Any mishaps you didn't know until you got the film back?

[rayonline_nz]

What's yours? For me I shot 5 rolls of slides with my RB67 and didn't know until I got them back and found one of my lens the main one I used the aperture was not closing down properly.


Cheers.

 

[StepheKoontz]

It's always a "Wonder how these turned out", especially when I am shooting with 60+ year old gear. It's part of the fun of shooting film

 

[railwayman3]

An intermittent shutter fault on a Minox 35mm, so that half the frames were blank......not obvious on taking, as the normal "click" was still heard. I find it's a common fault with these cameras, and the shots were not irreplaceable, so very frustrating but not a disaster. (Anyone know a good repairer in the UK who can deal with these cameras, advice appreciated ? )

 

[railwayman3]

It's always a "Wonder how these turned out", especially when I am shooting with 60+ year old gear. It's part of the fun of shooting film

In my own case, it was two recent films "I wonder how these managed to turn out at all" ! A Kodak Gold 400 (outdated August 1996, and no special storage) - prints were fine and genuinely indistinguishable from fresh film. And an Ektachrome 200 from Jan 2011 (but fridge stored this time) - used with a slightly warming filter, having noticed a slight tendency to blue in other o/d Ektachrome - again, results absolutely fine, if anything a slightly "old-fashioned look", to me, a bit reminiscent of earlier Kodachrome colors.

 

[perkeleellinen]

(Anyone know a good repairer in the UK who can deal with these cameras, advice appreciated ? )

Paul at MS Hobbies works on these. He says the problem is the magnets in the shutter. It can be fixed he says.

 

[winger]

Partial frames once with a Minolta X-370. Other than that camera, no camera faults, just brain farts occasionally. Frequently of the "why did I shoot that and not the other thing?" type.

 

[Patrick Robert James]

I had a Contax 139 that malfunctioned years ago and I didn't know about it for a while. It would miss winding so I would get double exposures or half overlapping ones. Sometimes though that sows ear can be a silk purse. Like the old Chinese proverb, you never know!

 

[Ariston]

I just picked up a Fuji GW690. Its T function is like my RB: you wind the film/cock the shutter, or change the shutter speed to close the shutter. On my RB I just cock the shutter to close it. For the Fuji, since it winds at the same time, I got light streaks across the film.

 

[Vaughn]

In 1980, I spent 3 months hitch-hiking from one end to the other and back again in New Zealand with a 4x5. Got home, developed the film to find that the camera had a massive light-leak and only 2 or 3 usable images.

 

[Wallendo]

I bought a FED collapsible lens for my Leica IIIc. First few rolls looked great. Later I noticed that something didn’t feel right. When I got back a roll of slide film and when I developed a roll of B&W, I noticed that all photos were out of focus - somehow lens wasn’t locking properly.

Same camera. Shot 4-5 rolls without problems, primarily FP4+. Went on a cruise and shot TX400. When I developed the rolls, most images had marked banding and frequent shutter issues. It turned out that the faster shutter speeds I used with TX400 exaggerated problems with sticky shutter curtains.

I replaced lens with a newer model and sent camera for repair. Everything works well now.

 

[reddesert]

Around the time I finished high school, I developed a roll of film out of my SLR and found only a tiny strip at the bottom of each negative was exposed. It turned out that the SLR mirror was supposed to move up slightly and then flip up, and the pin that did the flipping had broken, so it made a noise but didn't flip, and was blocking most of the film. Perhaps I should have noticed the viewfinder wasn't blacking out fully, but I wasn't that alert.

It wasn't economical to fix, so in a rare good decision, I spent more than a replacement would have cost and switched systems, getting a used Nikon F, which had the reputation of being bulletproof. I still have it.

 

[Daniel-J]

You reminded me of my ancestor's old camera. It still used a powder flash. Whether it's alive or not, I'll try to find it in my things in the attic, I'm curious what kind of photos I can take with it now.

 

[MattKing]

I've posted this before:
A few years ago, a number of my friends and I went on a photo shoot to an interesting location, with heritage farm buildings and old orchards. One of the members of the group set up a photo of the rows of trees, capturing nicely the textures and colours and light.
After getting the result, he liked it and ordered a nice enlargement.
It was only after getting the enlargement from the lab that he realized that one of the details he overlooked was that amongst the trees and fruit and dappled light, there was a guy urinating against one of the trees!
It was surprising, and funny, but it was not beautiful!

 

[Anon Ymous]

Soon after I started developing my film, I loaded one in the tank. Friends called me on the phone to go have some drinks, so I left the film in the tank for the next day, but forgot to put the lid on. It turns out that without the top lid, the tank isn't absolutely light tight and film will be very slightly, but noticeably fogged. It takes hours to do so, but it can happen. Needless to say, I never forgot to put the top lid again...

 

[Steve Roberts]

Definitely. Boring subject, poorly framed and shot in bad lighting conditions. Must get that camera serviced.

