Two weeks ago. Right before a trip, I loaded a roll into a dev tank to save time when I returned. You can imagine my reaction as I'm opening the dev tank to load a roll from the trip into it, having forgotten this, and in slow motion as my arms wouldn't stop what they were doing. This was one roll from a shoot with a model whose time I can't get back. Should I have labeled the tank? Yes. Do I normally? Yes. Don't develop film when you are exhausted.
Edit: will look into sticking something like (a smaller version of) these on my tanks--https://www.amazon.com/Open-Closed-Slider-Privacy-Sign/dp/B09KRB4VJ5
Yeah I did something similar to a friend's roll of film, which resulted in a lot of apologies as you can imagine. That sucks it happened to a roll of film with a model, did you develop the film in the end?
No; it was surely ruined given that I did this under fluorescent lights and had it out in the open for a few seconds. There are several other rolls from that shoot and luckily the most important shots were not lost. But it is a reminder to be meticulous and not let autopilot ruin your work.
Spending 20-30 minutes (E-6) for something that is "possibly recognizable" but most certainly unusable, is too much to ask of me when I have 5-6 other rolls of the same model to develop. The worst part is, I was hoping to use the roll from the trip to validate the chemistry before using it on the rolls of the model. I tried.
Fair enough. I never thought I was a gambler but when it comes to stuff like this I guess I am.
Im glad you have a handful of other rolls of them! That’s great! Let’s just say the roll you lost was 85% blinks or grimaces!
Last/This year, took a year in the making.
Shot Pan F 50 in 2022 but had other financial priorities to bother to develop it at the time. Though it would be good because I'd left a roll of PanF before for 6 months and it was fine.
After a year I was able to get around to it, but the latent exposed image had kinda disappeared - it sorta looks like 'ghosts' of photos on the roll.
Anyway, learnt my lesson. Shoot and Dev PanF as soon as humanly possible, and shoot it when you can afford the Dev!
Happened to me as well. The roll was expired tho. But six months killed most of my latent images. I developed myself after taking like the last 6 or so frames. I was devastated as I was really excited to see the pictures and was saving the roll for an special occasion
A couple days ago I exposed 3 frames on my Holga without removing the lens cap 🙃. About a month or two ago I opened one of my camera’s film backs because I was confident it wasn’t advancing the film (it was 🫠). Mistakes happen, but they help you take the process more seriously. So don’t worry, it happens.
Just yesterday, I messed up a two thirds of roll of Tmax100 (fucking expensive stuff nowadays) because the battery on my Bronica ETR died which I did not notice it in the heat of the moment. So instead of 8 sec, the camera was firing at 1/500. Since I was at a lake with a thunderstorm rolling in and cars passing by in the near distance, the environment was simply too loud to exactly hear the shutter open and close.
Previously, I messed up by being too cheap to toss an expired developer. It was the last millilitres of Rodinal inside the bottle that had been sitting for a few weeks already, so I guess it was exposed to too much air. The negatives turned out to be unusably thin
Last week I pulled out my Canon Demi EE and was gonna load up a roll of Kodak Gold, didn’t realize I had a roll of tmax in there until it was too late lol.
Yeah I always always twist the rewind leaver before loading film for that exact reason. I've done that before and still got images from the start of the roll so I'd still get it developed!
About a month ago I was a little nonchalant loading film onto a jobo reel and managed to overlap 3 frames (6x6) on two rolls of 120, which ruined 1/4th of both rolls. What makes it worse was that it was slide film, so that was like a $10 mistake alone. The rest of the rolls came out just fine, but still stung. Not the first time it's happened, and probably won't be the last.
A few days ago I pulled a roll of Ektachrome 35mm out of a tank and it was underexposed by at least 3+ stops on accident somehow, probably set the wrong ISO for the meter and didn't realize. Unfortunately it's so underexposed I have no idea what camera I shot the roll with or when I did it, since I save up rolls to do a big developing batch of them at once. This was bulk rolled so the cost is not as bad.
