Stupid mistakes in the darkroom

JRieke · Feb 10, 2012

Just added another one to the list. Yesterday I was developing x-ray film so I had the safe lights on. When I had two blank sheets come out of the developer I realized I'd grabbed a film holder with regular film in it instead of the one with x-ray film. Oops.

Right after I switched to developing regular sheet film so the lights were off. Only one problem, I forgot to unplug the aquarium heater I use to maintain my water jacket temp. It kicked on and the orang glow from the heater coil put a nice streak through two negatives.

clayne · Feb 10, 2012

Sounds cliche but the typical did indeed happen to me once: the one and only time I spooled film without a changing back (but in darkness) my cellphone receives a text message and I end up trying desperately to shield said roll of p3200tmz from the metronomic led of the phone. Exposures were still there but fog was prevalent.

albada · Feb 10, 2012

mark said:
I learned a lot that day about my darkroom work flow.

And blood flow.
That sounds like a really bad mistake, one of those things you only do once, like stepping onto the ice at the ice rink with your blade-guards still on. Ouch!

Mark Overton

Newt_on_Swings · Feb 10, 2012

clayne said:
Yep. It always ceases to amaze me when people don't do such an easy process to indicate "shot" vs non-shot. That being said, some people do have a need for recycling commercial carts. But if that isn't the issue by all means rewind it all the way.

Yeap, I have never had it happen to me. I always rewind fully.

A tip for people who like to leave the leader out, just put a big crease into by bending it backwards and stick into film canister. You will always know it has been shot if you see a big ol crease across the film and leader bent backwards. The crease also makes it harder to load too.

MattKing · Feb 10, 2012

Newt_on_Swings said:
Yeap, I have never had it happen to me. I always rewind fully.

A tip for people who like to leave the leader out, just put a big crease into by bending it backwards and stick into film canister. You will always know it has been shot if you see a big ol crease across the film and leader bent backwards. The crease also makes it harder to load too.

Cutting the "tongue" off the film works too.

ezwriter · Feb 11, 2012

Only had the darkroom about a month now and made some great goofs!
1- Made some nice shelves for the chem bottles above the toilet. 1/2 jugs fit fine. Now using 1gal jugs and shelves are 1/2" too short!
2- Installed a nice brass double hook on said shelf to hang towel,rods,tongs, etc.
Later put enlarger on sink and it hits the new hook! Remove enlarger, unscrew hook...

3- Screwing in other hooks in side shelf, drilled right thru a dev jug! argghh mess!

4-Cut all the first 35mm negs 6 long strips. Neg sheets hold 5 neg strips!
and BTW, why do the sheets hold 35 and roll is 36 and 120 sheets hold 9 and i get 10 exposures? i may sue!
5-Developed TMax with Ilford times.
6- cut neg in half in dim lite.

7- Making contact prints, coming out bad. then realized the glass over the negs was really dirty.
8-Cut nice enlarger plywood board to go over sink. installed it. Forgot about the faucet. back to garage...

9-Moving enlarger back to closet, forgot to lower it and banged it on the door.

10- First 120 roll, loaded the paper on the reel, didnt feel right, picked film off floor and loaded it.
11- Mixed one chem in oz instead of ml.
12- water bath going, didnt know rag fell into bathtub drain, water poured all over my legs,floor...
13- Print not in clip right, fell back into developer.
14- poured fixer back in jug, overflowed. Didnt realize waterbath was flowing into the fixer tray.
i'm sure they're be more! ez

fotch · Feb 11, 2012

Hey ezwriter, you're making this stuff up, right?

Pat Erson · Feb 11, 2012

Films came out brown after the fixing stage. I checked the jug of fixer... only to realize I had used the jug of exhausted fixer I had previously used for contact-sheets a few days before. And of course it was diluted 1+9 not 1+4...

ezwriter · Feb 17, 2012

i wish i was!

ezwriter · Feb 17, 2012

reel mistakes

Latest mistake: Doing the agitation with big mouth Patterson tank- which stinks BTW-, the lids not on tight and spill devel all over the place. Later, same tank
the room lights on of course and the whole lightight top falls out into the tub. I really lke the smaller Patterson tank WAY better. Plus it uses less chems.
For some reason the film didnt get fogged tho. weird.

jon koss · Feb 29, 2012

Not exactly a stupid mistake but not really worth a new thread either...

I have been entertaining an idea for a series of portraits of our dear old pooch on a Graflex 4x5. After finally shooting the first six sheets, I put the holders in the closet to keep them out of harm's way. Tonight I went up to the closet and rummaged around and found the holders and dropped the film in the developer. Upon pulling the first sheet out of the fix I was totally bummed to find a blank image. Nothing at all. Naturally I figured I had blundered when mixing the developer so I pulled the other sheets to confirm my mistake. Three more blank sheets. But to my astonishment, frames five and six had images on them - but not of the dog! They were shots of an older fellow standing beside his bike in front of a Mercedes. Nobody I know, that's for sure. As best I can figure, I had some used holders kicking about in the closet and they had somebody else's film in them. Lost some time I guess, but otherwise no harm.

fotch · Mar 1, 2012

At least, hopefully, you still have your film to develop.

