let's make a list of every mistake we've made with large format!

[huib_smeets]

My biggest mistake was to start with LF photography at all :-) :-)

[edsel_adams]

While shooting a water falls,I walked away from the camera & tripod for a minute.My mistake was underestimating the wind speed.The whole thing blew over into the creek!This cost me $125 to have the lens dried & fixed.Worse than that,there was a school class trip watching this.A 12 year old girl asked if I meant to do this....

[audidudi]

Absent-mindedly handing my daughter a lens to hold while I changed to my bag bellows only to hear a thud when hit the ground. It turned out that she was standing on my right side, not my left ... oops!

[edward_kimball]

This is probably a fairly common mistake. I metered for f/32, opened my lens wide open (f/4.5) to focus and then forgot to stop back down for the shot. Can you say overexposed?

[daniel flather]

I got into the format. Good bye $.

[steve_feldman]

NOT ENOUGH ROOM ON THIS FORUM!

 

Confucious says, "Your problems are obvious. Stop making errors."

[chris_jordan3]

ha!!!!!!! what a wonderful list so far.

 

okay, here's a horrendous story i heard from Duane Michael in a lecture he gave: he was hired to shoot a wedding of some rich and famous people. there was no other photographer there-- he was it.

he shot the whole wedding with his Leica, but forgot to re-set the parallax when he changed lenses, so every single photo came out completely blurry. The couple was furious, but agreed to stage a SECOND entire wedding, just to get photos. So they invited all their friends back, put on all the tuxedos and dresses and got more flowers and stuff, and went through the whole thing again, and Duane photographed it all again, and made the EXACT SAME MISTAKE!!!!!!

 

he said that was his first and last wedding assignment...

 

~cj

[hyperfocal]

Wasting my tiume reading this forum? Sometime I wonder ... but I have met some indispensible folks here.

 

H

[dan_fromm1]

I once wound up a Speed Graphic's focal plane shutter with the dark slide out and the front shutter open. For those of you who aren't acquainted with these beasts, the fp shutter isn't self-capping.

 

Cheers,

 

Dan

[john_kasaian1]

All the above and add this: On the rarest of New Years Days, Tioga pass was open to traffic a few years back---what an opportunity! Tenaya Lake in her winter glory! Too bad I left my cable release in Fresno. Then theres the time I forgot to reverse some of the dark slide after shooting, or worse, after loading, and not realizing it until I'm out in the field. Oh yes! Tray developing film by putting the film in the fix before the developer---hey, its dark in the darkroom, what good are different color trays if you can't see them? Or forgetting the Kodak lens cleaning juice and using vodka instead because thats all we had in camp. I'm still in denial about the rest of the mistakes. Maybe after a few years of therapy I'll be able to post more. Cheers!

[jorge_gasteazoro5]

Just today. drove 4 hours, beautiful day, azure blue skies....set up camera...exited about the photo....forgot &$"%&%# dark cloth at home.....

[erik_ryberg]

Let's just say photo-flo is not an acceptable substitute for selenium toner.

[psychophoto]

Did some good architectural shots with one corner of my bag bellows mis-seated. Fogged 18 sheets of 4x5 Provia. I don't like to think about it.

[john_alexander_dow]

been in large format about 2 months

 

mistake 1 - very first 6 sheets I remembered as I fixed them that I had forgotten to add the developer concentrate to one litre of water at exactly 20 centigrade. Oh well more blank sheets to practice fitting into dev tanks dark slides etc.

 

mistake 2 - drove 200 miles in 4 hours to north wales and found no tripod in car boot (trunk to you)

 

mistake 3 - usual one of forgetting to close lens before removing dark slide

 

mistake 4 - got concentration of developer wrong by factor of 10

 

JD

[nicholas_f._jones]

After not shooting for a while I was in the darkroom with lights on and started opening 8x10 holders with black sides out, thinking they were empty. Exposed two b/w portraits, so had to call subjects back (to the immense irritation of one of them), but two new portraits were among the very best we�ve ever done.

 

When switching from TMax100 to Tri-X I lost track of two 5x7 holders which still had the slower film in them and exposed at 160 instead of 64.

 

In motel bathroom in pitch-black darkness at 4:00 am (I had to wait that long for the temperature to drop in this non-ac unit), with the trays in the bathtub I missed the developer (the shower curtain through me off) and put the films in the stop bath. I managed not to panic, put the films in the developer, and proceeded from there with no perceptible loss of quality in the negatives.

[jorge_gasteazoro5]

Here is another one, stack filters, forget to check vigneting. Nice round circle.....

[paul freeman]

1) I thought there was something wrong with my Polaroid holder. Every time I pulled out the tab on the film, the film came right out, causing chemical gunge to flow out all over the rollers.

 

This only happened intermittently, finally I discovered the large lettering on the film envelope which indicated which side needed to be pointed at the lens.

 

2) Used a Sekonic light meter for nearly 10 months before realising that my exposures were all f**ked because the light meter was mis calibrated by 1.3 stops. Luckily my expertise with Polaroid film ;-) see above meant that at least some of my exposures were still rather nice.

[vicki_guidice]

When I was 22, I was photographing on an ice covered pond in Columbia Missouri. I fell through the ice - only up to my waist - but the camera equipment was completely drenched. I stood there in the frigid water for about a minute in complete disbelief while friends urged me to get out.

 

Who has ever done anything more dumb than that? - Anthony

[terence_m.]

[1] Leaving girlfriend asleep in car while I'm photographing steel mill in Cleveland's Flats. Amazing how women get agitated at being abandoned in sketchy neighborhoods. How come we never see that on the "things not to forget" list for shooting LF?

 

[2] Next trip, asking girlfriend to grab film holders for me on the way out the door, not realizing that both my 5x7 and 4x5 holders were on the counter. Actually took me 10 seconds to figure out why the 5x7 holders wouldn't fit into my B&J 4x5.

 

[3] Identifying wrong film holder as the one with the light leak.

[arne_croell]

After coming back from a trip to Scandinavia: put the (old-type) Readyload envelopes on the darkroom table to sort the front and the back sheets into separate boxes. Switched on the main power for all the darkroom stuff so the Jobo can get up to temperature. Went outside again to do something else (bright sunshine outside). Come back in, close darkroom door, switch off main lights and start sorting the film. After a minute or two, when the eyes got adjusted to the dark I suddenly realize I can see the outline of the enlarger... panic...

 

Before I left for the trip I had done some tests with orthochromatic film and used a special safelight with a really dark red filter for that. That one is not visible with the room lights on, and coming in from the sun my eyes also needed time to adjust... that safelight is usually not plugged in and has no extra switch in the power cord. Of course it had been switched on again with the main power...

I developed the film sheets anyway but they were fogged to about zone VI. I tried reducer to clear some of it, but they were still unprintable. Lost about 16 sheets that way...

 

Otherwise, not locking down the movements on my camera and shifting that carefully composed image when inserting the holder, forgetting to stop down the lens, having the cable release in front of the lens, etc., etc.....