101 ways to ruin a roll of film

24. Not spotting the person you asked to hold your camera moved the shutter speed dial from 1/60 (flash synch speed) to 1/125 while you sorted out a dodgy flash synch lead and finding each frame from 24 rolls of 120 film were only half exposed :bang:
 
Well you lot have certainly given a noice who has recent added a flim camera to his photography - confidence in knowing my early mistakes are just a fact of life, cheers for the laughs also, feel lots better now.
 
25) shoot a few shots on 120 before realising the darkslide is still in :bonk:
 
27 - trying to shoot double exposures without having a clue how to properly do it

ended up with some pictures with 5-6 overlapping frames, and the following part of the roll just blank (thought I'd shot 36, the counter had already hit the 40 maximum!)
 
28) give the camera to someone to finish the roll, they shoot to the last frame then hand it to you after hearing it wind back into the canister, you open the back and find it hasnt...
 
29. Think your shooting in shutter priority but the aperture ring is actually set to F16 and not 'A'...
 
First roll I developed myself at Uni, went into a dark room (big cupboard) to put the roll onto the spool to put into the tank... dropped it on the floor. Light from under the door... whoops!

Photos weren't great, either :p
 
mothdust said:
First roll I developed myself at Uni, went into a dark room (big cupboard) to put the roll onto the spool to put into the tank... dropped it on the floor. Light from under the door... whoops!

Photos weren't great, either :p
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Moral of this story, always keep your towel with you ( (c) Douglas Adams) - bung it at the foot of the door and block out the light-leaks :)
 
31. Force your film onto the reel and get kinks over various frames. Interesting C-shaped patterns...
 
32) have a brain fart while using ND grads and meter for the sky you've just added 5 stops of ND to and horribly underexpose 4 frames of medium format velvia
 
33) Having a friend load a fully exposed and wound roll in to the camera instead of the new roll. You think you have 36 exposures to go. You dont even have the film on the reel ready to be destroyed. (how he didnt realise his mistake is beyond me.)

Funny thing is it took me until I developed it to realise this - I had quite a many undeveloped rolls and so lost count, fail DX
 
Gandhi said:
The Woes of Large format are many. And at £3 for a sheet of velvia and £2.50 p/sheet processing. Sometimes bloody expensive!
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No kidding...

We had a dodgy polaroid back cause a completely unexposed £20ish 5x4 polaroid sheet a while back...
 
A person (erm someone of the opposite sex that I know well cough) doesn't know the P&S is NOT auto rewind at the last shot, and opens the back to take the film out.
 
34) put the camera down on an uneven surface and have a pebble or whatever knock the film disengage, so no matter how much you wind on, the film never advances and end up with a completely blank film :(
 
Use a OM-10...the worst designed camera I've come across in many years, at first I lost some good shots (ruined the film) in using it (because of the bad design).
 
excalibur2 said:
Use a OM-10...the worst designed camera I've come across in many years, at first I lost some good shots (ruined the film) in using it (because of the bad design).
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Why so? I've never used any OM camera, but many people swear by the different layout with the shutter speed and aperture around the lens mount.
 
excalibur2 said:
Use a OM-10...the worst designed camera I've come across in many years, at first I lost some good shots (ruined the film) in using it (because of the bad design).
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I probably don't know much about camera's anyway, but the only camera I have is an OM-10 and I have yet to do anything stupid with it (read above, it was my friend who messed up). How come you don't like it?
 
freecom2 said:
Why so? I've never used any OM camera, but many people swear by the different layout with the shutter speed and aperture around the lens mount.
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!. The old flashgun I used/use for most my 13 other film cameras works perfectly...but on holiday used it on the OM10 and the shots were ruined as it couldn't communicate with the camera properly, lucky I had my trusty Canon for backup.
2. There is a slider under the asa dial that you move for "auto" or "B" or "manual adapter"..this slider although stiff can move toward "B" by changing asa setting or winding on, once this slider moves towards "B" just a small way the shutter speed slows.
3. stupid idea of a manual adapter attachment stuck on the front.
 
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Hmm, never had flashgun problems nore the dial moving accidentally. The adaptor to the front I will admit is not the greatest of idea's.
 
scotchegg said:
Hmm, never had flashgun problems nore the dial moving accidentally. The adaptor to the front I will admit is not the greatest of idea's.
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There is no way to set the flash sync speed manually (dunno if possible with manual adapter, I'm not going to spend any more money on this carp) so if you don't use an Olympus flashgun (probably expensive at the time), the camera will flash but continual to think it's a dark shot (without flash) and meter for example at 1 sec before the shutter closes....even a basic Nikon EM or Canon AV1 have a sync speed setting. Also the Olympus engineers/designers did/should know "If it can happen it will" for controls on a camera for non pros, and in fact the OM20 was a better redesigned camera, but still can't see a way of using any flashgun on my OM20, unless when selecting manual on dial all speeds from 1/60 down work for flash sync.....mine don't work so can't check.
 
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excalibur2 said:
There is no way to set the flash sync speed manually (dunno if possible with manual adapter, I'm not going to spend any more money on this carp) so if you don't use an Olympus flashgun (probably expensive at the time), the camera will flash but continual to think it's a dark shot (without flash) and meter for example at 1 sec before the shutter closes....even a basic Nikon EM or Canon AV1 have a sync speed setting. Also the Olympus engineers/designers did/should know "If it can happen it will" for controls on a camera for non pros, and in fact the OM20 was a better redesigned camera, but still can't see a way of using any flashgun on my OM20, unless when selecting manual on dial all speeds from 1/60 down work for flash sync.....mine don't work so can't check.
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Attach flash, slide OM10 to M, set your flahs settings on the flash and shoot, it's that simple. Want to shoot slower sync? well you'll need a manual adapter yes.

