When things go bad

[Morca007]

:bang:
Yesterday night I waited 4 hours to see Bill Clinton speak at my university, for the express purpose of taking photographs. Unfortunately a lack of foresight has lead to having precisely 0 usable frames of the President.

I set out with nothing more than my Bessa, Jupiter 8 (Far too short, even in the standing room crowd, maybe 35 feet away), and a single roll of Fomapan 400 at a speech outdoors with almost no light.

Mistake #1: Trying to expose at 800 while developing with Diafine. I forgot that foma gets no speed boost at all.
Mistake #2: Camera choice. I should have brought along my N80 for fill flash.
Mistake #3: Loading the reel wrong. It seems I hooked the bottom portion of the roll into the wrong groove, consequently I have 1/5 of each frame undeveloped.
Mistake #4: Crowd placement. For some odd reason I decided to go into the crowd, but couldn't get far enough up for any reasonable shots.
Mistake #5: Insufficient fixing. I only remembered after starting to develop that I was almost out of fixer.

At least next time I'm less likely to make the same mistakes, right?

These are as close to usable as I got.

 

[BigSteveG]

The SLR would've been a better choice for the this event if you have a zoom. Don't worry about it though, you learned a lot. That experience will show in future images.

 

[corazon]

Well at least you can see that it's him!
But daaaamn, that's a lot of limiting factors. I know the feeling. I had just gotten my Leica, probably not even a week before and I went to a Hawksley Workman show (Canadian music artist) It was a seated venue, but somehow got to the front where all the press photographers were shooting, and 'got' all these wicked shots of him playing these mini drums. Got back to my seat, took more shots, only to realize my sneaking suspicion about having wound the film improperly when loaded was in fact the case...and I opened the back to see the leader, just hanging out where I'd initially placed it some time before. I've since got a better handle on my loading technique, and know that if the rewind spool ain't spinning when you advance the frame, the film ain't rolling.


So, that truly is a bummer, but at least you GOT some shots! I'll have to have my memory serve me on that one.

Bill makes the rounds. See if you can catch him somewhere else.
Next time you two cross paths, you'll be ready.

 

[Denis M.]

... know that if the rewind spool ain't spinning when you advance the frame, the film ain't rolling.

I think this is one of those things called experience, as in, some things that you don't learn unless you screw it up! In my case I was left wondering why I was getting 40 shots per roll! I can still recall those pictures in the back of my head, yeah, I mean if I took them.


Yeah, morca007, making mistakes is part of the process. At least you got some shots. Imagine if you had to do this for an assignment. Personally when it comes to photography sometimes I feel like that everything I know about it is somehow derived from me screwing it up first. But hey, maybe that's just me.

 

[bmattock]

It's probably not you. I've heard he can't see himself in mirrors, either.

 

[Morca007]

I've since got a better handle on my loading technique, and know that if the rewind spool ain't spinning when you advance the frame, the film ain't rolling.

It was the spool in my developing tank that I screwed up actually. I learned my lesson on loading film into cameras properly awhile ago. 😛

All in all I'm still glad I went, the speech wasn't half bad.

 

[hans voralberg]

It's just a start of a very long list of screwing things up 😛 dont worry, be happy. I had made some of your mistake over 10 times, must be a slow learner