Oh Calamity!

[nickc1]

I may not be the world's best darkroom worker, but it has been a long time since I have produced something `that

was totally unprintable (or scannable today) - until Sunday night that is.

 

I have just finished a bottle of HC110 but I had a roll of Ilford HP5+ to process - I looked at the bottle of Rodinal, but I

have never liked the results with that combination, so I picked up my last, new and sealed, bottle of Patterson

Aculux.

 

I developed, stop bathed and the fix had gone in in when I picked up the red bottle of developer and saw the small

sticker on the side - 'best before end 2007'

 

My heart stopped as I took the top off the tank - a beutiful clear pink 120 roll with nothing, not even an edge marking

on it.

 

The moral of this story is ALWAYS read the small print in every label on every bottle!

 

I felt like more than just a 'wee dram' after that I can tell you!

 

Nick

[bruce_karnopp1]

It is refreshing about a mistake. Most of the time folks show only the good stuff and refrain from telling the rolls and prints that are in the garbage. I have shot a good deal of infrared film. The good stuff is great, but there were a lot of clear rolls and sheets for every successful negative.

[jim_appleyard]

Sadly, it happens to the best of us.

[mpo]

Not a surprinsing mistake considering that you seem to be used to those "ethernal" developers like Rodinal and HC-110

[jpo3136b]

My condolences. I, too, have made this kind of error. Sometimes this happens to me when I use home-made formulas

beyond the point of exhaustion. Sometimes there will be a color change noticeable in the solutions when they come out of

the tank; but, alas, usually by that time, I find that things have already gone too far. J.

[gt1]

"Not a surprinsing mistake considering that you seem to be used to those "ethernal" developers like Rodinal and HC-110"

 

Yeah, I've settled on those two.

 

My last calamity was leaving the dark slide in my Mamiya Press camera for rolls 2 through 5 of a crazy bicycle event,

Choppercabras, a couple of weeks ago. Nothing like pulling nothing but blanks out of the tank. Only 6 keepers out of 40

possible shots is pathetic! I was shooting 6x9 and I shot two on the first roll before focusing. Duh.

[robert lee]

Oh, did I mention the time I blew through 3 rolls of film on the RB-67 before I noticed that lens was still set for mirror lock-up?

[gt1]

"Oh, did I mention the time I blew through 3 rolls of film on the RB-67 before I noticed that lens was still set for mirror lock-

up?"

 

Hahahah, I did that with one roll. I posted here on photo.net just a few weeks ago to try to figure out what I did.

[profhlynnjones]

Last week one of my adult students of landscape photography came in, in tears, she had borrowed a Superwide from our department used up four rolls of 120 color filn to find it blank, had done it again with the same result. Naturally I checked out the camera and found it to be working just fine.

 

These students are all digital and only use film cameras for advanced special use, I had drilled her on how to load a Hasselblad magazine but had not actually loaded up a test roll. I looked at her and asked, "Are you sure that you didn't load it upside down"? "It had to be OK, Lynn, I saw the big arrow". I had a brick of Fujicolor and demonstrated to find that sure enough, she had loaded it paper side up which is east to do with MF SLR's.

 

My mistake, just because I have used Hassys since 1955, I didn't think about this possibility. Naturally I gave her a bunch of free film and felt terrible because I had made that same mistake myself 50 odd years ago.

 

Lynn

[jon_shiu]

Hi, I don't think a developer that is one year out of date would give zero development. Look out for some other error in processing.

 

Jon

[thomas_sharka]

Good Sir,

 

I have used developer the color of Coca Cola that still performed to some degree. Perchance you might have left the dark slide in the camera?

 

Just a thought, I've never used a Patterson formula.

[silverscape]

About a month ago, I almost ruined a roll of film, just because I was too cheap and lazy to mix up new developer. I

was using D-76 and I noticed that it had turned dark yellow. I should have known something was wrong, but I

decided to use it anyway. Now I know what underdeveloped film looks like. It was really thin and very low contrast.

I still managed to get acceptable pictures from it though.

 

I've messed up a lot of ways...overexposed and underexposed, and overdeveloped and underdeveleloped. I've had

negatives that were so dense that I could hardly see through them, and others that were so thin that I had to cut the

exposure time on the enlarger down to about 2 or 3 seconds to get a usuable picture. I've been developing my own

film since March, about 8 months now. I love film photography so much that a lot of times I say I wish I had started

a long time ago...but the thing is, I know there's no way in the world I would have had the patience. I used to get

really frustrated about almost anything, even up until just a couple of years ago. For me, this was the perfect time to

learn. I feel like now I do have the patience and maturity. (Well, usually). I think Bruce is right that it's good to talk

about the mishaps too, so that people who are new to this will know that bad luck happens to everyone. Everyone

will mess up a roll of film now and then. So just because it doesn't work right the first time they try, or if sometime

they do mess up developing a roll of film, they don't have to give up. Stuff happens.

