anyways, I load the Ektar on the bridge and wind it two times on the takeup spool, with the camera back open. Then I close it to advance it to the start position, but it's not advancing smoothly. No problem... I'll just rewind it a tad and rethread it, right? Well, wrong, as I rewound the film back into the canister and didn't have anything to get it out with. I had bought 5 rolls, but only took one with me onto the bridge. Luckily, I had my 5D with me, so it wasn't a total loss.</p>

<p>John O' Keefe, John-Paul, I've read em and wept. Only because I know your pain. Gotta add a couple here. I am at the end of a week-long shoot on location with lenses sitting atop a crate. I trip over a sync cord, which brought all lenses to the ground.. 4 feet to cement. Now I often set my lenses on the floor. No kidding. Next one isn't my fault. I shoot 8 rolls of artwork for another week-long shoot. The tank at the processor breaks(I saw it afterwords), E-6 guy calls me, his voice shaking, saying all the rolls are ruined. Another one I sadly witnessed was an 8x10 camera fall in the wind, right smack onto the lens. The photographer just stood for a few seconds, looking at his life pass before his eyes. Another sad one I only heard of was of 50 sheets of Velvia that for some reason stuck together in the box, AFTER exposing them.</p>

<p>Chris, your story made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. I think any of those qualifies as a 'worst day ever'.</p>

<p>Chris, here's one for you along the lines of dropping things. A few weeks ago, I was on vacation in Oregon and Washington, tho this happened to me at Mount Rainier National Park in Washington.</p>

<p>I was taking my camera out of my backpack and somehow, it slipped out of my hand and fell 3 or 4 feet to the pavement and landed directly on the lens, which was not the worst of the news. The force of the impact forced the back to spring open and expose the few shots I'd already taken, which fortunately had only been three or so. Surveying the damage, I picked up the lens and found that the UV filter had absorbed most, if not all of the damage. Of course, the UV filter was now cracked, bent from the impact and jammed onto the lens. I looked thru the viewfinder and couldn't see any of the cracks, which were only located in one area near the very rim of the filter. The lens still clicked in at all f-stops and DOF preview engaged the aperture blades at each stop with no problem. I fired it off a few times and all seemed to be well, so I reloaded my film, retook the shots that had been exposed and continued on my way. I continued using this camera for the duration of my trip and after I got home, I stopped into the photo shop in town and showed the lens to my friend, who said he could easily get the filter off by breaking the glass and then using a wrench to bend the filter ring inwards, or something. I watched him carefully do that and even tho the front of the lens is a little dinged up, filters still mount with no problems. I got my film back and none of the cracks in the UV filter show up in any of the shots! I'll chalk everything up to some sturdy construction and a bit of luck.</p>

<p>Oh, and a few weeks after that, my friend - the same one who let got the UV filter off for me - asked me to take some engagement shots for him and his fiancée, using his Nikon D3 and other gear. The following day, I had to take some shots at a baby shower and asked if I could use his D3 for that, due to its great low light capabilities. He also had some very fast lenses - the 35/2, 85/1.4, 70-200 VR 2.8, 50/1.4, etc. After the event was over, my girlfriend and I were walking around the campus of Drew University, as I was hoping to catch some of the sunset light that had been present the day before for the engagement shots. Anyways, we're walking around campus and my girlfriend drops the Nikon 85/1.4. She claims I bumped into her and made her drop it, but whatever. Luckily, once again, just the filter and lens cap were a bit scuffed. The filter came off the lens with a bit of elbow grease, and luckily, nothing was damaged further. I bought my friend a new filter and that was that. To boot, because he's a photo merchant, he let me buy him the filter at cost ($48) instead of the retail price.</p>

<p>I very recently hand processed four 4x5 negatives in a tray. I finished fixing the images and was so excited to see the results because the digital captures we're very nice...so I turned onthe lights and first sheet was totally clear! Well I thought I must have screwed that one up then one after another all clear.... I soon realized I had inadvertently mixed up the developer and the fixer... won't make that mistake again...</p>

<p>(Brief aside: I'm a different John Wilson than the one that posted above)</p>

<p>Heh, let's start with this one: http://www.photo.net/black-and-white-photo-film-processing-forum/00OrpD </p>

<p>Still have that roll in my freezer. A month ago: I just got done taking a priceless photo of Grandma holding the new baby; last shot on the roll. Did I open the back of the camera without rewinding? You bet I did! Couldn't re-take the shot since I didn't have a 135mm focal length equivalent lens for my digital, and that was my last roll of color film.</p>

<p>A friend of mine gave me her old camera. Her parents gave it to her when she was five and she had it all her life until she got a digital camera. Then she gave it to me. Spent $$ on a CLA, ran about five rolls through it then one morning in a fog I was getting into the car and dumped a cappuccino on it. It landed mostly on the lens which is now sticky as hell, and the camera seems to still work okay but the film door sticks shut every now and then.</p>

<p>I will also share with you my biggest digital mistake since it is related to my most frequent film mistake. The lens on my digital SLR no longer stops down reliably. (Canon 35mm f2; it's the only lens I have so I can't exactly send it in). I'm pretty much stuck wide open at f2 all the time; I'll try stopping down every now and then and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I spend most of my time in aperture priority mode, switching to manual mode if I need to override the meter. Fortunately the top shutter speed on my 20D is 1/8000 which overexposes the brightest sunlit scene by about a stop or so at iso 100. Fixable in Lightroom most of the time. Most of the time, what I change on my camera is the ISO, I'm changing it from 100 to 1600 to 100 to 1600 as I go in and outside (dark interior walls, small windows, dim lights -- it's iso 1600 trust me.) Of course my biggest digital mistake is forgetting to change the ISO.</p>

