chris_sabbath

<p>Thanks to everyone who as responded. I think what actually happened, as a few of you have already mentioned, that the button located on the bottom of the camera popped out after I pushed it in. I spoke with the owner of the photography store, and he agreed, suggesting that I hold the button down while rewinding in the future.</p>

<p>Hello fellow photogs,<br /> <br />I own a Nikon F3. I recently finished up using a roll of expired slide film from 1997, and when I went to rewind the film manually, I noticed that the crank was resistant and wouldn't allow me to do so. After giving it a little more force, the crank finally began to turn, however the film wasn't rewinding, so I dipped into a nearby room that was dark and opened the back of my camera. What I discovered was that the film had tore off from the spool, so I removed the film from the camera and placed it in a black film canister. <br /> Obviously, the force I gave the crank caused the film to tear from the spool, but I'm wondering why this happened? It's the never happened before. Could it be that the film was too old (again it was from 1997)? Or did I possibly load the film wrong initially? It advanced all the way to the final exposure with no problem.<br /> <br />Also, when I opened the back of my camera, I was in a room that was 98% dark, except for a dim bleed that came thru the shades. It was about 6:30pm and I tried at times to conceal the film under my shirt when it was exposed to the dark room. Is there a chance that the film is ruined now? I realize that it's old film so there's already going to be some "defects" in the final result. I plan on taking the film up to my local photography store to see if I can get it developed. Thanks for reading.</p>