What went wrong?

[luxikon]

I developed the first film that my neigbours son shot with his inherited Canon AE-1. The result is dreadful. Can anybody tell me what could have happened?
T-Max 100, Rodinal 1+50, 20°C, 12 min, 60/60-3x. 1 min stop in water, 4 min fixing in new Kodak F-24. I know the combo is not ideal but I had nothing else but Rodinal.
He took only 29 pictures. The resting frames are totally blank without any exposure traces on the films edges.

 

[Thomas Wilson]

It looks like someone opened the camera before rewinding the film.

 

[colrehogan]

It almost looks like there's a light leak in the camera. My other thought is that perhaps this camera hadn't been used in a while and maybe the shutter is sticking or the lens aperture is sticking open.

Duh! I forgot about the open the back of the camera. Yes, that is probably a better explanation than what I had originally suggested.

 

[Doremus Scudder]

I second the camera-back-opened-to-soon theory. Probably it was opened before the film was rewound at all, since the damage is to the end frames. The film is light-struck out to the very edge and is in bands, consistent with the film being rolled-up.

Best

Doremus Scudder
www.DoremusScudder.com

 

[Jeff Kubach]

Same here, looks like the back opened to soon.

Jeff

 

[Prest_400]

Yep, the back has been opened. It happened me once.

 

[George Collier]

I don't know if this is another possibility, but if the last images were loaded into the reel first (as in directly out of the cassette), and were not wound onto the reel well separated from each other, uneven fixing, leaving yellowish (can't tell the color from the contact sheet) emulsion behind in the unexposed areas. These areas would block light during print exposure and could look like this on a contact sheet. Does the film look yellow in these areas, or exposed?
Another possibility is that the cassette was dropped, or compromised after removal from the camera, fogging the last few frames.
I've never opened the back with film in the camera, but it would seem that if you did that, toward the end of the film, there would be an area 3-4 frames long that would be solid black on the film (white on the contact) that would be the part of the film that was stretched between the cassett and the take up spool at that moment. I don't see that in the contact sheet.

 

[Jack Fisher]

I agree with the Back-opened answers above. But I think the back was opened and then closed again. I see one reasonable exposure at the end of the roll, which would indicate the operator closed the back, wound the film on, and achieved one more exposure before reaching the end of the film and then rewinding.