When was the last time you screwed up ...

removed account4 · Jan 4, 2017

there are countless threads on photography websites about beauty shots, the once in a lifetime
sunny 16 and the moon photographs, the everything worked great and look what i did negatives
and worked in the darkroom for 19 hours used up 40 sheets of film, but LOOK at THIS ! kind of stuff.

What was the last things you totally screwed up? maybe your shutter speed was off, your camera needed a cla
your aperture blades were oily and sticky, you rated your film wrong, you put the wrong film in your camera
you processed your film wrong ... or whatever.

not looking for how you saved the day, but what went wrong ...

Cholentpot · Jan 4, 2017

I loaded two tanks with a roll in each one. Put the reels back and developed them with Rodinal 1:50 partial stand.

I put the reel with film on TOP instead of on BOTTOM in BOTH tanks. Worse part, one of the rolls was from a kid that I got into film and he spent months on that roll...

Needless to say the film did not develop.

Live and learn for me, kid is disappointing but still chugging away at film. Last I heard from him he fogged half a roll by popping the door open. I give him a roll or two every few months.

fiddle · Jan 4, 2017

Every time I click the shutter....

Sirius Glass · Jan 4, 2017

Well once I thought that I had made a mistake but it turned out that I was right the whole time.

Really, if one does not make mistakes, they are not learning.

HiHoSilver · Jan 4, 2017

Tried to extrapolate what a semi dilution should be for Acros - and went the wrong direction from its closest ISO rating. 'Badly underdeveloped. Sigh.

Theo Sulphate · Jan 4, 2017

The last time I screwed up? Well ... what time is it?

Forgetting to focus... forgetting to change the aperture... not having the shutter cocked for that 'decisive moment'... the list goes on.

MattKing · Jan 4, 2017

Ill ask my wife ......

fdonadio · Jan 4, 2017

Loaded a back with Ektar 100, another one with T-Max 400 and labeled them wrong. Now I have to push-process the Ektar and pull-process the T-Max... Lucky I didn't use a yellow or orange filter when shooting the mislabeled Ektar!

Cheers,
Flavio

nbagno · Jan 4, 2017

My last 5 screw-ups are with ready/quickloads.. For some reason I leave the lens open and slide out the dark slide. I don't have that problem with film holders.

Patrick Robert James · Jan 5, 2017

Hmmmm... This all sounds vaguely familiar....

My last f-up was developing a roll of film with aged Pyrocat. I knew it was close to bad but I was too lazy to mix more. The film is from a Holga that I do long exposures with, so I can only make two images each trip to the place I make them. Three trips and several hours of my time wasted by splotchy negs...

Leigh B · Jan 5, 2017

A couple of decades ago.

I thought I'd made a mistake, but I was wrong.

Nobody bats 1000.

- Leigh

etn · Jan 5, 2017

"Little" screw ups of little importance happen, well, pretty much every time I am in the darkroom. After a few hours my concentration wanes and I start making mistakes such as forgetting to set the correct aperture on the enlarging lens before exposing the paper, or forgetting the red filter... no big deal, it only costs a sheet of paper. At work I would take a coffee break at this point, but in the darkroom I just pack everything up and call it a day. It's probably already late evening at this point anyway.

More severe screw-ups include: forgetting to wind the film after loading a Hasselblad magazine. I do this a couple times a year. Once I mistakenly exposed a roll, thinking the magazine was empty. I'll probably jinx myself by saying that, but I have yet to jam my Hassy. Other examples abound.

I rarely screw up exposures, provided I give them the required amount of thinking. Sometimes I am just being lazy, thinking the film can take some over/underexposure. The error is more difficult to compensate when printing.

I also try to keep my gear well maintained, therefore sticky apertures or speeds being off rarely happen.

LAG · Jan 5, 2017

jnanian said:
... camera needed a cla

Contax 139 Q

Raphael · Jan 5, 2017

Hi John,

I wish you an happy new year !