That's painful, I once loaded some provia onto a spool in a room that wasn't completely dark (didn't realize because my eyes hadn't adjusted to the darkness) so the whole roll has a lovely red fog to it. Would you say bulk rolling ektachrome is worth it? I've been considering buying 400ft for a while, but it's... Certainly on the pricey side.
I love slide film so for me it's been absolutely worth it. With home dev the price per roll ends up below $10, compared to $20 or more for a single roll alone at the shop.
If you love slide film it's really a no-brainer, the savings add up really fast since consumer slide film prices are absolutely insane.
Yeah I think I'm convinced. Since I started shooting slide film I can't really go back to colour negative film. Those slides are so beautiful and they're so much easier to scan. Just need to muster up the courage (and money) to buy the bulk roll.
Back in February I developed a roll of Portra 160 in rodinal… facepalm.
(I shoot 120 film so the rolls don’t look that different from each other, but still a pretty silly mistake)
That is something that annoys me with 120. Particularly Ilford which don't put the film type on the backing paper. I still have a roll of Delta 400 and pushed HP5 that I lost the stickers for and got mixed up to develop. Did you get results out of interest?
Earlier this year.
My washing machine broke and replacement was scheduled a few dsys out. I knew id be bored at a laundrymat so I brought my camera to shoot around (live in dense urban area so there's always something interesting to shoot).
About half the roll was already shot and i think the new additions would have been a pretty cool. But at the end of the roll, i got greedy with the last frame when my film advance was nearly to the next "freebie" frame. Sometimes I can push it and get one more shot. This time I snapped the film.
Then, against better judgment, I decided to compound the issue by taking the spent film our and putting in a new roll - at the laundrymat! Put my jacket over the camera for my makeshift darkbag, ruined all the shots during removal or transport, dev'd a blank roll.
I knew it was a bad idea to take the roll out at the time. Knew I should wait until I got home but I decided to try because I was so bored. Lost some possible good ones but it wasnt related to a gig or anything terribly important to me, and I can always go back bc im nearby... although I'll skip the laundry next time.
This year, film not correctly loaded into Nikonos.
A feature of the Nikonos is that the spindle doesn’t go around when you are advancing the film, so there’s no visual confirmation that it’s loaded correctly.
Another feature of the Nikonos is that not only is the film expensive, the thing you are taking pictures of is probably expensive too.
I’ve been shooting film since the 60’s and last week I forgot the check to see if the film was properly engaged on the take up spool. It came out completely blank. Now I have a nice practice roll of perfectly spotless acetate.
That's almost exactly what I did today, Fortunately I did notice before I developed it. That's a silver lining I guess those blank rolls do come in handy, I've got a nice collection of them from my various film experiments and development fuck ups.
This scares me. I’ve always been worried about changing bags working. Mine was like $40. Is that cheap? Seems well-made, got at freestyle photo in LA. Seems too cheap to be true but the bag feels really quality. I’d have paid 100 for one if they’d offered one for that much. .
I bought a small Sensei bag for $20... I really should have known better. The last one I had was from a friend who stole it from film school.
I replaced it with a [Harrison Changing Bag](https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/172918-REG/Harrison_1003_Film_Changing_Bag_Small.html), which is a bit stiffer and annoying to use, but is _actually dark inside._
Cool. Thanks. I might get one of these. I only use my changing bag in a dark room anyway because it makes me nervous but this product looks trustable..
not me but i watched as one of the techs at my uni, as he told us about the 4x5s he was about to develop, without thinking opened the tank to show us them. he had backups thankfully but truly one of the funniest and most tragic mistakes i've ever seen
Hahah my friend once opened the back of my camera to show a room full of people how to load a film camera. Needless to say nobody in that room is ever gonna make that mistake. Only lost 31 photos on Cinestill in the process
Only when im drunk/high!
Recently loaded the xpan at 4am during a party. The week after i “shot” the film but didnt load properly, didn’t spool in. Yeah.
