When was the last time you screwed up ...

[Wayne]

used too much washing soda and bleached a cyanotype almost completely to oblivion

Just call it an abstract. ;-)

 

[aoresteen]

Friday night I was processing four 120 rolls of HP5 in a 64oz tank and when it was time to put in the Hypo Clear I grabbed the Photo-Flo instead. The foam bubbles alerted me to my stupidity and I ended up dumping the contaminated Photo-Flo down the drain. Since I mix chemistry in 1 gal size I still had plenty of Photo-Flo 200 left. It could have been a lot worse !

 

[mcfitz]

An hour ago, when I loaded a film onto a reel, using a dark bag, and realised once the film was nicely loaded, I didn't have a tank in the bag.

Folded the dark bag around the reel, wriggled my hands out from the cuffs, fetched an empty, heavy black plastic bag, hands back into changing bag, reel into light tight black bag, opened changing bag and put the tank in so I could load the reel into it, at last.

I hope it worked and there was no light leak...

 

[TheGreatGasMaskMan]

recently forgot to bring a light tight top into a loading closet recently. But I managed to save my film by putting it in the tank, putting the tank upside down, and running back to the darkroom to get the top.

 

[Rick A]

Last time I was on the bottom.

 

[nsurit]

Right before the last time I learned something. Seems like screwing something up is one of my most important gaining knowledge processes. Unfortunately, it sometimes repeats itself.

 

[Peter308]

Well last week I developed a 120 roll of Tri X in my usual DDX, except it was Ektar! I did wonder why there was so much yellow dye in the developer when I dumped it but kinda ignored it as my normal film is Delta 400 so thought perhaps this is the colour of Tri X 120. Anyway I completed the processing and got very dense negatives. Maybe they will print but lesson learnt - don’t just glance at the foil packaging but check the roll properly before you process it.

 

[rubbernglue]

Last week I worked on a couple of prints in my home (bathroom) -darkroom and I seem to have a bad light source or something as I tend to get extremely long timings for fairly simple prints.. So, I had my machine working on a print for I think it was 30-40 minutes, and as I was watching tv in the next door room I heard my timer alarm me that it was time to shut the machine off - a little bit shocked I ran away to the bathroom and getting in there in the dark the first thing I did was to turn on the light... DOH!

 

[blockend]

I repeatedly try to get one extra film out of a Tetenal C41 kit. This has bit me on a number of occasions.

 

[Ces1um]

The first time I ever developed my own film I forgot to dilute the developer. Turned out to be some of the nicest photos I ever printed.

 

[RetroFuture]

Can I go for two? I somehow put my bottles of E6 developer back in the wrong order in my Jobo. You can guess what happened next: two rolls of slide film from a trip to Italy go into the tank and I start with the color/reversal developer followed by the first black and white developer. In case you're wondering this yields nice dark slides with nothing on them whatsoever.

My mistake before that was even more exciting: I was wondering why my two part jobo tank (the combination of 1510/1540 tanks that snap together) didn't seem to go together as solidly as I remembered after I took them apart to clean them. Seemed fine though-- pressed down pretty hard and they stayed together when I picked them up. I put the film in, poured in the xTol and watched as it got to where the two tanks meet and proceeded to flow out the sides in a fountain-like circle onto the table and all over the floor and shelves below where I happened to have several cameras sitting. A liter of xTol all over the office floor and your newly acquired Pentax 6x7 takes a while to clean up. Despite both of those events strangely I still love film photography.

 

[Deleted member 88956]

Anyone has tried fixing a negative before developing? If you need advice on how to proceed PM me

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

PM sent

 

[lensworker]

My biggest photographic FUBAR was years ago.

When I was up in Maine photographing fishing villages, I was carrying my Nikon F100 with my 300mm f/4 on it, both of which were mounted on my tripod. I was on a pier where lobster boats would tie up after coming back in for the day. I tripped on a loose plank and went down; the tripod, camera & lens went flying.

The F100 was fine, but the 300mm f/4 broke in half.

 

[NedL]

Maybe a month or 6 weeks ago, I was going through some stuff here... can't remember now if it was in a box or a drawer or where it was... and I came across one of those eyedroppers that fits on a little brown bottle. It was sealed in a plastic bag or bubble wrap, and I thought to myself "hmmm.. that must have been leftover from a B&S order from something that I didn't need it for..."

This morning, I thought I'd try adding a drop of tween to my cyanotype sensitizer. There's the unused little brown bottle of tween right where it should be... with no eyedropper... looked all over and couldn't find it anywhere.

Ended up dipping a straw into the bottle and got 2 drops instead of 1... it foamed and made bubbles when I brushed it onto the paper, but it WAS pretty amazing how it left no "puddles" or wet areas on the surface of the paper...and the bubbles were easily brushed off after it sat for a few seconds.

