First film - Just developed...

[cambsno]

And it was awful!!! For some reason, it looks like the middle 16-20 exposures in a 36 roll did not come out, and the ones that did were generally rubbish!

My excuses... it was an old (40 year?) Zorki 4 which is manual everything and a rangefinder. Had to rely on sunny 16 or an iPhone app to get exposure, and focussing on mu son is near impossible!!! Cheapo Fuji film and developed at Tesco!

Well, just for a laugh here are some! Will have to get another roll and try again.

1. What causes this line a third the way up? About 3 or 4 shots had this?

2. This really could have come from 30 years ago!

3. Better!

4. Edited in LR

5. Quite happy with this one

 

[freecom2]

The discolouration looks like a possible light leak or perhaps a developing problem. The film transport and the other mechanical bits on the camera will be unlubricated, possibly worn out, so getting usable images is already a good start!

 

[TheBigYin]

Have you loaded another film into the camera yet... if not, have a look at the shutter curtain - I had a similar problem with a "ghost bar" on certain shots (it was black and white so showed as a lightened area on the images) - it was caused by the rubberised coating on the shutter curtain "delaminating" - I removed the lens and camera back and held the camera to the light to look at the curtain - what i saw was this...


Film Side by The Big Yin, on Flickr

it looks awful, but was fixed with a couple of coats of latex based fabric paint, and the camera's now going strong

 

[cambsno]

Thanks Mark, have a few faint marks but may get some paint and just make sure.

 

[TheBigYin]

Not saying it's particularly likely to be the same problem, to be honest, but it's just one possibility among all the others that need to be checked - and I have to say, it had me fooled initially, until I noticed that the worst affected shots were the ones where I took longest between shots - the wind, shoot, alter shutter speed and aperture,wind, shoot repeat ones (it was a test roll, and I was checking the different shutter speeds ) were okay - but the ones I took at the end of the roll, where I walked 100 yards with the lens cap off between shots, were all munged, but the ones with the lens cap on were okay. So, I guessed it was probably light coming in through the lens. Took the lens off, and the inside of the camera was full of loose bits of dead black rubber!

 

[RaglanSurf]

It's probably worth running a test film through it, making notes of the variables and having it processed somewhere you trust.

Or if you want to test your processing technique try using a camera/lens/film combo that you know and trust.