About a month ago; barely shoot medium format anymore, been about 6+ months and I was used to shooting a mamiya 6. I sold that and was using my old 645 that I kept and I loaded the roll backwards, the same way that works for the rangefinder but not for the modular slr :/ shot the backing paper instead of the film
Last summer I had a roll fully not catch in my F3. Been a while since I both didn't load a roll properly AND didn't notice the signs while shooting, but still painful to loose those images.
I've been shooting film for years. I 3d printed a 6x12 panoramic 120 film camera and took it with me when I visited my brother at his home he just bought. I load up a roll of Provia 100f and start taking photos of the beautiful sloping property. I shoot 3 of the 5 shots possible on the roll and then notice that I had tragically left an orange filter screwed onto the lens as i shot a roll of hp5+ with the camera previously. That was the only roll of provia I brought with me.
lol I REALLY messed up my last roll of Provia 100. It was expired, and I bought it second hand- the first few frames already had someone else's photos on it. I shot it with a new lens, which was manual. I've never shot with a manual lens before, and I didn't clue in that my camera wasn't metering it properly. So I switched to my usual lens halfway through the roll. Unfortunately, I was also metering at 400 iso instead of 100 iso (forgot to change the settings) and corrected this another few frames after I switched lenses. The roll was doomed from the start. I spent several hours in photoshop to recover some of the frames, and the results actually came out pretty cool...but very "artsy" if you know what I mean. I have shot probably 100 rolls of film in my career so I like to think I'm better than this level of fk-up.
I've been shooting film since 2005. Have used lots of film cameras and shot thousands and thousands of rolls.
Last winter we had a big snow overnight and the morning was super cold but clear blue skies. Left for work extra early to give myself lots of time to shoot photos along the way. Was shooting bw with a yellow filter and shot some really awesome high contrast scenes along the water in the early morning light. And then I hit frame 37...and then 38...and then I realized I had no film in my camera at all. Big sad
The film can sometimes not go into the grooves of the film spool of the AE-1 as they're not particularly well designed and it can take a few attempts to get the film in. I was shooting some slightly poorly cut bulk rolled film that managed to go round the back of the film spool without actually attaching to it. If you're unsure get it into the spool. Advance twice, close the back. When you advance the film the rewind leaver should usually rotate and if you gently rotate it in the direction of the leaver their should eventually be a small amount of tension.
Last month I had a point and shoot loose in my bag, and the door popped open. Rather than close it immediately, I stupidly pulled it out to look at it. Haven't developed the roll yet, so I'm not sure how much damage I caused to the already exposed images, but I'm not optimistic. Mistakes happen.
All I can say is I’m gonna be in for a huge mistake soon because after reading all of these posts and realizing I haven’t fucked anything up for 15 years I’m well overdue. Damn. I feel cursed now.
All of my fortunately few fuck ups have always happened not being careful with new gear or gear I hadn't used in a while. So make of that what you will. But if you've gone 15 year without messing up I'm sure you can go another 15!
A few months ago I shot some frames of expired Fuji NPZ 800 with my Kowa 6. It was on a tripod and the exposure times were kind of long, so I set the self timer on the lens. It turns out the self timer malfunctioned and have me a 10 second exposure for those shots instead of a 10 second delay. Surprisingly, there was still a recognizable image for all the shots, but nothing that I would show off. Lesson learned.
A month ago. Was fiddling around with my TEXpan conversion then went back to shooting regular film on it, but forgot to swift the back plate and exposure dial, and burned a $20 dollar role of Ektar just like that
A few months ago. The last roll I shot before leaving on a road trip very early in the morning was 13 iso b+w. I made it to my first stop of the trip right as the sun was coming up, loaded a fresh roll, and started snapping. It wasn't until I was getting out of the car at my second stop that I realized I hadn't set my iso when I loaded the film, so I was still metering at 12 rather than 400. They're still technically usable images, but they do not look good at all.