 

Here's a funny story. It's sad and hillarious at the same time. I think I might have told this before, I don't remember.

Anyway...I graduated from high school in 1996. We were walking out to the field on graduation day and of course

everyones' family is taking pictures of us walking out. I was walking with my friends. Talk about ruining pictures.

Imagine this - we see an old lady with thick glasses, taking pictures with the camera BACKWARDS. I don't mean

upside down, I mean with the camera literally BACKWARDS, with the lens facing toward her! It was so freaking

hillarious. Yeah, I know that sounds mean...but I was 18 years old. I just kept thinking what it was going to be like

to get those pictures back with probably half of them just a super blurry close up of her face. I'm sure a lot of people

have made the usual mistake of leaving the lens cap on, but I had never seen someone hold a camera backwards

before! I did try to tell her, but we had to keep walking and she started moving away through the crowd, I guess

looking for another vantage point...to take pictures of her face.

 

When I talk with my friends about it, we still laugh about it to this day. An old lady trying to take pictures with the

camera backwards.

[gt1]

"Perchance you might have left the dark slide in the camera?"

 

No edge markings.

[chris_waller]

That very same thing happened to me with a bottle of Aculux many years ago. I bought it at a closing-down sale. It had been on the shelves for a long time but I ignored the date on the bottle because it was still sealed. Big mistake! I lost some really good pictures. It was this that confirmed my subsequent choice of Rodinal as my standard developer.

[www.roelandebruijn.nl]

My niece of 3 does the same thing, takes pictures with the camera backwards.

In her case it is not so strange. She is used to seeing a lens in her face whenever her picture is taken. Thus pictures are taken with the lens facing her.

 

Maybe the old lady was thinking along the same lines,..

[patrick_gainer]

With regard to Rodinal, you might try this: to 1 level teaspoon of ascorbic acid powder (4 grams is close enough) add 1/2 level teaspoon sodium bicarbonate and a couple of ounces of water. When the effervescence subsides, add 20 ml Rodinal stock and water to make 1 liter. Use it as Rodinal 1+25. The rodinal can be old or new, and I believe you will like the results better than plain Rodinal. If you have sodium or potassium ascorbate,you can leave out the bicarb.

[john_markanich]

I too doubt that the developer went of date like a light switch. I've used developer that was so old it looked more like used motor than a photo chemical oil and always pulled out something printable. I think something else happened here.

[silverscape]

hmm...you know what, I think I have to agree with the others that something else might have happened. Even when I

used bad developer (completeley oxidized D76, that had turned dark yellow), I still got SOMETHING. The negatives

were really thin and the details were faint. But still I got mostly decent pictures. I admit that I've never used the

developer you have, but if the bottle was new and sealed than I just can't imagine that it would just suddenly go so

bad that you wouldn't get ANYTHING.

 

Is it possible something else might have happened? It almost sounds like the film was never exposed. When was

the last time you used your camera? Could there be a problem with the shutter?

[bsharpe411]

As Nick said originally, and Greg reinterated "no edge markings". Film that was unexposed, yet properly developed would show edge markings, which are imprinted during manufacture. Totally clear film says no development, but properly fixed (i.e. all undeveloped emulsion is removed).

 

I agree that one-year outdated developer should still have some ability to react with the emulsion, however edge markings should be there, if only faintly, as part of the development reaction. The only other explanation I have is the film went into the fixer first.

[jim_graves1]

My 1 1/2 cents worth ... no way a less than 1 year out of date unopened developer produces no image. Not the developer ... it's something else.

[david_f._stein]

Probably fixed first, then stop, then developer.

[alex_furman1]

Good to know that i'm not the only one :)

 

I've gotten a completely blank roll of film twice in the past few months, once with edge markings - loaded the film the wrong way - and once without - a pre-mixed Rodinal 1:50 going bad in a sealed bottle. I am certain that both of those rolls contained at least one masterpiece each.

 

In an case, I'm still learning the analog ways. I now mix my rodinal from syrup immediately prior to developing and I doubt I'll be loading film the wrong way any time soon.