which side did i expose??

[rippo]

a couple of weeks ago i was out shooting before dawn, hands numb from cold (it's california after all) and barely awake. i realized after taking a film holder out that i hadn't put the darkslide back in correctly, and had no idea which side i'd exposed. i took a guess, exposed what i thought was the other (unexposed) side, and then marked the holder as suspect. but i'll probably never develop the film, since i then had to re-do the shot.

some of you rocket scientists out there have probably figured this out. but i figured it out later on that day. rather than take a guess and get a 50/50 chance of being right, do this: start over with the holder. expose BOTH sides again, so you've taken three shots. one side will certainly be wasted, but you will be sure to have gotten at least one shot properly exposed. if i'd done this in the field, i could have wasted only a single sheet instead of two.

oh sure, i could be more organized. but it's good to have a plan B. thought i'd pass it along.

[Vaughn]

Plan C -- mark the sides of your holders "A" and "B". I number my holders 1,2, etc, so one side is 1A and the other 1B. I always use side A first (or at least try toremember to, lol!).

Plan D -- How important in the image? If the one you took, but forgot to reverse the slide, is potentially a winner, the second piece of film (dirt cheap compared to the cost to get where you are photographing) is easily sacrificed and left unexposed. Then develop both negs from the holder. One will be blank and the other will be your "winner". If the next image is the potential winner and that holder was your last, then it is worth exposing both sides of the holder to insure that you got the winner. And who knows, perhaps the double exposed neg could in itself be a winner.

Vaughn

PS...Unless one makes an obvious mistake (forgot to close down the lens, knocked the camera during a long exposure, etc.) why not develop the neg! That is the easy part.

[Alan Davenport]

Plan E: Don't bother exposing both sheets again, just develop both sheets. You'll have one correctly exposed shot and one blank sheet that you wasted, but you'll have saved the time spent reshooting the same exposure two more times.

[Vaughn]

Plan E: Don't bother exposing both sheets again, just develop both sheets. You'll have one correctly exposed shot and one blank sheet that you wasted, but you'll have saved the time spent reshooting the same exposure two more times.

I think that was my Plan D -- or at least it was suppose to be!

Vaughn

[rippo]

Vaughn: I already incorporate plan C into my scheme. But obviously I forget to shoot A first, then B, more often then I'll care to admit!

Plan D/E: duh. Makes even more sense. See? You guys are a bunch of rocket scientists.

I'm not going to develop the mistake negs though, because it's chrome. If it were b/w, I'd just pop 'em in and see what I got. But if it's going to cost me Actual Money....

Thanks all.