DISASTER + why im the biggest idiot here

MattKing · May 17, 2009

This would be a shorter thread if you had asked for posts from people who haven't done something like this .

I haven't done this exactly, but I once finished shooting a wedding, walked back to my car, proceeded to unload the last roll of 220 from my camera and when I went to attach the tape to seal it, had the roll slip out of my fingers and merrily unroll itself across the parking slot.

Thankfully, they were all shots taken late in the reception, so in the range of wedding photography disasters, it was near the lower end.

Your slip will help you in the long run - it will be a long time before you will develop film without first checking the chemistry.

By the way, when developing film, I almost never get the stop bath and fixer ready until the film is already developing.

Matt

jeffreyg · May 17, 2009

I happen to used Rapid Fix and premix from concentrate (don't use hardener) and put it in brown glass apothecary bottles that are indexed in oz/ml. I mix my developer to working solution right before use to the correct temperature in a graduate. It's "impossible" to confuse the two.

Kvistgaard · May 17, 2009

Don't worry -I suspect it is a sort of initiation ritual, you're not a real analogue photographer until you've tried developing your film in fix or stop bath.

I, of course, am among the initiated ;-). Carefully metered & exposed roll of Pan F+, shot in gorgeous winter morning light in beautiful scenery. A film I was looking forward to print from, in other words. Took a VERY long walk outside after discovering I had poured the fixer over the unsuspecting roll of film first. Next, I took a look at my film developing processes....

Dennis S · May 17, 2009

Bin there, Did that, Bought the T-shirt

Dave Dawson · May 17, 2009

Having just learnt to count to five........I put 1, 2 and 3 in perminant marker pen on the dev,stop and fix bottles!

Cheers Dave

JMC1969 · May 17, 2009

Example number one is herethere was a url link here which no longer exists) hours apart but with the same holder.

Second good one was a local University asked us for development times for the new Kentmere films we sold them to be Processed in the Sprint we sold them. I actually started a thread here about it, but to help myself, I (and boss) wanted me to shoot a roll and do the test myself. I did, cut it into 3 pieces for 3 different times in developer, mixed my chemicals, processed, washed, dried and checked them out. What a strange look you get when you fix your film with "Fix remover" instead of actual "Fix". Very "milky" base, go figure. Funny thing is, I returned it to an actual fix (probably 6 hours after development) and it cleared. Not that it was anything I could use to judge development times with, but surprising none the less.

mudman · May 17, 2009

My favorite - I was learning to use medium format film, and I prerolled it to where it said stop, and then let the roll holder do the rest. turns out that my holder does the pre rolling for ya, so I shot 1/3rd of a roll instead of a full roll.

sperera · May 17, 2009

hahaha ALL your stories are great....the bummer is im convinced and 100% know what i shot with film was better than what i shot with the DSLR....i was using the DSLR as a lighting polaroid....good job i decided to double up on the compositions i was doing.....actually....ill post some shots later.....

JMC1969 · May 17, 2009

mudman said:
My favorite - I was learning to use medium format film, and I prerolled it to where it said stop, and then let the roll holder do the rest. turns out that my holder does the pre rolling for ya, so I shot 1/3rd of a roll instead of a full roll.

HAHAHAHAHA, I was shooting a Yashica A for the first time this week. 1st shot, I'm looking in the ground glass, turning the focus knob and nothing is happening. I gave the camera the sideways look of "What the hell is wrong with this thing?" as I was turning the advance film knob. Did it one more time just for good measure before I was done with the roll.

darkosaric · May 17, 2009

sperera said:
it was a mistake with the fix and developer....i used one instead of the other

I have made this error also 1-2 times. don't worry, you are not alone

MikeSeb · May 17, 2009

Don't worry. I once managed to load only fixer into the Jobo. I think, therefore, that the "Dumbest Guy/Gal in the Forum" club has a large and nonexclusive membership.

erikg · May 17, 2009

Oh yeah, I've done that, and pretty much everything else folks are confessing to here. I've miss-loaded sheet film in the holder so that when I put the darkslide back into the holder after exposure the film was pushed right into the camera. I've left the hatch of the developer reservoir up on a Jobo ATL, if you used one you know what I mean, the developer was there, but never reached the film, so I had the same result as you. This after using that machine pretty much daily for 9 years. No excuse. You just have to let it go and take it as a lesson learned.