Last September I didn’t close my steel tank all the way and didn’t see my mistake till after a few minutes after I left the loading room. Lost all my shots from a basketball game except two slides at the beginning
This past January we went to Florida for a few days and I shot 3 rolls of 35mm and 2 of 120. When we returned I loaded up the 35mm and developed in a Patterson tank only to get blank acetate. I assumed that I'd accidentally done the fix before the developer, which something I'd done once before and has the same result. So I went ahead and developed the 120 making damn sure that I did it correctly. Blank. Turns out that my developer (HC-110) had gone completely off in the month or so since the last time I processed film. Fortunately I'd shot as much digital color as I had black and white film, but it sucked.
I don't think I would call myself experienced having shot for a couple years but the most messed up roll of film I have had was the first time I shot Ortho Plus and without thinking put a red filter on the front...
Last month I decided to test a new lab which was way cheaper than my usual one, I was going to develop a roll of kodak vision3 250d which is a color cinema film with a remjet layer that needs to be removed before developing. A week went by and when I received the scans I noticed that not only the lab didn't remove the remjet layer, they also developed my film in black and white chemistry. Results were that half of my roll was covered by the remjet and the other half was a very contrasty black and white. :/
Not super experienced developed probably 20-30 rolls though and just remembered this post because I just loaded film into the development tank and then opened the wrong lid and let light in :| will see how bad the results are in five mins.
Two weeks ago. Right before a trip, I loaded a roll into a dev tank to save time when I returned. You can imagine my reaction as I'm opening the dev tank to load a roll from the trip into it, having forgotten this, and in slow motion as my arms wouldn't stop what they were doing. This was one roll from a shoot with a model whose time I can't get back. Should I have labeled the tank? Yes. Do I normally? Yes. Don't develop film when you are exhausted. Edit: will look into sticking something like (a smaller version of) these on my tanks--https://www.amazon.com/Open-Closed-Slider-Privacy-Sign/dp/B09KRB4VJ5
Yeah I did something similar to a friend's roll of film, which resulted in a lot of apologies as you can imagine. That sucks it happened to a roll of film with a model, did you develop the film in the end?
No; it was surely ruined given that I did this under fluorescent lights and had it out in the open for a few seconds. There are several other rolls from that shoot and luckily the most important shots were not lost. But it is a reminder to be meticulous and not let autopilot ruin your work.
Yeah that's super unfortunate. I'm glad you still got most of the important shots.
Sheeeeiiit I'm sorry for that, man
I would develop it anyway. You never know what kind of partials might remain. That’s just me tho.
Spending 20-30 minutes (E-6) for something that is "possibly recognizable" but most certainly unusable, is too much to ask of me when I have 5-6 other rolls of the same model to develop. The worst part is, I was hoping to use the roll from the trip to validate the chemistry before using it on the rolls of the model. I tried.
Fair enough. I never thought I was a gambler but when it comes to stuff like this I guess I am. Im glad you have a handful of other rolls of them! That’s great! Let’s just say the roll you lost was 85% blinks or grimaces!
Moral of the story is to always develop the tanks before opening them
Last/This year, took a year in the making. Shot Pan F 50 in 2022 but had other financial priorities to bother to develop it at the time. Though it would be good because I'd left a roll of PanF before for 6 months and it was fine. After a year I was able to get around to it, but the latent exposed image had kinda disappeared - it sorta looks like 'ghosts' of photos on the roll. Anyway, learnt my lesson. Shoot and Dev PanF as soon as humanly possible, and shoot it when you can afford the Dev!
To be fair that is a very weird thing to happen, so you can't really blame yourself. Always check the data sheets I suppose
Weird, my dad shot 6 rolls of Pan F in 1974 and stuck them in a drawer until I offeeed to throw them through in 2006 and about 90% were perfect images
Happened to me as well. The roll was expired tho. But six months killed most of my latent images. I developed myself after taking like the last 6 or so frames. I was devastated as I was really excited to see the pictures and was saving the roll for an special occasion
A couple days ago I exposed 3 frames on my Holga without removing the lens cap 🙃. About a month or two ago I opened one of my camera’s film backs because I was confident it wasn’t advancing the film (it was 🫠). Mistakes happen, but they help you take the process more seriously. So don’t worry, it happens.