Steve

 

[railwayman3]

Paul at MS Hobbies works on these. He says the problem is the magnets in the shutter. It can be fixed he says.

Thanks for that suggestion, I will contact him.

 

[removed account4]

Well the film wasn't sent out but done in house. It was my camera's battery not being alive so i exposed 3 rolls ( they were all purposfully made triple exposures, made on my morning commute every day for 2 months and they were genius ) that when I unspooled they were BLANK. The only other time somethng like this happened was about 12 years ago, again 3riple exposed film, was probably one of the best set of rolls i ever shot they were ..... blank because of me being a dope and using 80ºF water to develop my film in Caffenol.

 

[Chan Tran]

Mishaps? If you mean mistakes then I have plenty. If you mean the camera malfunction that I didn't know until the film was developed? That I had a few.
1. I had an Nikon FA and I checked it and it was fine before loading film. I didn't know that it ocasionally shoot at 1/4000 regardless.
2. My Nikkor 20mm f/2.8 AF-D lens aperture was stuck. I didn't know until the film was developed and the shot was overexposed and not having the DOF I expected. Checked the lens and found it doesn't stop down.

 

[rayonline_nz]

Mishaps? If you mean mistakes then I have plenty. If you mean the camera malfunction that I didn't know until the film was developed? That I had a few.
1. I had an Nikon FA and I checked it and it was fine before loading film. I didn't know that it ocasionally shoot at 1/4000 regardless.
2. My Nikkor 20mm f/2.8 AF-D lens aperture was stuck. I didn't know until the film was developed and the shot was overexposed and not having the DOF I expected. Checked the lens and found it doesn't stop down.

Yes I mean that you technique was 100% spotless but when you got your film back, something was just wrong.

I do wonder thou back in the days, how did commercial and wedding photographers experience this with their clients? I guess medium format they shot polaroids but what about 35mm ... I read that 35mm had polaroids also but many who shot 35mm didn't use them right.

 

[railwayman3]

Mishaps? If you mean mistakes then I have plenty. If you mean the camera malfunction that I didn't know until the film was developed? That I had a few.
1. I had an Nikon FA and I checked it and it was fine before loading film. I didn't know that it ocasionally shoot at 1/4000 regardless.
2. My Nikkor 20mm f/2.8 AF-D lens aperture was stuck. I didn't know until the film was developed and the shot was overexposed and not having the DOF I expected. Checked the lens and found it doesn't stop down.

Your number 2 above reminded me of my first "serious" 35mm camera, a s/h Exa, the lens with an external shutter release (on the lens....Exakta users will know what I mean), which stopped down the lens as it released the shutter. Except that this one didn't, so my 36 (amazing and prize-winning pictures), were all taken at full aperture !

 

[railwayman3]

Yes I mean that you technique was 100% spotless but when you got your film back, something was just wrong.

I do wonder thou back in the days, how did commercial and wedding photographers experience this with their clients? I guess medium format they shot polaroids but what about 35mm ... I read that 35mm had polaroids also but many who shot 35mm didn't use them right.

I knew a local wedding and portrait photographer about 25 years ago, in the pre-digital days, and asked him a similar question. The answer was using more than one camera on an assignment, checking these every time, shooting several films every time and saying the occasional prayer. He said that, in his career, he'd been fortunate in being able to count real disasters on one hand, though he did tell me of one portrait session for a young lady, taken in his studio. When the final prints came back, the lady was very irate because of a dark spot appearing on her cheek in the enlarged print; my friend assumed it was an emulsion or processing fault, being too big to retouch, so he could only apologise and offer a free studio session for a retake. When the lady arrived for the retake, the first thing that he noticed was the "beauty spot" right there on her cheek......

 

[MattKing]

I shot a lot of weddings and portraits - almost all with medium format.
I've never used any instant materials, except a couple of times for fun.
I always took some sort of backup equipment with me. The equipment was checked and maintained. And I was familiar with its operation.
If you use well maintained photographic equipment regularly it almost always works as expected. And when it doesn't work as expected, any problems are usually obvious.

 

[dmr]

Infinity stop on my 28-135 zoom on the Pentax was off and I was not really aware of it. One of my last rolls of Kodachrome came back with most infinity shots soft. Those focused closer were fine. I'm surprised I did not notice it when shooting.

 

[BSP]

I learned the hard way NOT to load a roll of 120-film in my Mamiya C200 in bright sunlight.
Half of every frame was severly overexposed which ruined most of the 12 exposures but actually
added something nice to others. But I will not be doing it again.

 

[abruzzi]

When I first got my new (to me) Bronica ETRSi, it came with a 50mm lens with collapsible hood on it. So I loaded film and shot a test roll around the neighborhood. When I developed, all the frames were fairly severely vignetted from the hood. So I threw the hood out, and cropped the images quite a bit. You couldn’t see the vignetting at all through the viewfinder (I assume because it didn’t vignette wide open, but only at closed apertures.