101 ways to ruin a roll of film

When you look back at it, making mistakes is all part of the fun, it's not so much fun just after it's happened though :D
 
I remember back in my days at college gaily sharing a tank with a friend so we could dev both our films at once, before getting half way through the dev process and realise they were using PAN100 and I was using PAN400 - both with different dev times. I figured I didn't have many usable shots on mine anyway so let them do the dev time for theirs.

When printing colour at uni we have separate booths for each enlarger with light tight curtains and a white light. I was rushing to get some final prints done and my brain got confused with which light I wanted on and I turned the white light on rather than starting the timer for my exposure :( Stressed out me managed to fog three sheets of colour paper that day by turning the white light on without thinking. It's never happened before or since.
 
Some of these postings are hilarious...not least of all because i've done some myself, cursed and gone nuts with myself at the time but having then read the incidents of others makes me realise that what i did was in reality quite amusing although as Rob says, definetly not at the actual time!
 
Not checking that the light meter batteries aren't flat. And then only realising that they were on the last frame of the last film, whilst standing on top of the Grand Hut in the Alps

:(

That is three films potentially wasted.
 
Sectionate said:
That is three films potentially wasted.
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No idea what camera it was, but fingers crossed it defaulted to a mechanical shutter speed and that if you were using negative film, you might have a reasonable chance of getting some usable shots (y)
 
freecom2 said:
No idea what camera it was, but fingers crossed it defaulted to a mechanical shutter speed and that if you were using negative film, you might have a reasonable chance of getting some usable shots (y)
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It is the Super ME - and it defaults to 1/125s. I am expecting a lot of white that isn't snow!

One of the films was my last roll of Kodak Elite Chrome 200...

Which high up in the alps may not be the shutter speed I want. I have dropped one film in this morning for a quick development, so I should know in a few hours.
 
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Ah. F4 ones will probably be burnt to a crisp! You'll probably find the narrower aperture ones are ok. Sunny 16 and all that :)
 
Not looking at the ISO setting on my manual SLR before shooting & realising afterwards it was far from correct. I could have compensated during dev' with the times as if I'd pushed or pulled my film but I hadn't realised til' after I'd processed & seen how underexposed my shots were. Needless to say, getting a decent print from that roll was tough. I always look these days! Mistake made, lesson learnt :}
 
Forgetting to account for the Bellows losses when shooting macros with my RB67 combined with having the spot meter compensation wrong by 2 stops, resulting in a roll of photos darker than a dark thing :(
 
Uh oh, darker than a dark thing in dark land?

The first roll of film you ever shoot is usually destined to be ruined. Mine was! Manual exposures with no experience ~ it was inevitable!
 
Took my Pentax 6x7 out today, and when I got to where I was going I discovered the battery was dead... No problem, I thought, I have another camera to meter with. Then I realised a screw had fallen out of the shutter speed dial and it was turning with no clicks. I had no idea what shutter speed it was stuck on. Took a couple of shots anyway, hit and hope kind of deal. When I got back I miraculously found the teeny tiny screw on my floor and put it back in. YES! The dial worked again. But then I realised it wasn't aligned properly and wasted another 4 shots trying to figure out where the bulb mode was in comparison so I could realign it... So that's 6/10 shots trashed on my last roll of Fuji 160NS.

Edit: Just remembered the shutter needs a battery to operate, so actually there must be something seriously wrong with my prism. Yay.
 
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Couple of months back during a shoot, was thinking I must have a very long roll of film (like 40 shots instead of the usual 36) in the camera as thinking it must time soon to change film. Then checked for movement of the film rewind lever as I wound up a shot and realised it wasn't moving. Opened up the back and realised I had been shooting with no film in it, doh.
 
IamAshlyRose said:
Uh oh, darker than a dark thing in dark land?

The first roll of film you ever shoot is usually destined to be ruined. Mine was! Manual exposures with no experience ~ it was inevitable!
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Even darker :D

The first roll of 35mm i shot fully manual and developed myself is still in my negative folder, a bit worse for wear with kinks and torn perforations but surprisingly only 4 of them have shafted exposures. ISO 400 film, middle of the day, lens wide open at f1.8 don't quite know how that happened :nuts:
 
zeroeseight said:
Couple of months back during a shoot, was thinking I must have a very long roll of film (like 40 shots instead of the usual 36) in the camera as thinking it must time soon to change film. Then checked for movement of the film rewind lever as I wound up a shot and realised it wasn't moving. Opened up the back and realised I had been shooting with no film in it, doh.
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There was a famous photographer whose name escapes me at the moment that photographed Peter Sellers wedding and then half way through realised that he'd not loaded any film into his camera! Luckily he was able to sort it out from then and he was a friend of Sellers, who found it quite funny!
 
