Tech Tip for Newbs from a Newb

[Michael Lloyd]

I just discovered this truly amazing tenet of LF photography!

Dark slides only let dark through. If you trip the shutter with the dark slide in you get an all black image. Pulling the dark slide out apparently lets darks, midtones, and highlights through. That's one smart doohicky... Unless it was a Fujiroid issue???



(note: I'm kidding. I messed up... but... I learned another lesson)

[Jeremy Moore]

(note: I'm kidding. I messed up... but... I learned another lesson)

Welcome to the club!

[Mike1234]

Their ar know mistrakes... onry fowl-upz.

[Scott Knowles]

And there's the opposite, taking the dark slide out with the shutter open, and letting all the non-dark (aka light) in to get a wonderful one shade/color image of blown highlights. Cocking the shutter is and does an amazing thing.

Personally I'd opt for your lesson, you still have a good slide/negative to expose.

[Michael Lloyd]

Scott- I was using Fujiroid and I didn't realize the mistake until the 30s were up :D I had just shot an image that was a good 5 stops over exposed :) so initially I was wondering what the heck I had done...

[Ron Marshall]

When I began LF I forgot to take out the darkslide. That was bad enough. The really embarassing part was spending five minutes trying to remember where I had put it, before realizing I had never taken it out!

At least I never made that mistake again.

[JohnGC]

Forgetting to put the dark slide back in before I flipped the holder was my all time classic. It's an interesting view, flipping the holder and seeing your freshly exposed film!

[pocketfulladoubles]

:eek: Just remember that when you're doing an outdoor portrait, and you ask your friends to walk carefully across a river over to a rock, and hold really still for a minute while you set up the shot and get everything adjusted - remember, that it is essential to actually load the film holder!!! :eek:

[speedfreak]

...or load the film the wrong way. I'm sure everyone does it once.
Last evening I was out, and in a bit of a rush to catch the last remaining rays of sunlight, forgot to check the shutter speed. I needed 1.5 sec, but noticed when I hit the release, it sounded a little short. Duh! only 1/2 sec. So quickly, and carefully, changed to 1 sec and made another exposure on the same sheet. We'll see how it turns out, but shot one more sheet regardless. It did get me thinking about dividing exposures with moving objects in them. Hmmm...