Phillip P. Dimor · May 17, 2009

I managed to somehow get film curling into the inside of my hasselblad beyond the body shutter.. That was fun. I was using 220 in a 120 back and definitely not paying attention.

And with sheet film, i've put it in backwards/wrong so many times, not even in the holder but in my rotary tank that it's not even funny sometimes.
No one is perfect. Just try not to change things much and be conscious of what you are doing and why, it makes things easier as you go along.

nickandre · May 17, 2009

my friend during our school photo class poured his pitcher of fixer back into the developer bottle right before about 5 people processed their film. Heh.

Ian David · May 17, 2009

Bummer... enjoy the pain now, but don't torture yourself about what might have been on the roll. Maybe you left the darkslide in as well anyway!

I once got an old Canon EOS very wet on a fishing trip. After it dried out, all the functions seemed to work fine but (bizarrely) I didn't test it with a roll of film. Soon after, I travelled over to New Zealand for a 6-week roadtrip with my girlfriend. I took quite a few rolls of film on the same camera but didn't develop any until I got back home. No images on any of them! My girlfriend's photos were OK, but I felt sure mine would all have been prize-winners! Since then, I have been irrationally suspicious of cameras with any electronics inside them...

When processing films I always use the same three large graduates. They are labelled in black marker - DEVELOPER, STOP, FIX. I line them up in a row and then use them in order. Not fool-proof but close!

Anscojohn · May 17, 2009

[NOW i had better shots than on the DSLR.....I was seeing better pictures...
******
Yup. The fish that got away.......

I hereby claim the award for the dumbest person in the forum....can anyone top this???? c'mon...make me feel better![/QUOTE]
*******
Here's mine: I was re-using gallon, brown-glass Clorox bottles (anyone remember them!?) to store my fixer. I had just pencilled over the labels a bit, rather than soaking the labels off and properly relabelling the bottles; my darkroom was in the family laundry room.
I began to empty a fixer tray into a brown-glass Chlorox bottle. "Hmm," I wondered, "Do I have the right bottle'," as I smelled the odd smell.
So, to compound the stupidity, I stopped pouring, put down the tray, and sniffed the Chlorox bottle: which, you guessed it, was now liberating chlorine gas such as that used in the trenches of WWI.
I gasped for breath, got out of the room. The last part of this potentially fatal, consumately stupid drama, was not going immediately to the E.R. I had painful breathing for the next several days.
So, how many dumb acts were combined?

dancqu · May 17, 2009

papagene said:
Been there... done that!

Haven't quite been there but have come close.
I've litmus paper handy if ever I'm in doubt.
Turns blue in the alkaline developer. Dan

Larry Bullis · May 17, 2009

tiberiustibz said:
my friend during our school photo class poured his pitcher of fixer back into the developer bottle right before about 5 people processed their film. Heh.

We had a lab assistant at one of the colleges I taught at, who was fresh from Moldova and could neither speak or read English, which happened to be what everyone else was speaking and was also the language in which the directions were written. A whole bunch of students started asking the same question: "What's wrong with my film?"

It was the week before the final.

I had shown them what film looks like when it's not yet fixed, but for some reason, they didn't recognize the issue. Many of the rolls had already been cut into strips of five, and several tried to make proof sheets of them.

I have some "dumb tests" I use. For example, if I'm not sure that something is developer, I put some exposed film in it to see if it turns black. If not sure something is fixer, I put film in it to see if it clears. That test failed, I thought, but I tried it over using more of the liquid and after a half hour the film had visibly partially cleared. So, the determination was that it WAS fixer, but not good fixer. Edwal Hypo Check didn't indicate saturation, and anyway, it seemed too watery.

We put up clotheslines all over the classroom, and students pinned their little strips up to dry after they were all refixed, and rewashed, a strip at a time, by hand.

Turns out that the lab assistant thought fixer and photo flow must be mixed the same. She mixed the fixer 1:200 instead of 1:9.

