Miserable fail... I need to practice more

[DREW WILEY]

After awhile everything needs to become second-nature, spontaneous. There's nothing quite like hacking your way up some sixty degree ice
wall with a huge pack, being miserably out of breath, and right at the top spotting something spectacular to photograph. Seems I've done that successfully quite a few times, and come back with shots taken in horrific conditions. I've even taking perfect crisp 8x10 shots in wind so severe that I had to use my own body as ballast, lying on the ice, to keep the whole damn rig from blowing away, including a huge maple tripod. But t's when, by all reasonable standards, the shot should be a no brainer that I tend to screw up. Or maybe those are just "senior moments". If so, I've been absent-minded most of my life. Or maybe, as they say, when your number is up, your number is up; like when I free-climbed twenty-two running waterfalls in a single day when I was sixteen, then broke my arm and end up with a bunch of
stitches to due to tripping over someone in a basketball game that evening!

 

[Alan Gales]

You need to look at it with the right perspective.

There is a saying that a bad day fishing is better then a good day at work.

Just substitute large format photography for fishing!

 

[megzdad81]

Oh, crap--and all this time I thought we were SUPPOSED to do that ...

 

[Luis-F-S]

Out of the 4 shots, I screwed up 2 of them. ..

So you screwed up two sheets n you feel a need to tell the world? Guess none of us have ever done that!

 

[Vaughn]

Wait 'til you pull the darkslide on the wrong side of the holder ...

Or try to put the correct darkslide back in-between the holder and the back of the camera...

(and one is left with the worry of fogging the exposed film!)

 

[Roger Cole]

So far you are doing better than normal. You should have screwed up at least three of the four negatives. Large format allows one to screw up in clever and outlandish ways. Well come to Large Format Photography!

Ain't that the truth. I was on a roll for a while in getting my filter holder (for square filters) accidentally positioned where it blocked the shutter on my Angulon. I'd trip the shutter but the little cocking lever couldn't move back because it caught on the filter holder and the shutter would stay open until I wondered about the sound and moved the holder. Now ONCE, this would be a fluke. But I must have lost ten sheets to this over several months.

 

[Roger Cole]

Ned, consider, then, how much it hurts to be standing there with it in your hand watching the (paper) negative turning purple in the sunshine ....

Paper is cheap. Do it with a fresh sheet of TMY-2 or even worse, Portra or Velvia!

 

[Kyle M.]

I just started shooting large format about a week and a half ago. I actually made a checklist to carry along to make sure everything went smooth. Yesterday I went out after work to shoot as the lighting was perfect and on the second shot I found out I had a problem. It turns out when I loaded that side of that particular holder I got the sheet of film between the rails that hold it and the darkslide. So I pulled the slide, made the exposure, went to put the slide in and no go, pulled the holder and there was my sheet of HP5+ in the bellows. Unfortunately that's not something my checklist could have prevented, but as soon as I got home I double checked every one of my holders to make sure they were loaded right.

 

[wiltw]

It all takes practice and making it all a certain routine to follow. I learned that when I was twelve, my dad asked if I loaded our point-and-shoot, and I commented that I had. Then, after hours of wandering about a vacation spot and taking shots, I discovered an EMPTY camera. Even the simplest of cameras will cause you to fail when you do not have sufficient time with the beast to make its handling routine enough to do everything with little conscious effort! Magnify that with a camera like LF and the failure opportunities multiply.

 

[pdeeh]

Paper is cheap. Do it with a fresh sheet of TMY-2 or even worse, Portra or Velvia!

It's only cheap if the photographs you were trying to take didn't matter.

 

[esearing]

sounds like we should all do a little practicing at home with an empty holder on a regular basis to develop good habits. Just don't make the empty holder usage a habit. I personally find it difficult to concentrate in areas where other people are coming/going which is when I make the most mistakes in the field.