finishing up a roll... what do you do?

[Disaster_Area]

So you've gone out and shot 75% of a roll and either need to or are impatient to develop... what do you waste the last of the roll on? I always end up taking snaps of my cat or something... anyone got a more creative way to finish the last few frames?

 

[kshapero]

I let my cat shot the rest of the roll. Or I just rewind and develop. The former works better.

 

[david.elliott]

I go out for a short walk and finish up the roll with whatever catches my eye.

 

[Al Kaplan]

I usually just waste it. If "part" is more like half a roll I'll cut it off and shoot the rest later. I used to do that in a half-frame Olympus Pen W so I could often get 20 pix on the "leftovers".

 

[Keith]

Set the camera's lens at it's widest aperture and practice your scale focusing with the last few frames.

 

[capitalK]

If it's a roll of 36 I'll usually put my hand over the lens and shoot off a few blanks at the end. That way I can cut them off and fit the whole roll on a single Print-File sleeve, which holds 35.

 

[dazedgonebye]

This is so funny....

I'm trying to imagine, when I was shooting mostly digital, not being able to hit the button 36 times.
I'm not saying better or worse, but the mind set sure is different. Now I can load up a roll of 120 film on a 6x6 and not get it all shot on a single subject.

 

[pesphoto]

dont waste frames, shoot something...anything

 

[Al Kaplan]

I prefer individual glassines and cutting into strips of six frames. If there's that dreaded 37th frame I can usually find a frame someplace that can be discarded when I'm cutting the strips apart, or make a mix of five and six frame strips. My contact sheets have five strips. When you're in a hurry and the film is perhaps still a bit curly it's too difficult to get six strips neatly under the glass.

I keep reading that glassines aren't "archival" but I have been using them since the early sixties. They may have yellowed a bit but the negatives are still just fine.

 

[Austerby]

I like keeping films to one main subject at a time but when this happens I will often use these spare frames for lens experiments - eg close ups, narrow dof, same subject with different lenses etc. Also exposure experiments - eg using Sunny 16, or bracketing the same shot to really see the difference over and under exposure make, using a flash with a Leica etc. Lots of things really, often involving one of the cats, of course.

 

[Pickett Wilson]

I'm trying to remember a time that I didn't shoot an entire roll...usually several. A roll of film is usually gone before I've been out for an hour!

 

[chris00nj]

So you've gone out and shot 75% of a roll and either need to or are impatient to develop... what do you waste the last of the roll on? I always end up taking snaps of my cat or something... anyone got a more creative way to finish the last few frames?

I take photos of my cats as well! I wouldn't consider it wasting photos though. They can turn out very nice.

 

[jtzordon]

I haven't had that problem in a while for some reason. I think I just used to take photos of random stuff, trying to make interesting compositions.