Accidental double exposure

Raffay · Nov 19, 2013

Hi all,

Over the weekend I took two very nice portraits of cousins visiting. Later I realised that I took both the exposures on the same negative. Felt like killing myself but could not do anything, although I write on each side after taking a shot but somehow used the same side.

I want to know if there is anything I could do during development to save whatever I can.

Cheers

Raffay

Tom1956 · Nov 19, 2013

dorff · Nov 19, 2013

What's been exposed cannot be unexposed.

brucemuir · Nov 19, 2013

just go for it you may end up with a pleasant surprise.
hard to say until you soup the neg.

maarten m · Nov 19, 2013

control + z ?

Raffay · Nov 19, 2013

maarten m said:
control + z ?

lol, wish we could do that, but i guess thats the fun of shooting film i.e. no room for such errors.

Raffay · Nov 19, 2013

brucemuir said:
just go for it you may end up with a pleasant surprise.
hard to say until you soup the neg.

Thats what I am hoping, and the reason for this post. Technically, the first exposure must be way over exposed now because of double exposure. If the people in the second exposure are not overlapping then there might be some interesting results.

Cheers

Raffay

Doremus Scudder · Nov 19, 2013

After years of photographing, I still do this occasionally; it's just that sometimes I'm not paying as much attention to things as I should...

Make sure you are turning the darkslides in your holders when you replace them after exposure so that the white side is out. That helps to more easily identify the exposed side. Numbering and keeping records of your shots helps a bit as well.

Best,

Doremus

pentaxuser · Nov 19, 2013

If both exposures were right for the light conditions then isn't what happened exposure-wise only the equivalent of exposing the neg at half box speed which isn't a disaster and can be partially corrected by curtailing development time?

Of course there is no way to "cut out" the other figures and the backgrounds will be mixed up but depending on where the figures are on each neg they may be separate and the whole neg can be cropped to cut out as much as possible of the mixed up backgrounds.

There may be issues but it may be salvageable. A good printing exercise if nothing else

pentaxuser

adelorenzo · Nov 19, 2013

Two exposures is only +1 stop so with any film that I use I would develop it normally. The question is did you compose the two shots in such a way that they will work together? Only one way to find out...

Sirius Glass · Nov 19, 2013

Rewind the film and shoot it again.

Raffay · Nov 19, 2013

Will be developing over the coming weekend, will share the results.

Cheers

Raffay

belfastdispatcher · Dec 31, 2013

I think I might be on to a record here, my mother in law found a few old undeveloped films, two of them looked like they weren't shot (leader was sticking out) so I shot them this year. Turns out my now wife shot them in university some 15 years ago and now there's pictures of our kids on the same film.

Goes to show how great the longevity of kodak consumer films is.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

pentaxuser · Dec 31, 2013

It would be nice if the OP would tell us or show us how the double exposed negative turned out.

pentaxuser

Bill Burk · Dec 31, 2013

Hi Raffay,

You would develop normally, and maybe have a pleasant surprise. Maybe two-headed cousins if you are lucky.

I personally don't shoot the other sheet, just in case I made a mistake about making a mistake, I don't want to compound the problem.

Accidental double exposure

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