Memorable Misteaks...

[bmattock]

Memorable mistakes?

I recall one in particular - I wanted to take some photos of Independence Day fireworks. I did some reading on the subject and decided to use a rangefinder camera (no mirror shake, eh).

Got all set up - tripod, remote shutter release, some killer slide film (Velvia 50) and I was ready to rock and roll.

Saw some amazing fireworks and burned through maybe 4 rolls of 36-exposure Velvia.

Got the slides processed - they were all RED!

Turns out, I had been out taking landscapes earlier in the day with B&W film. Still had my dark red filter screwed on the lens. Rangefinders mean you don't notice it through the viewfinder; I thought the filter was a UV in the dark. Grrr!

Your turn...

 

[philipus]

I'm amazed nobody has replied yet. RFF is a very competent forum 🙂

I was in Japan, up in the mountains, and saw some amazing scenery. On several occasions we stopped the car so I could go out and photograph with my 1N (also using Velvia 50 incidentally). The scenery was quite breathtaking, snowy mountains with various types of trees that created a strong contrast against the snow, lit by the sun, with blue skies in every direction.

On the way back to Tokyo I realised that I had had no film in the camera...

 

[Timmyjoe]

In 1976, armed with my first real camera (Canon TX) and having my first experience with the Rocky Mountains, spent the day climbing a rather remote peak with a few buddies. Took 36 amazing pictures that day, all on the leader of a roll of Kodachrome (misloaded the camera). The roll came back completely black, except the first inch and a half, which had all 36 exposures on it, and was quite clear.

 

[giulio stucchi]

Here's my story from few years ago.

Friday afternoon.
I came back home from work pretty tired but keen on going out for some shooting in my Neighbourhood.
I picked up my Polaroid 600SE and left the flat.
The very moment the door shut I realize I had the car key and not the key of the flat in my hand.
I called the “Schlüsseldienst “ actually locksmith in English but I had to look for the English word ;-) and paid 70 Euro to be able to get into my flat again after an hour waiting while chatting with my Neighbours.
I dropped the idea of going out again and checked my e-bay account: the START 66 TLR I put up for sale sold for 60 Euro, at least I cover part of the cost for the job.
I ended up with no picture and one camera less but as you know camera comes and goes.

 

[p.giannakis]

I have taken a few shots with the lens cup on my Leica

 

[Trius]

As a vegetarian I eat neither steaks nor mis-steaks

 

[jojoman2]

I have a similar no film in the camera story... I was in Denver for a month--one day I got out for a few hours and felt like I was really on, I thought everything I was taking was going to be great. Sun went down--no film in the camera. I remember thinking the film advance felt a little too smooth. Funny thing is I remember most of those pictures that didn't actually record on film. I don't remember many of my other captures that I now have as negatives.

 

[mkvrnn]

I must have been 12 years old at the time, and I'd recently discovered the joys of contact printing, closely followed by developing a film.

My enthusiasm for my new-found hobby had clearly rubbed off on one of my school friends because he asked if I would help him develop the film he had shot on his mother's Agfa.
So the next day I took my developing tank, Ilford developer and Fixadon fixer around to his house, and we spent the morning sealing the gaps around the door of the cloakroom in order to provide perfect darkness for loading the film. We borrowed his grandfather's stopwatch and found some suitable cooking implements and measures for mixing the chemicals. The kitchen table was cleared and everything was neatly laid out in readiness. With everything precisely mixed we calculated the developing time and we were ready to go.

We removed the film from the camera and Graham then shut himself in the tiny cloakroom. I applied more tape around the door to make sure no light could possibly enter. I'd instructed him on how to remove the backing paper (it was a Kodak 127 roll film I think) and to feed the end of the film into the plastic spiral inside the developing tank, then to rotate the two ends of the spiral alternately to gradually feed the film inside. After struggling for a full 15 minutes he emerged into the daylight clutching the tank with the lid firmly screwed in place.