She had a good excuse. When I mess up, I NEVER do.

McFortner · May 17, 2009

I've forgotten that I loaded a roll with black and white instead of color and took it in to get commercially developed. Yep, 36 exposures of absolutely nothing....

Michael

wogster · May 17, 2009

sperera said:
no frame numbers or anything!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i think you're right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it was a mistake with the fix and developer....i used one instead of the other!!!!!!!!!!!!! IM AN IDIOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THAT wont happen again.....i will learn from this mistake!!!!!!!!!!!!

Your not an idiot, unless you promptly do the same thing again....

You should look at your darkroom process though, different colour bottles and lids to start with. I always put the unused chemicals to the right of the tank, developer closest, then stop (or water) then fix. I use developer one shot, so it's in a container of it's own, usually a graduate of some kind, if I don't use stop another graduate contains water (they look completely different so they can't be confused). Fixer is in a bottle pre-mixed.

When the developer is done, it goes down the drain, same with the stop, fixer can be reused, but always gets a clear test before use, if it clears in less then 2 minutes it gets 5 minutes fixing, if it takes longer, time for a new batch. Three bottles are potentially used for fixer, one contains the concentrate, one film fixer, one print fixer. They are clearly marked which is which, although they are the same bottle, with different colour electrical tape.

Edimilson · May 17, 2009

The most stupid thing I've done up to now was done, in fact, to someone else's film. I don't know if this makes me feel better or worse. This happened many years ago, in the year when I started taking pictures as a hobby. Anyway, I was making photos outdoors with other amateur photographers. They all had digital cameras, I was the only one carrying a film camera. All of a sudden a couple approached us. He was carrying a cheap film camera. He asked us to help him, since he didn't know how to open the camera. I was the only one shooting film, so everyone expected me to do something about it. Me thinks: "well, I'll do what was asked". I opened the back of the camera and there it was, the old man's exposed film which I had just destroyed. (Why didn't' he tell me there was film in the camera?) So I snapped the camera close again, but I don't think I did it so fast as to avoid the sunlight hitting the film. Oh boy.

Please don't tell anyone about this. I still have nightmares in which I relive this situation.

clayne · May 17, 2009

Edimilson said:
So I snapped the camera close again, but I don't think I did it so fast as to avoid the sunlight hitting the film. Oh boy.

I don't know a single film photographer who hasn't done this. In most cases though the damage isn't as bad as one thinks. It's usually between 3-6 frames or so (film acts as a nice ND filter).

Shan Ren · May 18, 2009

I have never: put fixer in first, forgot a part of a three part developer, dropped a tank with film in it and had it break open, forgot to fix, shoot with a camera with no film in it for about 40 frames... shot an empty film holder, load a film holder backwards, open the (exposed) film holder facing the ground glass, started to break down a camera with the film holder still open in the back or set up and realise I have no/wrong film holders or roll film back, shoot with strobes on an old shutter with different sync settings, on the wrong synch setting or any other stupid stupid things

Andrew O'Neill · May 18, 2009

i KNOW i had better shots than on the DSLR

What's a DSLR?

2F/2F · May 18, 2009

Shan Ren said:
I have never: put fixer in first, forgot a part of a three part developer, dropped a tank with film in it and had it break open, forgot to fix, shoot with a camera with no film in it for about 40 frames... shot an empty film holder, load a film holder backwards, open the (exposed) film holder facing the ground glass, started to break down a camera with the film holder still open in the back or set up and realise I have no/wrong film holders or roll film back, shoot with strobes on an old shutter with different sync settings, on the wrong synch setting or any other stupid stupid things

Do you want a prize?

DISASTER + why im the biggest idiot here

MattKing

Moderator

jeffreyg

Kvistgaard

Dennis S

Dave Dawson

JMC1969

mudman

sperera

JMC1969

darkosaric

MikeSeb

erikg

Phillip P. Dimor

nickandre

Ian David

Anscojohn

dancqu

Larry Bullis

McFortner

wogster

Edimilson

clayne

Shan Ren

Andrew O'Neill

Moderator

2F/2F

DISASTER + why im the biggest idiot here

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