Made a rookie mistake today darn

Larryc001 · Nov 13, 2022

Friday the 13th came on Sunday for me today. Here’s what I did. I was trying to finish a roll of b&w in an Olympus OM-1 today. i thought (?) it was a 36 so when it stopped advancing at 30 I stupidly tried to force it. Then I turned the camera to R and started to rewind it. Rewinding felt funny, when it wouldn’t rewind I (2nd stupid) thought it was rewound and opened the back. Oh oh. You are right. When I tried to force the film to advance it tightened it too much and the rewind clutch wouldn’t release. So now I have a test roll. Stupid rookie mistake. Fortunately it doesn’t appear that I damaged the lovely little camera. I will take my punishment. Lol. I guess I am so used to the F4’s I use all the time I have forgotten how to rewind film manually.

Don_ih · Nov 13, 2022

If you were fast enough closing the back, the start of the film might not even be fogged. Film is pretty opaque when it's tight on the take-up side of the camera.

Sirius Glass · Nov 13, 2022

Don Heisz said:
If you were fast enough closing the back, the start of the film might not even be fogged. Film is pretty opaque when it's tight on the take-up side of the camera.

Faster than the speed of light??

The OP will not do that again.

Don_ih · Nov 13, 2022

Sirius Glass said:
Faster than the speed of light??

Do you not know the meaning of "opaque"?

Sirius Glass · Nov 13, 2022

Don Heisz said:
Do you not know the meaning of "opaque"?

As in opaque thinking?

MattKing · Nov 13, 2022

Don's correct - some of the first exposures on the roll may still be usable.
If you closed the back again and then rewound the film.

Larryc001 · Nov 13, 2022

Thanks for the good advice gentlemen. Fortunately there was nothing particularly important on the film, I was just testing two of the Olympus OM-1s for a friend. So now I need to do it all over again. Taking images is never a chore, no matter how it turns out. I also need to find my changing bag, I know it’s around here somewhere. Haha.

E. von Hoegh · Nov 13, 2022

Larryc001 said:
Friday the 13th came on Sunday for me today. Here’s what I did. I was trying to finish a roll of b&w in an Olympus OM-1 today. i thought (?) it was a 36 so when it stopped advancing at 30 I stupidly tried to force it. Then I turned the camera to R and started to rewind it. Rewinding felt funny, when it wouldn’t rewind I (2nd stupid) thought it was rewound and opened the back. Oh oh. You are right. When I tried to force the film to advance it tightened it too much and the rewind clutch wouldn’t release. So now I have a test roll. Stupid rookie mistake. Fortunately it doesn’t appear that I damaged the lovely little camera. I will take my punishment. Lol. I guess I am so used to the F4’s I use all the time I have forgotten how to rewind film manually.

How old are you? I've been using cameras for just about 50 years, there are still moments...

Larryc001 · Nov 13, 2022

That’s a pretty personal question. Let’s just say I am certainly old enough to know better.

GRHazelton · Nov 13, 2022

Wasn't there a thread on photo mistakes we've made? I could contribute quite a few over my roughly 60 years in photography.

Mike Lopez · Nov 13, 2022

Don Heisz said:
If you were fast enough closing the back, the start of the film might not even be fogged. Film is pretty opaque when it's tight on the take-up side of the camera.

Yes, this is a great point. I experienced a "Christmas Miracle" in 2019. I had made several exposures on 120 film in late November, and several weeks later (near Christmas), I had forgotten that I still had 2 or 3 exposures remaining. I opened the film back, saw my mistake, and immediately closed it. The frames that had been exposed and wound onto the take-up spool were fine. (Of course the frame that was ready for exposure was toast, but I didn't lose anything from earlier in the roll). Your mileage may vary, of course.

Cholentpot · Nov 13, 2022

Sirius Glass said:
Faster than the speed of light??

The OP will not do that again.

I've done this more times than I can count. I usually lose about 6 frames and have some random leaks on random frames. The whole roll generally doesn't get ruined.

VinceInMT · Nov 13, 2022

Larry, thanks for sharing. We all make mistakes but not all of us are willing to admit it on a public forum. My most recent one, and one I wrote about here a few months ago, was letting a hose drip into my darkroom sink overnight when I had the drain valve closed. I had about 1/4" water on the floor the next day. I didn't lose anything but the time it took to sop it all up. At least the floor got a good cleaning.

