Thanks Clay. It wasn't really a mistake in the usual sense, but all that weird texture and fogging? I can't take credit for that! These feel a bit like double exposures to me: time and age have made one long, random, 60 year image already, and my photos add a second, more instantaneous exposure on top.Originally Posted by cpercy
Jonathan
As I mentioned above, I am always wary of buying expired sheet film in boxes whose seals have been broken. It's one thing to get a 30 year old box of film that is still sealed, but entirely another if the seal is not intact. For one thing there is no guarantee some numbnut didn't open the box and expose the whole thing in the intervening years. Recently I bought a box lot of film to get at a few unopened boxes, but there were some open boxes as well. Today I shot the photo below as part of a continuing exposure and development test of the loose sheets. This sheet came from an open box of Plus-X that expired in 1975, but when I was washing the negative I noticed the the notch code was not that of Plus-X. Turns out it is Super-XX Pan. Unfortunately this in no way helps me determine a good EI and development time for the remaining Plus-X. Oh, well.
Pacemaker Speed Graphic, 178mm f/2.5 Aero-Ektar @ f/16, Supper-XX Pan (expired 1970s?)
Jonathan
Imagine my surprise when I removed this sheet from the wash - lucky it was just a demo shot. It was 8x10 HP5 processed in Rodinal 1+50 by rolling in a Jobo 2830 drum. I'd processed another sheet a few hours before that came out perfectly. The black streaks across his t-shirt are clear film on the neg, so obviously some fix got on before the developer. After thinking about it I realised that I hadn't washed the lid/cup part of the drum after the previous sheet. There must have been some fix still in there and when I loaded the next sheet the fix ran and splashed down over the film as soon as I put the lid on. Oh well, mistakes and problems don't worry me as much if I understand what happened and how to avoid them in future.
Meant to post my most recent mistake (still pretty much all mistakes, some are just more catastrophic than others): found that a couple of holders had film in them that I didn't recall loading. Assumed they were what I had been shooting most recently (HP5+). After developing, turned out to be Arista.EDU Ultra 100. Oops.
Followed that mistake up by assuming there wasn't much on the very thin negative and not handling it very carefully. Of course it ended up covered in schmutz, while the scanner pulled more out of it than I would have guessed. Ah well, lessons learned.
CC-020, Dark rose by rbrazile, on Flickr
Robert
Two different expired films, two different attempts at a still life, two different failures.
Jonathan
Not sure how I managed to underexpose this so badly. The meter reading was 1/4 second wide open and I was using a dark slide as a shutter. I didn't think I was capable of anything faster than 1/4 sec. by hand, but apparently I am. Either that or I don't know how to read a light meter.
You can see how far I pushed this in PS to make it viewable by all the lovely banding and noise from my scanner at the bottom.
Jonathan
I had high hopes for this shot, but the area is heavily populated with tourists. I was able to wait while the guy took about 45 pics of his girl with his iPad. I was able to wait out a huge group who took turns with one camera. And then I waited for this last group to move. I went back and forth between the ground glass and making adjustments and then finally I had an opening. The light had changed just a bit while I was waiting, so I rushed to the lens to make the adjustments, pulled out the darkslide and just as I was tripping the shutter I saw this couple right in front of me.
Manhattan Bridge Tourist on 8x10 Ilford HP5+ by Shawn Hoke, on Flickr
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Here's another that went wrong. A large format pinhole image 4x5.
This time I didn't screw on the lid of the Paterson developing tank properly and some light leaked in at the top causing the bright patch at the top left of picture.
Aaarrrggghhh !
Odd thing is though, it gives a bit of a 'Sermon-on-the-Mount' look to these boulders which were in a car park near the Great South Wall at Dublin Port.
In a way, I kind of like it.
...find these while cleaning digitaly,
decide to let this noise be
Train Yard with Hillside Erosion Control Project
Yet another double exposure. It's funny, when I first started out in large format, I almost never made double exposures, and now I find I do fairly frequently. I guess I'm getting careless in middle age... Either that or it's this blasted train yard. You know, come to think of it, there's been something wrong with every negative I've ever made there. That's it-the train yard is cursed!
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