Want to shoot flash in Auto? you'll need a TTL flash.

I don't see how any of that is different from any other camera unless I've missed something major?
 
Alan Clogwyn said:
Attach flash, slide OM10 to M, set your flahs settings on the flash and shoot, it's that simple. Want to shoot slower sync? well you'll need a manual adapter yes.

Want to shoot flash in Auto? you'll need a TTL flash.

I don't see how any of that is different from any other camera unless I've missed something major?
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Huh! found it on the last page of the PDF manual...who'd think looking down on the top plate and using a non Olympus flashgun, that switching to "manual adaptor" would allow it to work esp if you don't have a manual adapter :wacky:
..and it also says "if an electronic flash is used while the optional Manual Adapter is attached, set the shutterspeed at 1 /30 sec. or slower. For details, read the instruction manual supplied with the Manual Adapter". WOW what's that about 1/30 sec sync speed is for dinosaur cameras. :LOL:
 
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excalibur2 said:
Huh! found it on the last page of the PDF manual...who'd think looking down on the top plate and using a non Olympus flashgun, that switching to "manual adaptor" would allow it to work esp if you don't have a manual adapter :wacky:
..and it also says "if an electronic flash is used while the optional Manual Adapter is attached, set the shutterspeed at 1 /30 sec. or slower. For details, read the instruction manual supplied with the Manual Adapter". WOW what's that about 1/30 sec sync speed is for dinosaur cameras. :LOL:
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That's better, now everyone can love their OM10 :love:

The M setting is also the backup mechanical speed, so when your batteries die and the mirror jams up, you set it to M and shoot it to unlock it again.
 
Alan Clogwyn said:
That's better, now everyone can love their OM10 :love:

The M setting is also the backup mechanical speed, so when your batteries die and the mirror jams up, you set it to M and shoot it to unlock it again.
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Well I have to admit when everything is set right I couldn't complain about inaccurate exposures.
 
I've yet to do anything overly bad, had a couple of camera problems, once the back door slipped open ruining two-thirds of a roll, and once my camera had a dodgy shutter leaving 90% of a roll blank.

You need dd1989 on this, he recently got his OM-40 and assumed the film loading procedure was like his Canon 1000 auto everything SLR so never hooked the leader onto the take up spool, now for most people this would have only happened once, when they went past 40 shots and the advance kept going but he rewound at 36 on the counter, and never looked at the rewind crank while advancing so he went through 5 rolls before getting any developed and got back.... 5 blank rolls of film; **** taking and laughter was had on IRC.
 
Just remembered another one I did...

35) While climbing in the alps, and going too slowly, decided it would be safer to bivi out for the night, rather than risk the stone-fall of the late afternoon. While pulling out some warm clothing for the evening, pull your camera out as well, and drop it over the edge of the ledge you're sat on. Look over the edge, to see the camera's first bounce 2-300m below, the second, a further 400m before the shrapnel remaining hit a snow bank and probably embedded itself 20 feet or so!
 
39) Fail to realise that the spot adjustment on the meter is set for 15 degrees, not 7.5 Degrees. A factor that means that your shots will now be 1 stop overexposed.
 
TheBigYin said:
Have a good evening out yesterday then ??
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Ha ha. yes, was immense. I suspect somebody had been fiddling with my exposure meter whilst I wasn't looking. I'm calling shenanigans on the local pixies.

I'm hoping that somewhere along the line, all of the above will cancel each other out!
 
40) Develop in hard tap water, realize that you're out of distilled water to rinse the film and it's a Sunday. Try to pass off the resulting thumb-sized stains as "art".
 
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Boofle said:
40) Develop in hard tap water, realize that you're out of distilled water to rinse the film and it's a Sunday. Try to pass off the resulting thumb-sized stains as "art".
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You can avoid that by putting a drop of detergent into the final wash. Not sure what soap would work best, as I'm using lab-grade Triton X-100.
 
Cistron said:
You can avoid that by putting a drop of detergent into the final wash. Not sure what soap would work best, as I'm using lab-grade Triton X-100.
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Really?? In all my years of developing and working with film, NOBODY has told me about that before. I guess you really do learn something new every day! It'd be great to know if regular hand soap would do the trick too, but thanks a lot anyway :)
 
Well - for my first 30-odd films I used a drop of ecover washing up liquid in the final rinse, and it worked a treat.

I'd avoid anything that's coloured or fragranced if possible, though to be honest, a bottle of Ilfotol or Photoflow won't break the bank, and will probably outlast your film camera!
 
Boofle said:
Really?? In all my years of developing and working with film, NOBODY has told me about that before. I guess you really do learn something new every day! It'd be great to know if regular hand soap would do the trick too, but thanks a lot anyway :)
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In theory you will still get deposits on the film, but the detergent reduces the water's surface tension, causing it to spread evenly on the emulsion. Thus no spots.

Alternatively, I've seen someone "centrifuging" his photo-reel with the film in it after the final wash. The contraption was simple but somewhat genius: an old CD-spindle case containing the reel on a piece of tissue whilst being spun on a length of cord. I haven't tried that and probably won't, as I don't have any problems hanging the film.

Another way of instant drying is an alcohol bath. Methanol (toxic, so rather not), Ethanol or Isopropanol will work a treat. Simply shake off any excess water after the last wash, then dip it in the alcohol and let it evaporate.

I'm not sure if the last two methods won't cause spots either though ;)
 
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