Sirius Glass · Nov 13, 2022

Cholentpot said:
I've done this more times than I can count. I usually lose about 6 frames and have some random leaks on random frames. The whole roll generally doesn't get ruined.

Yes most but not all the film can be saved.

GRHazelton · Nov 13, 2022

When I was a young teenager, 13 or 14, I started developing my own film. On one occasion I began, having mixed up D-76 and fresh fixer. I had been relying on the smell of the fixer so I hadn't labeled the bottles. You can see where this is going! I had a cold.... and I couldn't smell the fixer. Only a minute or two, but that was enough. Of course the lost film must have had some wonderful images.....
And I have other mishaps I could add, as have most of us.

Patrick Robert James · Nov 13, 2022

I tend not to think of those things as mistakes anymore. I now think of it as retraining.

My biggest retraining day was the time I hiked a mile or so to get to a waterfall. Put the camera to my eye and realized the battery was dead. Hiked back to the car, got a new battery, hiked back to the waterfall only to realize I didn't have any film in the camera. Back to the car....

You would think that type of retraining would stick, but a few years later I was on Mt. Tamalpais making photos of some amazing oaks in the most gorgeous fog. I kept that up for over an hour until I started to get that sinking feeling.. Yep. No film... That was traumatic. Missed some perfect photos. I haven't done it in the roughly 15 years since though so I think that time the retraining stuck.

munz6869 · Nov 13, 2022

With all the rain we've been getting (in SE Australia) lately, waterfalls are spectacular!! So, full of enthusiasm and energy, two weekends ago I lugged my 8x10" with three film holders up a 3.5km steep track (in the Grampians (Gariwerd) National Park to photograph three splendid waterfalls. Alas, photographs 5 & 6 are merely 'theoretical', because, despite labelling the holders as I always do, there was NO FILM IN THEM. You are never too old to do really daft things for which you only have yourself to blame. On a positive note, at least I didn't waste any film...

Marc!

Larryc001 · Nov 13, 2022

Thanks folks. Glad I’m not alone in forgetting things photographic.

GRHazelton · Nov 13, 2022

I was reveling in the smooooth film advance of my Pentax LX. But when I noticed that the exposure counter suggested 38 shots....I began to wonder. Checking the rewind crank......I hadn't loaded the camera! Again, many wonderful images lost, er, never made.

albada · Nov 13, 2022

I recently taped on my enlarger a list of things to check before exposing the paper. Things like "Focus. Make sure the paper is right-side up." Without that list, it's easy for me to forget a detail.

JerseyDoug · Nov 13, 2022

After 60+ years of using 35mm RF's I believe I may have one of the world's largest collections of photographs of the inside of a lens cap

Sirius Glass · Nov 13, 2022

GRHazelton said:
When I was a young teenager, 13 or 14, I started developing my own film. On one occasion I began, having mixed up D-76 and fresh fixer. I had been relying on the smell of the fixer so I hadn't labeled the bottles. You can see where this is going! I had a cold.... and I couldn't smell the fixer. Only a minute or two, but that was enough. Of course the lost film must have had some wonderful images.....
And I have other mishaps I could add, as have most of us.

I can assure you that every photograph on that roll was perfect.

Cholentpot · Nov 13, 2022

I just scanned a roll I shot this summer that I got in a batch of expired film. Welp, it had been used before. A few frames oddly smack in the middle. Like someone had loaded it, advanced to frame 18, taken two shots and then rewound it. So much for that.

gone · Nov 13, 2022

More than once I've tried to advance a 24 exp roll beyond that, thinking it was 36 exp roll. It doesn't work very well. Usually tears the sprocket holes, and I have to open the camera in the dark and fish things out.

If it makes the op feel any better, Ken McLeod says there are no problems or mistakes, there are only obstacles in the landscape that need to be negotiated. I like that, but believe he is mistaken.

Moose22 · Nov 13, 2022

Larryc001 said:
That’s a pretty personal question. Let’s just say I am certainly old enough to know better.

dude, I'm old enough to know better and young enough to occasionally do it anyway.

We all hit this moment. I was shooting the F6 with the auto-rewind for quite a while earlier this year. Got into a sort of workflow habit and was good. Switched cameras, shot out a roll, tra la la, cracked the back open.... dammit! No auto rewind on an F3!

I'm sure the greatest bit of art I ever created was on that roll of HP5, of course.

But that happens. You go on autopilot for the little things and don't realize until it's too late. Luckily it is rare, but it can occur when we get distracted and aren't working deliberately.

Made a rookie mistake today darn

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