The rest was plain sailing. We carefully poured in the developer, inverted the tank twice followed by precisely 5 seconds of rotation with the splined stirrer, and repeated the procedure at 60 second intervals until the required 12 minutes had elapsed. After twice rinsing with clean cold water, with more agitation, we added the fixer. The instructions told us 10 minutes but we decided to play safe and allow 20 minutes, again with 5 seconds of rotation each minute.
By this stage of course the eager anticipation had really built up. After a few more rinses Graham gingerly unscrewed the lid and pulled out the spiral to find ..................................nothing at all. No film, not even a trace of it! I was baffled. It had worked perfectly when I had developed mine only a few days before, but this time it had gone terribly wrong. Graham quickly reach the conclusion that I was to blame because I had suggested the extra 10 minutes in the fixer, and that this had caused the film to dissolve completely.

The sense of disappointment was overwhelming, but at least the mystery was explained 30 minutes later when one of us went back into the cloakroom to retrieve the backing paper, and found the undeveloped film on the floor in the corner, now exposed and spoiled.

 

[Nokton48]

I once went to a photographic convention and present there was a famous Master Photographer. I asked if I could make a few portrait exposures with my Leica M-5. I was really excited about seeing the resulting images. When I developed the roll, I had run it twice through the camera, resulting in double exposures. The entire roll was ruined.

 

[grouchos_tash]

I seem to have done a lot of these things, I photographed my niece's first steps without a film in the camera.

I went on holiday when I was 23, grabbed some film from my bedroom draw and enjoyed my holiday. When I got the film back I couldn't understand what had gone wrong. On closer inspection found that the film had already been through a camera when I was 19!

Here's a sample...I hope I'm never that skinny again

ibiza 2007/bedroom 2003 by Gary Harding, on Flickr

 

[sniki]

Resuming Hasselblad in a hurry after months of TLR (Yashica and Rollei) shooting, I loaded film magazine wrong side up... I felt a complete asshole!

 

[micromontenegro]

I once used fixer before developer in a roll I really, really anticipated to be the bee's knees

 

[f16sunshine]

I gave my ex girlfriend a film camera and a couple books to learn basic concepts.
We lived together and I had a large fully kitted darkroom.
Total nightmare. Not everyone gets it.
She did much better with a 40D and a new address 😱

 

[jojoman2]

I bet that made for a really cool time-lapse. The contact sheet is probably pretty artistic!

I seem to have done a lot of these things, I photographed my niece's first steps without a film in the camera.

I went on holiday when I was 23, grabbed some film from my bedroom draw and enjoyed my holiday. When I got the film back I couldn't understand what had gone wrong. On closer inspection found that the film had already been through a camera when I was 19!

Here's a sample...I hope I'm never that skinny again

ibiza 2007/bedroom 2003 by Gary Harding, on Flickr

 

[Lauffray]

I have a lot of wrong ISO on the meter kind of mistakes, but the most memorable one was definitely underdevelopping the 30 rolls I shot on vacation in Europe once, ouch

 

[rjbuzzclick]

Forgetting to flip the dark slide after exposing a paper negative. Luckily, I like the double exposure better than the two individual ones! 🙂

 

[bmattock]

That is a very nice photograph!

 

[rjbuzzclick]

That is a very nice photograph!

Thanks! I wish I'd actually thought it up on purpose! 😀

 

[JP Owens]

I had been covering a hurricane many years ago (back in the film days), had gotten no sleep for a couple of days, headed back in to the newspaper after the storm had moved on, only to have the editor tell me he wanted to do eight pages of photo coverage and that I would have to process and print all night to make it happen. I put on a huge pot of coffee in the darkroom, and set to processing 50 or 60 rolls of Tri-X. A couple of hours pass, I've had about six cups of coffee to keep going, but I'm making amazing progress...until I open up an eight reel tank and see that what I thought would be my best stuff (I had saved it until last) was not only undeveloped, but kind of shriveled looking and had a brown tint.

Somehow in my sleep-deprived state, I managed to dump a large cup of coffee into the tank instead of developer. Fortunately, I had enough coverage to fill the section...and I never let on about the "ones that got away." And never took coffee into a darkroom again.

 

[Mackinaw]

Back in 1970, a buddy of mine took an out-west trip with his brand-new Pentax Spotmatic 35mm SLR taking numerous rolls of 36 exposure, 35mm Kodachrome slides along the way. When he gets back home, and looks at his just-processed slides, he notices they’re all black. Not one picture on any of the rolls. He never bother to read the user manual and wasn’t aware that you had to thread the film onto the take-up spool before the film would advance through the camera. To this day we still chuckle about that.

Jim B.