I'M REAAAAAALLLLLLY STUPID

chioque · Oct 24, 2010

I just spend the weekend with the family away on holiday. Brought along with me my M6 and OM4 with one lens each, both loaded with Neopan 400. I managed to finish both rolls plus another unfinished one in the Oly.

Reached back home last night around 11pm after driving about 4 hours in typical tropical torrential rain we have here, most of the journey. As soon as I got home, although extremely tired, I had itchy fingers to develop at least one of the rolls to see what I have got. Decided to develop the roll from the Leica first. After getting everything ready, mixed my 1+4 DD-X and just about to pour the developer into the tank.

AND THEN....POOF my brain just went AWOL. Instead of opening just the steel cap to pour down the chemicals, I opened the whole lid off

I bl**dy ruined the whole roll of precious moments. ARGHHHHH, it only happened in a split second, but damage was already done. I did develop it till the end, though, but you can all guess what the outcome was.

Lesson learnt - never do something important when you're too tired and sleepy

P/S: Not sure whether this should be here or in the Lounge.

Rob Skeoch · Oct 24, 2010

That is such a drag.
-rob

Darkroom317 · Oct 24, 2010

Sorry about your lose. It happens to everyone at some time.

It could be worse. Last year during a college course, my friend and I had our developing tanks next to each other. His was loaded and mine was empty. I grabbed a tank off the counter and when I opened it, I saw that it had reels in it. I then realized that I had gotten the tanks mixed up. His film was ruined .

More recently, I was developing at my home darkroom. I use Patterson 4 tanks and when I poured out the developer, the funnel fell out. I quickly put it back on the tank (upside down of course). I managed to save those rolls.

clayne · Oct 24, 2010

Haste makes waste. :-/ Next time, not so fast.

How possible to get any of the shots back?

Similar recent story, I was spooling TMZ3200 in the darkroom in the dark, knowing that at most it'd be exposed to potential damage for only around a minute or so. What happens right during that minute? Cell phone blinking blue LED light back and forth on SMS received.

Film was lightly fogged, but not too bad. Shots were all crap anyways.

chioque · Oct 24, 2010

clayne said:
How possible to get any of the shots back?

Don't think I'm able too. The whole rolls are so fogged, dense, virtually black. though I can see the images with some difficulty Perhaps I just try printing a frame, just in case tonight

Toffle · Oct 24, 2010

I don't know a single photographer who hasn't done something like that at some time or other. You might get something useable out of your roll of film. (besides a lesson learned) According to Murphy's law, the magnitude of the error is directly proportional to the value of the shot and or the difficulty in replacing it.

mesh · Oct 24, 2010

Sorry about the accident... stupid? No, just tied and unlucky... terrible to think about it now, but the 'lesson' will make you better for it. I put fixer instead of developer the other day - now THAT was stupid ;-) Three rolls from a wedding with special shots of a son and dad that I'll never get back again. I almost immediately put all my film and darkroom gear up for sale but have 'settled down' in the last 24 hours. I might not go to digital after all!

clayne · Oct 24, 2010

mesh said:
Sorry about the accident... stupid? No, just tied and unlucky... terrible to think about it now, but the 'lesson' will make you better for it. I put fixer instead of developer the other day - now THAT was stupid ;-) Three rolls from a wedding with special shots of a son and dad that I'll never get back again. I almost immediately put all my film and darkroom gear up for sale but have 'settled down' in the last 24 hours. I might not go to digital after all!

You could have just as easily deleted the images in one fell swoop with digital faster than you could have done anything with chemicals. Sell all your stuff over that mistake? C'mon, that's more than a bit impulsive.

jcarnes · Oct 24, 2010

maybe rather than rolling in the rubble so to speak .... just get on with it!!!

chioque · Oct 24, 2010

Toffle said:
.... According to Murphy's law, the magnitude of the error is directly proportional to the value of the shot and or the difficulty in replacing it.

How so very true. Sad but true

Rick A · Oct 25, 2010

AND THEN....POOF my brain just went AWOL. Instead of opening just the steel cap to pour down the chemicals, I opened the whole lid off

I bl**dy ruined the whole roll of precious moments. ARGHHHHH, it only happened in a split second, but damage was already done. I did develop it till the end, though, but you can all guess what the outcome was.