Puzzled by why the film advance met resistance at about 15 frames, I rewound the film fully instead of my usual habit of listening for the end and leaving the leader out. I'd forgotten that the camera held a short length inside a cheap plastic re-loadable cassette. After I'd used a leader retriever on the film and loaded it into the tank, I found one piece of the felt light trap inside the cassette. Sure enough - big black stripes all over the first few frames! Not a whole film ruined, but a high proportion of it. I won't be using that type of cassette again.
 
I've got another one erm well sort of:-
Use a very fast shutter speed when feeding a tame Robin...the Robin was walking to the food a few feet in front of me when on hearing the shutter he took off. This is the best out of five failures erm one use for a DSLR :) Oh and the shutter speed was 1/250 which aint fast enough.

Fdn50mmf1-461000px.jpg
 
Superewza said:
1) That isn't a way to ruin a roll of film, it's a way to mess up a shot. 2) It's not bad :p
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erm well if I had used the whole film up (with the wrong shutter speed) it would have been ruined and thrown in the bin ;)

Doesn't seem to care how close I get behind glass with a 35mm lens :cautious:
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The photo's of the Robin are in my opinion very good the first has movement in the wings that really look good.
 
boger said:
The photo's of the Robin are in my opinion very good the first has movement in the wings that really look good.
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Thanks...but for me I'm gonna need a bigger shooter so have bought the big gun out i.e. the T90 and set it at 1/1500 sec although it can do 1/4000...problem with high speeds is wider apertures and less depth of field, so more OOF shots. :bang:

BTW anyone interested:- 1/4000 sec at 200 asa in Sunny UK in April is F2.5
 
My OM-10 seems to be pretty good at (trying to) sabotage film. I opened the shutter one chilly evening to do some star shots and when I came back 20 or so minutes later the cold must have sapped the rest of the power out of the batteries, of course rendering the shutter stuck open...

15 frustrated minutes later, the film wound on several times and more exposures wasted i figured what had happened and replaced the batteries next day. I've shot the rest of it and still to develop it to see how badly it's been ruined, it's ISO 50 ilford too :bang:
 
I replaced the lightseals in one of my cameras a couple of days ago then loaded it up, i find out today when i tried to get the film out that ive managed to glue the bloody film door shut :bang: The problem with a good contact adhesive is that it does it's job very well :( Had to prise the bugger open with a screwdriver, then slipping and jamming the screwdriver into the film canister and shafting it :( :nuts:
 
robhooley167 said:
I replaced the lightseals in one of my cameras a couple of days ago then loaded it up, i find out today when i tried to get the film out that ive managed to glue the bloody film door shut :bang: The problem with a good contact adhesive is that it does it's job very well :( Had to prise the bugger open with a screwdriver, then slipping and jamming the screwdriver into the film canister and shafting it :( :nuts:
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Oh dear! Was it that pliobond adhesive that you recommended to me?? I have yet to get on with using it on my leatherette!
And the camera..has it survived it's ordeal or is that shafted too?
 
Asha said:
Oh dear! Was it that pliobond adhesive that you recommended to me?? I have yet to get on with using it on my leatherette!
And the camera..has it survived it's ordeal or is that shafted too?
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The camera survived fine :) It was a mixture of pliobond and another glue, which appeared to make it ridiculously strong :bang:
 
robhooley167 said:
The camera survived fine :) It was a mixture of pliobond and another glue, which appeared to make it ridiculously strong :bang:
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That's good to hear that you still have the camera in one piece.

Mixing glues!!!.........I wonder does that make you a "robglueley"!! lol
 
1, 10, 14, 15, 18 - been there, done that!

Slight variation on the 'loading' theme, not worth its own number, but my last cock-up was forgetting to insert the 120 underneath the runner in my Rolleiflex. Keep winding...waiting for the '1' to appear...then realise you've run a whole roll through.
 
Sneezing on it. Dirrrrty.
 
Hahaha.
Honestly, am I the only one?
 
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:LOL: I've done it myself, carrying the full strip through from the kitchen to the bathroom, could feel it coming on and couldn't get to the hanging clip in time!
 
monkeini said:
Keep winding...waiting for the '1' to appear...then realise you've run a whole roll through.
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Yep, done that on a roll of Velvia! Managed to respool the roll in a changing bag luckily.
 
Asha said:
That's good to hear that you still have the camera in one piece.

Mixing glues!!!.........I wonder does that make you a "robglueley"!! lol
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Ive had every variation of my surname except that one so far :D
 
Alan Clogwyn said:
:LOL: I've done it myself, carrying the full strip through from the kitchen to the bathroom, could feel it coming on and couldn't get to the hanging clip in time!
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Uh oh, mine was in the darkroom at college & it'd just been loaded onto the spool in the dark ~ awkward!
 
IamAshlyRose said:
Uh oh, mine was in the darkroom at college & it'd just been loaded onto the spool in the dark ~ awkward!
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Could be worse, i very nearly sneezed into my 5Dmk2 sensor this afternoon when i was cleaning it, would have been a very expensive cockup
 
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