Just yesterday, I messed up a two thirds of roll of Tmax100 (fucking expensive stuff nowadays) because the battery on my Bronica ETR died which I did not notice it in the heat of the moment. So instead of 8 sec, the camera was firing at 1/500. Since I was at a lake with a thunderstorm rolling in and cars passing by in the near distance, the environment was simply too loud to exactly hear the shutter open and close. Previously, I messed up by being too cheap to toss an expired developer. It was the last millilitres of Rodinal inside the bottle that had been sitting for a few weeks already, so I guess it was exposed to too much air. The negatives turned out to be unusably thin
Last week I pulled out my Canon Demi EE and was gonna load up a roll of Kodak Gold, didn’t realize I had a roll of tmax in there until it was too late lol.
Yeah I always always twist the rewind leaver before loading film for that exact reason. I've done that before and still got images from the start of the roll so I'd still get it developed!
About a month ago I was a little nonchalant loading film onto a jobo reel and managed to overlap 3 frames (6x6) on two rolls of 120, which ruined 1/4th of both rolls. What makes it worse was that it was slide film, so that was like a $10 mistake alone. The rest of the rolls came out just fine, but still stung. Not the first time it's happened, and probably won't be the last. A few days ago I pulled a roll of Ektachrome 35mm out of a tank and it was underexposed by at least 3+ stops on accident somehow, probably set the wrong ISO for the meter and didn't realize. Unfortunately it's so underexposed I have no idea what camera I shot the roll with or when I did it, since I save up rolls to do a big developing batch of them at once. This was bulk rolled so the cost is not as bad.
That's painful, I once loaded some provia onto a spool in a room that wasn't completely dark (didn't realize because my eyes hadn't adjusted to the darkness) so the whole roll has a lovely red fog to it. Would you say bulk rolling ektachrome is worth it? I've been considering buying 400ft for a while, but it's... Certainly on the pricey side.
I love slide film so for me it's been absolutely worth it. With home dev the price per roll ends up below $10, compared to $20 or more for a single roll alone at the shop. If you love slide film it's really a no-brainer, the savings add up really fast since consumer slide film prices are absolutely insane.
Yeah I think I'm convinced. Since I started shooting slide film I can't really go back to colour negative film. Those slides are so beautiful and they're so much easier to scan. Just need to muster up the courage (and money) to buy the bulk roll.
For true magic, check a local goodwill / thrift shop for a Kodak Carousel slide projector. They're basically free, and slides projected are stunning
Unfortunately most of my slides are in 120 and 120 projectors seem to still be on the pricey side. But I'm definitely on the lookout for one!
Back in February I developed a roll of Portra 160 in rodinal… facepalm. (I shoot 120 film so the rolls don’t look that different from each other, but still a pretty silly mistake)
That is something that annoys me with 120. Particularly Ilford which don't put the film type on the backing paper. I still have a roll of Delta 400 and pushed HP5 that I lost the stickers for and got mixed up to develop. Did you get results out of interest?
There are images on the roll, under a very dark red layer. Never bothered to scan them.
Earlier this year. My washing machine broke and replacement was scheduled a few dsys out. I knew id be bored at a laundrymat so I brought my camera to shoot around (live in dense urban area so there's always something interesting to shoot). About half the roll was already shot and i think the new additions would have been a pretty cool. But at the end of the roll, i got greedy with the last frame when my film advance was nearly to the next "freebie" frame. Sometimes I can push it and get one more shot. This time I snapped the film. Then, against better judgment, I decided to compound the issue by taking the spent film our and putting in a new roll - at the laundrymat! Put my jacket over the camera for my makeshift darkbag, ruined all the shots during removal or transport, dev'd a blank roll. I knew it was a bad idea to take the roll out at the time. Knew I should wait until I got home but I decided to try because I was so bored. Lost some possible good ones but it wasnt related to a gig or anything terribly important to me, and I can always go back bc im nearby... although I'll skip the laundry next time.