I have seen a very funny (with a bit of bitterness) french "photo" book for you : it's "Manuel de la photo ratée" (Screwed-up Photography Manual) from Thomas Lélu
I was tempted to bought it, but I think then the price was a stole for such a "not-must-have" small book, I need to find it second hand !

best regards,

Raphael

Toyo · Jan 5, 2017

Haha - what time is it? I was setting up a shot with my camera on tripod when I noticed a large leaf in the background that was a definite bright spot and a distraction.
I took off my spectacles and tucked them into the top of my T shirt as I bent down to remove the leaf.
Went back to the camera and took the shot.
Then I couldn't find my spectacles.
I started to wander about looking for them and discovered that they had fallen onto the precise spot from which I had removed the errant leaf.
So the image contains a pair of spectacles instead of the distracting leaf.
Haha

pdeeh · Jan 5, 2017

Toyo - that is one of the most perfect stories.
I would have been so happy to have had that happen to me, Please please post the photo if you have a scan of it!

Anon Ymous · Jan 5, 2017

Accidentally shot at manual mode using flash, at a shutter speed higher than the flash sync speed. Got about 2/3 of the frame exposed. Not exactly a spectacular fail, but my latest nonetheless.

Toyo · Jan 5, 2017

pdeeh said:
Toyo - that is one of the most perfect stories.
I would have been so happy to have had that happen to me, Please please post the photo if you have a scan of it!

Yes, I will be happy to.
The film is still in the camera and that was the second exposure. Ten more to go. Fomapan 100 in my Mamiya C330.
It may be some days before I finish the film, but I will be back
T

locutus · Jan 5, 2017

I've been shooting some Imago direct positive paper recently and i feel i screwing up more then anything :-D gone through a box of 25 sheets with essentially 1 usable result.

Raphael · Jan 5, 2017

@Toyo : nice one !!!

My last big fail was on the processing stage.

With my stupid tendancy to experiment a lot of film/dev/process combinaison...
As I had a TMAX400 35mm roll from the last holidays, why don't give a try to this SpurSinn Velvet developer bottle I bought some... months ago (and still not opened) ???

After looking for the advised dev time in documentation, let's setup the Jobo !

And I got a perfectly blank (clear) roll of film after the final washing step !!! WTF ???

Re-reading more closely the .pdf doc... and found something like this : "concentrate shelf life around two years in unopened bottle... Should be discarded if concentrate shows color change "!!! And of course, go figure, the chemical showed a nice brown cast...

Army35mm · Jan 5, 2017

Pretty sure i killed the lightmeter in my Minolta with my vivitar 252 flash. Only recently I learned that this flash outputs like 250 volts, and pretty sure i fried something.

Army35mm · Jan 5, 2017

LAG said:
View attachment 170288

Contax 139 Q

That image actually looks very cool. Happy accident I say.

Agulliver · Jan 5, 2017

August last year...I'd got back into bulk rolling B&W film rather than buying ready made, due to increased usage....I had some rolls of Fomapan 100 in a labelled baggy...and some rolls of HP5+ in another labelled baggy...I took them to Cornwall on holiday where I shot several of each but didn't label them or put them quickly enough back in a laballed bag. WHen I got home, I was unsure which was which.

Also I put two rolls of HP5+ through a little Vivitar Cruise Cam, rather naff compact water proof motorized 35mm camera. I hadn't counted on the motor drive being strong enough to un-tape the bulk loaded films from the spools! No other motor drive camera that I've used does this.

Agulliver · Jan 5, 2017

Oh....more recent...Christmas day in fact...I was fooling around with my Lomo Konstruktor kit SLR with HP5+ again. Among the nice photos of the town I grew up in, I decided to take a few of the neighbour's Christmas lights at night using the B setting for the shutter. I guestimated 15 seconds but I guess at F1 it needed a lot more....the three frames are essentially blank.

Using a d****** camera at 3200 ISO F4 I was getting 0.5 second exposures...so I don't know how I was so far off. Redoing the calculatuon I should get 16 seconds at F8 and 400ISO...so less than a a stop out...but I've had issues using the d****** camera as a reference before. Methinks it misleadingly reports shutter speeds.

LAG · Jan 5, 2017

Army35mm said:
That image actually looks very cool. Happy accident I say.

I appreciate your words (I agree with the look, I little bit more predictable and perhaps there no would be no need to repair) but it was not what I expected. Thanks

When was the last time you screwed up ...

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