Newt_on_Swings · Mar 1, 2012

Oooff. I cringed on many of these while going down your list. I feel for you buddy. Well now since you have managed to cover all your bases, you'll be perfectly fine going forward! Education by experience! nothing teaches you better, unless that experience kills you! hehe. And as always you can always ask for help here, apugers are glad to lend a helping hand.

ezwriter said:
Only had the darkroom about a month now and made some great goofs!
1- Made some nice shelves for the chem bottles above the toilet. 1/2 jugs fit fine. Now using 1gal jugs and shelves are 1/2" too short!
2- Installed a nice brass double hook on said shelf to hang towel,rods,tongs, etc.
Later put enlarger on sink and it hits the new hook! Remove enlarger, unscrew hook...

3- Screwing in other hooks in side shelf, drilled right thru a dev jug! argghh mess!

4-Cut all the first 35mm negs 6 long strips. Neg sheets hold 5 neg strips!
and BTW, why do the sheets hold 35 and roll is 36 and 120 sheets hold 9 and i get 10 exposures? i may sue!
5-Developed TMax with Ilford times.
6- cut neg in half in dim lite.

7- Making contact prints, coming out bad. then realized the glass over the negs was really dirty.
8-Cut nice enlarger plywood board to go over sink. installed it. Forgot about the faucet. back to garage...

9-Moving enlarger back to closet, forgot to lower it and banged it on the door.

10- First 120 roll, loaded the paper on the reel, didnt feel right, picked film off floor and loaded it.
11- Mixed one chem in oz instead of ml.
12- water bath going, didnt know rag fell into bathtub drain, water poured all over my legs,floor...
13- Print not in clip right, fell back into developer.
14- poured fixer back in jug, overflowed. Didnt realize waterbath was flowing into the fixer tray.
i'm sure they're be more! ez

steven_e007 · Mar 1, 2012

I wanted to cut some sheet film up from a long aerographic roll.

I checked the darkroom was fully lightproof with some film test strips (it wasn't - much black tape later...)

Then settled down to slice up the film in total darkness, having remembered to leave my mobile phone outside (aha, you won't catch me with that one!)

The temperature dropped. The thermostat cut in. The fan heater came on. It's element glows surprisingly bright red, in the dark...

Vlad Soare · Mar 1, 2012

What? A glowing heater in the darkroom? Ouch!
And it's allowed to switch on by itself? Double ouch!

movin · Mar 1, 2012

Once after a long developing session I did contact sheets for quite a few rolls of film. It was really late at night when I had only one left. I exposed the paper, walked up to the processor with the paper in one and the neg sleeve in the other hand ... and instead of the paper put the neg sleeve into the processor. I remember that I was cursing because the "paper" seemed exceptionally sloppy and difficult to feed into the processor this time. Imagine the horror when I switched on the light and realized my error.

Fortunately the negs survived and I gave them a thorough wash.

Steve Roberts · Mar 1, 2012

Sooner or later in every darkroom session, the print tongs slip off the side of the tray and end up dunked in the liquid. It's always either the developer or fixer, never the water!!

Steve

Helinophoto · Mar 1, 2012

Make sure you have your iPhones OFF when you are struggling to get the film onto the reel
I use mine as a timer and it is always with me, not always flight-mode

madgardener · Mar 1, 2012

I was developing a roll for a class assignment, grabbed the "developer" happily went through the processing, and when dumping out the chemical, the water was purple (Hp 5+), turns out I used the Hypowash instead of developer.

steven_e007 · Mar 1, 2012

Vlad Soare said:
What? A glowing heater in the darkroom? Ouch!
And it's allowed to switch on by itself? Double ouch!

Well, funny thing is.... I never noticed that the heating element glowed red before. Not with the red safe-lights on

kerne · Mar 1, 2012

Been processing quite a number of color contact sheets in roller drums lately. Mostly 8x10 but a handful of 11x14 as well. Unfortunately my 11x14 drum needs new rubber bands and not once or twice, but _three times_ being in a hurry I threw it up on the roller unit, turned around and was splashed with developer as it slid sideways and fell to the floor.

Toffle · Mar 1, 2012

Helinophoto said:
Make sure you have your iPhones OFF when you are struggling to get the film onto the reel
I use mine as a timer and it is always with me, not always flight-mode

I use the Massive Dev Chart app on my phone, which has a handy "dim-green" mode. It is perfect for timing tray development of sheet film. (I keep the phone on a work table a few steps away from my trays, so there is virtually no light bleed to my film) ...until my daughter texts me to say hi, (love that girl.) at which point the screen glows its normal bright daylight colours and I have to dash to cover the it before I destroy a sheet of film.

zsas · Mar 1, 2012

End of printing session
1) Put funnel on empty 1L bottle to fill stop into
2) Pour 1L stop from tray into funnel which drains into bottle
3) *distract oneself*
4) Pour 1L left over dev from tray into funnel
5) Watch in amazement the funnel overfill with a nice dev/stop mix
6) Smile, clean up....he

marko.oja · Nov 21, 2012

Reminded myself again why you should never develop film when you're tired.

Working solution for Rollei RHS-DC works out to 20ml RHS + 300ml water per 35mm film. Doubled that for two films, 600ml water, and, you guessed it, 20ml RHS. Talk about thin negs...

madgardener · Nov 21, 2012

Finished developing a 36 exp roll of film, hang it up in the bathroom and forgot to close the door. Entered the bathroom about 90 minutes later to see one of my cats having a great time shredding the negatives. She thought it was a great toy!

Stupid mistakes in the darkroom

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