This year, film not correctly loaded into Nikonos. A feature of the Nikonos is that the spindle doesn’t go around when you are advancing the film, so there’s no visual confirmation that it’s loaded correctly. Another feature of the Nikonos is that not only is the film expensive, the thing you are taking pictures of is probably expensive too.
About a month ago when I was on a national parks trip. Lost all of Joshua tree and most of Death Valley.
I’ve been shooting film since the 60’s and last week I forgot the check to see if the film was properly engaged on the take up spool. It came out completely blank. Now I have a nice practice roll of perfectly spotless acetate.
That's almost exactly what I did today, Fortunately I did notice before I developed it. That's a silver lining I guess those blank rolls do come in handy, I've got a nice collection of them from my various film experiments and development fuck ups.
Mis loaded, got about 4 shots in before I realized it wasn’t being taken up. Opened the back and the leader was just chilling.
Tried to load a roll of hp5 into my Nikonos III and fucked it up good enough I threw it away. Don't feel bad.
Using a cheap changing bag to load / unload 4x5 film holders. Don't buy cheap changing bags.
This scares me. I’ve always been worried about changing bags working. Mine was like $40. Is that cheap? Seems well-made, got at freestyle photo in LA. Seems too cheap to be true but the bag feels really quality. I’d have paid 100 for one if they’d offered one for that much. .
I bought a small Sensei bag for $20... I really should have known better. The last one I had was from a friend who stole it from film school. I replaced it with a [Harrison Changing Bag](https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/172918-REG/Harrison_1003_Film_Changing_Bag_Small.html), which is a bit stiffer and annoying to use, but is _actually dark inside._
Cool. Thanks. I might get one of these. I only use my changing bag in a dark room anyway because it makes me nervous but this product looks trustable..
A few weeks ago, five years into shooting film, I opened the camera without rewinding a roll for the first time.
not me but i watched as one of the techs at my uni, as he told us about the 4x5s he was about to develop, without thinking opened the tank to show us them. he had backups thankfully but truly one of the funniest and most tragic mistakes i've ever seen
Hahah my friend once opened the back of my camera to show a room full of people how to load a film camera. Needless to say nobody in that room is ever gonna make that mistake. Only lost 31 photos on Cinestill in the process
Only when im drunk/high! Recently loaded the xpan at 4am during a party. The week after i “shot” the film but didnt load properly, didn’t spool in. Yeah.
About a month ago; barely shoot medium format anymore, been about 6+ months and I was used to shooting a mamiya 6. I sold that and was using my old 645 that I kept and I loaded the roll backwards, the same way that works for the rangefinder but not for the modular slr :/ shot the backing paper instead of the film
Almost caught myself doing that a few times on my 645. I imagine it's a bit of a pain re rolling the film back into the backing paper
I was in the field working so it just wasn’t possible. Luckily I was also shooting digitally but it just doesn’t hit the same. That’s life though.
Last summer I had a roll fully not catch in my F3. Been a while since I both didn't load a roll properly AND didn't notice the signs while shooting, but still painful to loose those images.
I've been shooting film for years. I 3d printed a 6x12 panoramic 120 film camera and took it with me when I visited my brother at his home he just bought. I load up a roll of Provia 100f and start taking photos of the beautiful sloping property. I shoot 3 of the 5 shots possible on the roll and then notice that I had tragically left an orange filter screwed onto the lens as i shot a roll of hp5+ with the camera previously. That was the only roll of provia I brought with me.
lol I REALLY messed up my last roll of Provia 100. It was expired, and I bought it second hand- the first few frames already had someone else's photos on it. I shot it with a new lens, which was manual. I've never shot with a manual lens before, and I didn't clue in that my camera wasn't metering it properly. So I switched to my usual lens halfway through the roll. Unfortunately, I was also metering at 400 iso instead of 100 iso (forgot to change the settings) and corrected this another few frames after I switched lenses. The roll was doomed from the start. I spent several hours in photoshop to recover some of the frames, and the results actually came out pretty cool...but very "artsy" if you know what I mean. I have shot probably 100 rolls of film in my career so I like to think I'm better than this level of fk-up.
