what was the biggest MISTAKE you made, and was it really a mistake ?

[ColColt]

Sort of humbles you don't it?

 

[Old-N-Feeble]

I dont' maek miskates.

 

[gzinsel]

not learning pig latin?

 

[mamiyarzlover]

Not a mistake I made, but the one mistake that still lingers, in Air Force Photo School in 1970 one of the guys somehow managed to load the paper backing from a roll of 120 onto a stainless steel reel and develop the paper, which by the time he finished was just a mess at the bottom of the tank. We checked and found the film in the trash in the room where we loaded film. Luckily it was just a training assignment not mission critical.

Wow seriously made lol due to fact that I just developed my second roll of film tonight and the thought crossed my mind while I was loading it in the tank to double check that I had the film in my hand and not the backing

 

[RalphLambrecht]

we've all made mistakes, whether we just learned how to load a film reel 6.4 minutes ago,or if we are seasoned pros with 50 years of experience. sometimes
we do something wrong, very very wrong .. and the results weren't as bad as they could have been. maybe when we saw we did the bad-thing we tempered it
with a very good thing, maybe with unconditional film + chemistry love, maybe somehow we were smiled upon by the fate sisters or st jude ( i think he is the patron saint of lost causes ? ) and nothing terrible happened.
we wiped the sweat from our brows and somehow incorporated that bad into something good the next time

what was the last dreadful mistake you made, and was it all that dreadful? do you do something similar, maybe tempered down now in your bag of tricks
and if you did temper it down what did you do so if we make the same mistake we can learn from you ?

i know this is in the film/chemistry/b/w area, but this can be for anything: gear related, b/w or color related too

Yes, it really was a big dumb mistake and I'm too embarrassed to tell

 

[BMbikerider]

Mine was yesterday.

I developed a 24 exp cassette of Fuji Superia C41. For the bleach then fix stages, I had previously poured the amount of each into a measure and placed them in the Jobo processor, but transposed where they should have been. I poured the fix first into the tank then realised after 5 seconds what I had done. I poured the fixer straight out and washed the film with repeated changes of water. Then as I had nothing to loose replaced the last water rinse with bleach and continued as normal. Much to my surprise the film came out almost as normal with only the first half dozen negatives showing a slight hint of a green bias when scanned, the others were quite normal . They will all print onto paper perfectly normally with adequate filtration changes.

 

[PhxMedFormatPhotog]

Where to start, oh my. There were the first two rolls of 120 I put through my newly acquired Pentax 645 that were loaded backwards, so the backing paper was blocking the film. That was bad.

Or the first two rolls I put through my newly acquired Mamiya RB67, and didn't notice the mirror was set to lock up, so the only thing that was happening when I tripped the shutter was the mirror slapping up; no exposure was being made. That was bad. A lot of fine shots with amazing skies were lost to the wind that day, I can tell you.

Another great day was when I was developing a roll of 35mm, pouring in the developer, and glanced away to get my finger on the timer switch, looked back and saw that the developer was overflowing the tank because it apparently airlocked...and of course, not enough developer got into the tank. That was bad.