Lesson learnt - never do something important when you're too tired and sleepy

P/S: Not sure whether this should be here or in the Lounge.[/QUOTE]

After 45+ years in the DR I did the same danged thing a few months ago.
It gets better with practice(NOT)

Jeff Kubach · Oct 25, 2010

I have done everything stupid at least twice.

Jeff

Marco B · Oct 25, 2010

Jeff Kubach said:
I have done everything stupid at least twice.

You mean like marrying your wife?... eh... maybe there are exceptions to the rule

And yes, this thread belongs in the Lounge.

Jeff Kubach · Oct 25, 2010

I agree!

Jeff

Athiril · Oct 25, 2010

Don't worry I grabbed a sodium hypochlorite bottle (laundry bleach) instead of fixer one time.

tkamiya · Oct 25, 2010

I've done stuff like that, too. Putting in fixer first and developer second.... opening a tank to make sure the film was in correctly.... spooling film in a hurry and kinking it badly.... You can do a whole a lot more damage in digital world quicker. As disappointing as it was, at least your damage was limited to a roll. In digital world, equivalent action will wipe out the entire few hundred shots.

keithwms · Oct 25, 2010

Think of this as training so that you will have better procedures in place when you shoot something even more valuable. Which will happen. We have to be thankful for these "lessons" ... even if they are very painful at the time.

Mainecoonmaniac · Oct 25, 2010

WE all have brain farts once in a while

We all have our darkroom stories. Now let me tell you about weekend biffing of a shot. I was shooting my Mamiya RZ with a wide angle RB lens. A week earlier, I had shoot the lens on T for along exposure, so I and set the lens on mirror lock up mode. The film came out blank. I thought it was me not just setting the shutter speed correctly. I again went back and reshot again. I was hearing the camera, and it didn't sound right because I would hear the shutter close after the mirror goes up releasing the shutter. I had a gut feeling that things weren't right. I listed to my gut and saw the mirror lock up was still set. I had a Homer Simpson "Doh" moment. We are humans so we make mistakes. The joys of being human also is being able to create art. As intelligent beings, we have the ability to learn from our mistakes. We have to accept being human in it's totality even if we have brain farts once in a while

padraigm · Oct 25, 2010

I actually did almost the same last week only I opened it for a brief second right before I was to add stop (started day dreaming) So I was lucky as no development of that mishap occurred and my negs came out OK. But there was some anxious moments.

cdowell · Oct 25, 2010

These one-time mistakes aren't stupid.

Stupid is the way it took me a year -- when first starting out -- to figure out that bracketing my exposures didn't have much effect on negative density as long as I kept my camera set on aperture priority mode.

clayne · Oct 25, 2010

cdowell said:
These one-time mistakes aren't stupid.

Stupid is the way it took me a year -- when first starting out -- to figure out that bracketing my exposures didn't have much effect on negative density as long as I kept my camera set on aperture priority mode.

What kind of camera was this? In Av mode I'd expect the camera to appropriately over or underexpose based on the given bracket being fired.

Ric Trexell · Oct 25, 2010

How about when people lose their digital camera?

At least with a dark room mistake you are probably only losing one roll of film. If you go to the lost and found section in Craigslist you will see people that lost their digital camera. Many times they will say, I had all the pictures of my new born baby on it for the last six months and didn't transfere them to my computer. So they not only lost six months of photos, but their camera as well. Now that is stupid.

photoncatcher · Oct 25, 2010

We've all done something dumb when we're tired. Unless it's a paying rush job, I don't even unload my cameras till the next day, or at least till I've had a nap, or a lot of coffee. hell I've waited more than a week to develop so I can fill my 4 roll tank.

guitstik · Oct 25, 2010

Don't feel bad, I have ADD and I have learned to take my time and do things slowly and deliberately or suffer the inevitable consequences.

mesh · Oct 25, 2010

clayne said:
What kind of camera was this? In Av mode I'd expect the camera to appropriately over or underexpose based on the given bracket being fired.

I assume he meant 'manual' bracketing so all he'd be getting was a difference in DOF. I had a good chuckle at this one because I did the same thing for ages.

I'M REAAAAAALLLLLLY STUPID

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