<p>With all that as background, here's the most frequent film mistake I make: I tend to forget that I can even change the aperture, on any camera. So I'll take a shot and stop down to f8, then put the camera away. When I pull it out next, I just assume I'm shooting wide open and set the shutter based on the ISO and... yeah. I just blew a roll of Portra 400NC; I have maybe a couple salvageable shots on there (these are family snaps, so salvageable is a pretty low bar). I also almost never remember to bracket for some unfathomable reason, so I wind up with 5 shots "to make sure I got it" and they are all equally horribly over or under exposed or what have you. Or (my favorite) I'll only bracket in one direction, which inevitably is the direction which perpetrates the greatest error.</p>

<p>I just got my own enlarger and I've already turned on the lights at the wrong time, forgot to fix a print, and didn't put the diffusion filter in place (hey, you can see the filament on the enlarger bulb! It's like reverse vignetting, darker in the middle than the edges.)</p>

<p>Remember: if you aren't on top, you are screwing up.</p>

<p>Well, Chris, if you read 'em and wept, I hope you wept from laughing. I do. If we don't get a chuckle out of yesterday's mistakes, then we're probably looking too hard at it for too long.</p>

<p>I had a teacher once who had an entire shoot ruined by a water pipe or main breaking and flooding the lab and machine where his work was getting developed. Now, he only sends out one roll to begin with and does the rest later.</p>

<p>I can't say I've been back into photography long enough to have much go wrong. Nothing along the chemicals/darkroom mishaps, but along the lines of dropping things:</p>

<p>I was working in the old stadium on campus here taking some pictures of surrounding buildings and went to change my 28mm lens I had on for something else.</p>

<p>The steps in the stadium are ~2 feet rise and tread concrete with smaller 1 foot increments. I was at the top of the stadium ~50 2 foot steps up watching my 28mm Minolta Rokkor lens go bouncing down ALL the way to the bottom.</p>

<p>Trusty heavy duty Minolta Rokkor construction survived and the only ill effects were focusing was a bit stiff, probably due to a bent something. Everything else, aperature, glass, barrel, were all largely unaffected, and I used it no problems great pictures till I found a great 24mm that I now use.</p>

<p>It was an interesting sight, a lens just bouncing down concrete steps 100ft like a rubber ball =!</p>

<p>An aside I was in New Mexico over the summer and dropped my Minolta SRT Super on a metal picnic table. I caught it, mostly and only film rewind top was a bit bent and the shutter speed didn't change properly in the viewfinder. I have not sent it back to John Titterington yet because it works just perfectly.</p>

<p>Somehow I doubt my one digital camera, 30D, would survive this sort of stuff. One reason I like the old school gear, I just feel it's more trustworthy and reliable.</p>

<p>Recent mishaps: Back from a trip to nepal and tibet, 16 rolls of tri-x, finished 10 and 6 to go. 3am, want to finish them and got greedy. I had been using the 5-reel paterson for the last 10. 6 could not fit into a 5-reel, so i thought I would use the 6-reel stainless tank instead. I had never seriously used a stainless reel before, so I spent an hour to feed the 6 reel. Open the tank after fixing, every roll stick to itself at some point in the reel. So every roll had a few frame that didn't get developed.<br>

For the trip, I borrowed a hasselbald with two backs. I haven't used one for ages, load the back the way i usually do with a ROLLEIFLEX, without matching the triangle to the arrow, just feed the roll and wind till it stop. Bad idea, now I have rolls of 120 with 11 frames.<br>

Leica take up spools, anyone? First day of shooting a M3, thought I had the film feed to the take up spool and shot a roll. Frame counter to 36, I normally keep the number AT 36, so i can fit one roll in one negative sleeves. Rewind and feed another one, shoot but this time around I lost track of the number, and it was way past 38. Turns out the take up spools didn't take up the film properly.<br>

I shared a darkroom with a few people. I always cut my paper to size from a big roll. I usually cut enough of paper to use for one session. One day, I cut my paper and afterwards I went just outside of the darkroom to have a drink of water. Someone stormed in the darkroom and turned on the light to find a photo he did for the last session. 20 some piece of 24x24 fibre paper was gone.</p>

 

<p>OK you beat many on that one....</p>

<p>I just shot a roll with a recently purchased Pentax 645 discovering that the ISO was set to 40 not 400 because of a strange little symbol on the display which is indistinguishable from a zero. So to set ISO 400 you set ISO 4000 (it looks exactly the same). Who thought of that?<br>

I hate losing film and boy, is this going to be overexposed on any shot I used AE for (12/15 or so). Stupid.</p>

<p><em>Bumping for new war stories, funny goofs and because this is also useful info for folks new to the darkroom... and absent minded veterans.</em></p>

<p>I recently sold my D3 and some lenses and went completely to film, starting with a Leica M6. I was so excited to put some rolls of film through my new rig that I didn't check to make 100% sure that the film was loaded properly. (<em>nota bene</em>: always check the rewind to make sure it moves when you advance the film! The frame counter can lie to you!)</p>

<p>After doing the development my self for the first time in 9 years, I was gutted to find that the entire roll was blank. I hadn't loaded the film correctly, so no exposures. Welcome back to film, indeed!</p>

<p>Life goes on, I'm really only out a roll of T-Max and some chemical. I still have a lifetime with this wondrous German <em>Werkzeug</em>.</p>