 

[Tom Kershaw]

Just today I managed to photograph some great scenes with Pan F Plus. However the negs show the lens hood from the 43mm lens in the corners; I had forgotten to lock it in the correct positions. At least the location was fairly local to me.

 

[rubbernglue]

Last week I was struggeling with building a specific temporary pinhole camera, simply a large metal pot along with a sheet of aluminium foil ontop and a ilford paper inside - however I never made this specific camera to work, I have made several earlier with a similar construction - but all I had out of this large pot was deep black papers and I tried to find somewhere any light might come in besides the small pinhole and I just cannot understand why this didn't work.
Acoording to a calculation on ~200mm focal length and a 0,5mm pinhole on approx. iso 6 ilford paper I should have just below 2 minutes of exposure, but the paper turned black even after trying far lower than that.
Never did get the hang of it. I masked all possible places where there was a chanse of leaking light but nothing has made a difference.
And it was not like I loaded it with paper and ran about for a while before I used it - no, I put it together in my bathroom and made a fast shot on the balcony a few meters away and back again to develop. I just dont get it.

 

[jim10219]

Yesterday I learned that you have to mix the proper dilution of size with casein prints. Too thick, and the casein flakes off. Too thin, and the casein stains the paper. You have to reapply the size between layers and adjust the ratio as you go through multiple layers. The right amount depends on the pigment you use and the number of layers you've already applied, plus the type of paper.

Before that I learned you can develop casein prints in water, and if that doesn't clear them out, add some sodium carbonate to the water. But don't try to develop them in the sodium carbonate water first, as that will lift the casein.

And before that I learned that amonia goes bad quickly once you open the bottle. And if you mix casein with old amonia, expect it to not last long. And if the dichromate makes the casein the least bit chunky, don't try to mix it to smooth it out. Just throw it away.

 

[mcfitz]

Last week I was struggeling with building a specific temporary pinhole camera, simply a large metal pot along with a sheet of aluminium foil ontop and a ilford paper inside - however I never made this specific camera to work, I have made several earlier with a similar construction - but all I had out of this large pot was deep black papers and I tried to find somewhere any light might come in besides the small pinhole and I just cannot understand why this didn't work.
Acoording to a calculation on ~200mm focal length and a 0,5mm pinhole on approx. iso 6 ilford paper I should have just below 2 minutes of exposure, but the paper turned black even after trying far lower than that.
Never did get the hang of it. I masked all possible places where there was a chanse of leaking light but nothing has made a difference.
And it was not like I loaded it with paper and ran about for a while before I used it - no, I put it together in my bathroom and made a fast shot on the balcony a few meters away and back again to develop. I just dont get it.

Is it possible the problem is the paper you are using, and not your pinhole set-up? If the paper has not been stored correctly or been accidently opened with the light on (maybe not by you but someone else) then the paper is going to be ruined. Have you tried developing a sheet straight from the box, with no exposure at all, or tried a sheet from a different box of paper?

Just some thoughts that went through my mind, I understand how frustrating pinhole trial and error is.

 

[Pentode]

The takeup spools in Nikon SLRs are designed a little differently than they are in Minoltas. As I use my Nikons less often, sometimes I forget that. Sometimes I forget that and the film ends up dropping off the takeup spool as I’m winding on a fresh roll. And, sometimes, I forget to check to see if the rewind knob is turning as I advance because I forget that this has been a problem for me in the past. And, because of all this, sometimes I develop a blank roll of film....

The most recent ‘sometimes’ was two Sundays ago.

 

[TheGreatGasMaskMan]

scratched 4x5 negatives a couple weeks ago. I'm sure it all happened in the dryer because I wasn't careful.

 

[Pentode]

scratched 4x5 negatives a couple weeks ago. I'm sure it all happened in the dryer because I wasn't careful.

This is why I always check my pants pockets for negatives before I put them in the dryer.

 

[TheGreatGasMaskMan]

This is why I always check my pants pockets for negatives before I put them in the dryer.

Uh... yea...

 

[rubbernglue]

Is it possible the problem is the paper you are using, and not your pinhole set-up? If the paper has not been stored correctly or been accidently opened with the light on (maybe not by you but someone else) then the paper is going to be ruined. Have you tried developing a sheet straight from the box, with no exposure at all, or tried a sheet from a different box of paper?

Just some thoughts that went through my mind, I understand how frustrating pinhole trial and error is.

The paper is in great condition and I use it for lots of stuff (random wierd pinhole cameras among others). I use this particular paper as a testing paper mostly since it is glossy and I have lots of it and can regularly confirm that the paper is in fact fine.

 

[TheGreatGasMaskMan]

Guess what I just did?
so I'm out with my new mamiya c220, and decide to take off my sweatshirt because it's warming up.in the process of doing this I manage to twang off my 55mm lens that's worth as much as the camera itself and it lands in a puddle. now I have to figure out how to clear some water residue out of the inside elements of the lens.