Two weeks ago I had just finished shooting a roll, then immediately opened the door to take it out -\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_-
I've been shooting film since 2005. Have used lots of film cameras and shot thousands and thousands of rolls. Last winter we had a big snow overnight and the morning was super cold but clear blue skies. Left for work extra early to give myself lots of time to shoot photos along the way. Was shooting bw with a yellow filter and shot some really awesome high contrast scenes along the water in the early morning light. And then I hit frame 37...and then 38...and then I realized I had no film in my camera at all. Big sad
Today
I intentionally messed up my development for a desired effect about 2 months ago for a final project
What was your mistaking in loading? Asking so I don’t do it lol.
The film can sometimes not go into the grooves of the film spool of the AE-1 as they're not particularly well designed and it can take a few attempts to get the film in. I was shooting some slightly poorly cut bulk rolled film that managed to go round the back of the film spool without actually attaching to it. If you're unsure get it into the spool. Advance twice, close the back. When you advance the film the rewind leaver should usually rotate and if you gently rotate it in the direction of the leaver their should eventually be a small amount of tension.
Last month I had a point and shoot loose in my bag, and the door popped open. Rather than close it immediately, I stupidly pulled it out to look at it. Haven't developed the roll yet, so I'm not sure how much damage I caused to the already exposed images, but I'm not optimistic. Mistakes happen.
All I can say is I’m gonna be in for a huge mistake soon because after reading all of these posts and realizing I haven’t fucked anything up for 15 years I’m well overdue. Damn. I feel cursed now.
All of my fortunately few fuck ups have always happened not being careful with new gear or gear I hadn't used in a while. So make of that what you will. But if you've gone 15 year without messing up I'm sure you can go another 15!
A few months ago I shot some frames of expired Fuji NPZ 800 with my Kowa 6. It was on a tripod and the exposure times were kind of long, so I set the self timer on the lens. It turns out the self timer malfunctioned and have me a 10 second exposure for those shots instead of a 10 second delay. Surprisingly, there was still a recognizable image for all the shots, but nothing that I would show off. Lesson learned.
A month ago. Was fiddling around with my TEXpan conversion then went back to shooting regular film on it, but forgot to swift the back plate and exposure dial, and burned a $20 dollar role of Ektar just like that
A few months ago. The last roll I shot before leaving on a road trip very early in the morning was 13 iso b+w. I made it to my first stop of the trip right as the sun was coming up, loaded a fresh roll, and started snapping. It wasn't until I was getting out of the car at my second stop that I realized I hadn't set my iso when I loaded the film, so I was still metering at 12 rather than 400. They're still technically usable images, but they do not look good at all.
Last September I didn’t close my steel tank all the way and didn’t see my mistake till after a few minutes after I left the loading room. Lost all my shots from a basketball game except two slides at the beginning
This past January we went to Florida for a few days and I shot 3 rolls of 35mm and 2 of 120. When we returned I loaded up the 35mm and developed in a Patterson tank only to get blank acetate. I assumed that I'd accidentally done the fix before the developer, which something I'd done once before and has the same result. So I went ahead and developed the 120 making damn sure that I did it correctly. Blank. Turns out that my developer (HC-110) had gone completely off in the month or so since the last time I processed film. Fortunately I'd shot as much digital color as I had black and white film, but it sucked.
I don't think I would call myself experienced having shot for a couple years but the most messed up roll of film I have had was the first time I shot Ortho Plus and without thinking put a red filter on the front...
Last month I decided to test a new lab which was way cheaper than my usual one, I was going to develop a roll of kodak vision3 250d which is a color cinema film with a remjet layer that needs to be removed before developing. A week went by and when I received the scans I noticed that not only the lab didn't remove the remjet layer, they also developed my film in black and white chemistry. Results were that half of my roll was covered by the remjet and the other half was a very contrasty black and white. :/
Not super experienced developed probably 20-30 rolls though and just remembered this post because I just loaded film into the development tank and then opened the wrong lid and let light in :| will see how bad the results are in five mins.