Lab ruined last frame

[ForestCap]

When I was at Uni the photography technician used to allow me to use the C41 developer for a £1 a roll (some massive Fuji thing). I hadn't got a clue what I was doing and never managed to mess it up like this.

It's not always bad skill but bad attitude ruins things.

 

[Dwig]

I used to get this from a dumpy lab in Toronto as well. West Camera, one to avoid. They have issues with exposing the first frame of your 120 roll as well. Usually my 35mm came with scores down the length of the film as well as fingerprints all over. Pretty bad lab and warrants me to pay the extra cash to go to Toronto Image Works.

This is a common problem with daylight load mini-lab film processors. With these the film is transferred, in a darkbox or darkroom, to a special cassette resembling an oversized 35mm reloadable cassette or a 70mm cassette. A leader card is taped to the end of the film and the card is set against the felt lip when the cassette is closed. This will fog 3-4mm of film when the cassette is brought into the light and loaded into the processor.

Done correctly, this will rarely damage an image, but a little lack of care can result in the card pulling a bit of the film out of the cassette, often fogging part of the first image. Also, when the film is removed from the paper the tape needs to be peeled off or trimmed off. Trimming it in the dark is hard to do accurately and a small error leaves the first image too close to the end where it will be taped to the leader card.