What exciting ways have you found to screw up negatives?

Muggins

Muggins

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Inspired by an impressive foul-up (see below), I thought I'd start a pity party so we could all moan about how we'd managed to sod up otherwise great negatives.

The only thing I can think of - it's not the camera, because there's a frame where the scratches double back on themselves - is that I managed to drag the film over the zip in the changing bag as I loaded the spiral.

flic.kr

Shanks Pony

Great tones... but what the hell did I do to that fim? I reckon I dragged it over the inside of the changing bag zip...
flic.kr flic.kr
 
dourbalistar said:
Ironically, one way to screw up negatives is to fix them first! 😅
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That's a pretty good way to get nice, clear film. 😱

The funniest screw up in recent times was running a test roll of some old film through the Makina 67: it was so old that when I went to load it in the Rondinax 60 tank, it cracked right down the middle and split down its entire length as I attempted to roll it onto the reel. So much for whatever Pulitzer Prize winner I might have had on that roll...

G
 
When I was young and working on a deadline I learned you could develop TX at EI (I think it was) 320 in Dektol stock solution for a couple of minutes continuous agitation, and then drain and dump the fix in - no stop bath. It usually worked fine, but I swear a few times you’d see a puff of smoke and then you’d find you blew a hole in the emulsion down to the base.
 
Ask me, I know. So where do I start? Let's go with darkroom disasters.

Use ancient film. Says he who has 100+ rolls of old emulsions and several cans of long-expired Kodak B&W in his fridge. At least it's being temperature-controlled. And worth heaps on Ebay. Very tempted to...

Ignore time-temperature calculations. Ditto, use developer, stop bath or water, fixer all at different temperatures. The patina on your negatives will make all your images look like museum mosaics, this is guaranteed.

Rely on stand developing with highly diluted developers. I call this One Size Fits All formula, but the problem is usually the results end up being the wrong size with the contrast all over the place, usually down.

Use Dektol full strength on your Tri-X or HP5. Guaranteed ink black results. Bloody murder for scanning.

(I did similarly in the 1980s with Rodinal at max strength for Tri-X. Got six rolls of valuable negatives from Bali too grainy tand contrasty to be used for anything other than Zone VI filters.)

Use 20 year old Kodak Rapid Fixer. This one undid me recently. I bought the stuff in 2010 and kept it in a box in our garage until a few months ago. Fortunately, refining in fresh fixer saved the films. Never again.

Mix your own. Pay little or no attention to how you mix your chemistry.

Don't mark your bottles properly. Fixer before developer will give you pristine clear whites.

Enough for one post. Depressed already. I will rack my brain cells for the next lot. Or someone else may beat me to it. Things we have all done and either regret or laugh at in retrospect...

One more before I post. With older cameras, scratches on the negatives often as not clear up with a small adjustment and/or an isopropyl alcohol clean to the pressure plate. Or there may be a bit of emulsion stuck somewhere behind the plate.

A more common problem with old SLRs is the foam seals have deteriorated from age and these should be replaced. Kits are available cheaply on Ebay but the job is fiddly and tedious. I've done it a few times, never again.
 
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On a few occasions I would zone out during film processing and couldn’t remember exactly when did I pour the developer. That was before mobile phones with the timers when I just looked at my watch. A few times I had forgotten if I had fixed it but that was an easy fix. 🙂
 
Doug A said:
One of my specialities is photographing the inside of the lens cap.
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My idiot protection for this "speciality":
DSCN7835 lo.JPGDSCN7834 lo.JPG
"Deckel" is—you've probably guessed it—the German word for "cap."
And it works.
The last thing you see before you bring your eye all the way to the viewfinder window is a red spot. That's your last chance to think about what it was and what it's for. The "cap accident" hasn't happened to me again since.
An old saying goes: You can be stupid anyway, you just have to know how to help yourself. ;-)
 
Somehow I thought I could dry my first self developed black and white film with a paper towel. Let's just say there was "film on my dust" afterwards.
 
Another one: loading my Nikonos V, I did not wind it a full rotation before closing the back. Apparently when I closed it, the film leader came loose and the film just did not wind at all while I was shooting happily. I was sure I had some keepers on the roll. It came out completely blank instead. And what stings most: I made this mistake TWICE within a couple weeks.

I really am my greatest enemy when it comes to photography.
 
Not a new one, but an all-time favorite: replenishing a deep tank of X-Tol with HC-110 stock solution because I didn't look carefully at the nearly identical brown glass bottles. The next rolls through that tank were dense. Now label the glass bottles with different color masking tape. So far that's helped.
 
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