Oof, that hurts. You make a great point though. When you have a successful final image in film photography, that means there was a whole chain of decisions that were made and executed properly to get to that point. Any one of those steps could result in an unrecoverable loss. Even if the end viewer isn't aware of all the steps, you know and take pride in accomplishing your mission.
Yeah. I had that idea yesterday when I was writing the blog post. I think that writing is very good to internalize these things! Thanks for visiting and commenting!
Definitely relatable. I’ve had rolls lost to bad developer (crystals in your R09 = replace it) and user error. Somewhere out in the bowels of USPS is a roll of E100 which escaped the box (which THEY mangled) between here and the lab it was going to. When I switched to XTOL for a while I would actually test a clipping from a film leader each time to make sure the developer hadn’t gone south since the last time. And shooting large format more now, well that’s just an exercise in masochism at times, but worthwhile nonetheless!
The trick is learning from the errors. I know some things to watch for now. If I make the same mistake over and over, then that’s on me.
Yes! Like aviation! Learning from errors, and letting it go. Times makes it perfect. The old art of analog media counts a lot on experience, which digital medias usually suppress. Thanks for your comment!
I’ve gone through a similarly heartbreaking experience after my photography roadtrip through the American Southwest—all 35mm film rolls had tens or hundreds of spots on the film emulsion, basically making them useless. Fortunately, I had backups shot on digital, but this experience has really made me gravitate back towards the reliability of digital cameras and made me less likely to ever rely only on a film camera for a photography trip.
Yeah, I’m determined. I am going to Japan in April and I was going to bring only analog and tons of film. I changed my mind. I’m carrying my digital camera and one film camera too. Now, about the film spots you had: perhaps it was x-ray related?
No, I had the film hand-checked, and X-Ray may cause fogging but I don’t think it can cause spots. I asked around and the consensus was that it’s likely lab’s fault. It could also have been a problem with film.
Sorry for your loss. The voiceover and the BGM felt tense and serious in this post, but there was determination in your voice in the last paragraph. This post also shows that photographers should be more valued. It seems that technology made everything easier but took away the rewarding experience of analog photography. However, digital photos are still capable of preserving good memories, like this pic we took, even though the process does not feel as rewarding.
I am so sorry about your loss! And I agree with something said here: I would never shoot film again if that happened to me! Maybe some things, when possible, should be taken twice, on film and on digital? I don’t know. I just congratulate you for your resilience on this accident I would still be crying!
Thanks Neuro! I think that it’s important to resist! Everybody always told me “careful not to switch orders between blix and dev”. And since then, I’m super careful with this. No one told me “careful when chemicals are close to their exhaustion time, because it’s a sudden death”, otherwise I would keep an eye on. Living and learning makes it better, giving up is not an option! 💙💛
Oh what a nightmare, happens to everybody at some point doesn’t it but you hope it’s not after a cool trip. I’ve always been unsure how much potency the chemicals lose sitting in a bottle after being opened so my new go to plan is to shoot a load a load of rolls, store them in a fridge and then develop them all together with fresh chemicals. It means I have to wait longer to see my images but I don’t mind so much because I get nice surprised when I see images I had forgot I had taken
Yeah. I was wondering about the same. Do you know if the dev suddenly dies? Or it fades out? I find it hard to believe that the dev just died from time, I must had done something to it. Like pinged a drop of blix or so.
Not sure, I think the problem is that the dev loses potency in the bottle but there’s no way of telling if quickly so it’s best to leave it in the bottle for a short a time as possible. It’s the exposure to the air in the bottle that affects the chemicals so there are special bottles you can get which squash down to reduce the amount of air in the bottle
I'm gonna be honest, that's exactly why I never got my hands around C41. I am happy to do BW every once in a while with HC110/Rodinal or Amaloco74 for T-Max and Delta films. But the majority of the films are being sent to my lab whose owner became a friend over the years.
I don't wanna spend a few hundred or thousand bucks for a vacation, film shooting, cameras, and all that just to fuck up at the very last step at the kitchen sink. For me that is not worth it. If I have had that experience I would probably stop shooting film for ever,-)
You're da man!!
I do agree though with the conclusion of your post!
Thanks Hans! I believe that on the last developing I poured the blix back into the dev bottle, killing it completely. I’m still unsure if a Dev would be compeltely dead like that for no reason. It wasn’t light leak for sure, as the whole manipulation of the films were made with super care. The whole developing was carefully made because of the nature of the film subjects (trip abroad, etc.) — it must had been done inadvertently in a previous dev session.
This is very relatable. I began my darkroom journey developing HP5 in Ilfosol 3. It's an excellent developer, but when it dies, it is a sudden and complete death. I lost a roll or two in this manner and decided it wasn't a good fit for me. I prefer to develop my film as soon as possible, so shelf stability of the developer is a big plus. For black and white film we have HC110 and Rodinol, with near limitless shelf life. But for color film, there isn't a good option, is there?
That’s one question I had, about the sudden death. I thought that it would be just be gradual, as the previous session ran kinda ok! But after doing some research, I indeed found that it’s almost a binary thing. It’s like on/off. Very impressive!
There’s also a chance that I poured the blix back to the Dev bottle during the previous session. I think I’ll have to start recording myself with a GoPro when developing, for troubleshooting things like these. Like a dashcam.
I’ve been burned by C41 too many times. Thankfully I have an awesome lab in my neighborhood with great prices on film as well. I do all my black and white, do my scanning, even do ECN2 because I have the dry chemicals to mix fresh developer every time. But C41, I’m happy to let my local lab do it for me.
Yikes, the ultimate bummer and then some. So sorry you lost your work and the visual reminders of your memories. 😞
Oof, that hurts. You make a great point though. When you have a successful final image in film photography, that means there was a whole chain of decisions that were made and executed properly to get to that point. Any one of those steps could result in an unrecoverable loss. Even if the end viewer isn't aware of all the steps, you know and take pride in accomplishing your mission.
Yeah. I had that idea yesterday when I was writing the blog post. I think that writing is very good to internalize these things! Thanks for visiting and commenting!
Definitely relatable. I’ve had rolls lost to bad developer (crystals in your R09 = replace it) and user error. Somewhere out in the bowels of USPS is a roll of E100 which escaped the box (which THEY mangled) between here and the lab it was going to. When I switched to XTOL for a while I would actually test a clipping from a film leader each time to make sure the developer hadn’t gone south since the last time. And shooting large format more now, well that’s just an exercise in masochism at times, but worthwhile nonetheless!
The trick is learning from the errors. I know some things to watch for now. If I make the same mistake over and over, then that’s on me.
Yes! Like aviation! Learning from errors, and letting it go. Times makes it perfect. The old art of analog media counts a lot on experience, which digital medias usually suppress. Thanks for your comment!
I’ve gone through a similarly heartbreaking experience after my photography roadtrip through the American Southwest—all 35mm film rolls had tens or hundreds of spots on the film emulsion, basically making them useless. Fortunately, I had backups shot on digital, but this experience has really made me gravitate back towards the reliability of digital cameras and made me less likely to ever rely only on a film camera for a photography trip.
Yeah, I’m determined. I am going to Japan in April and I was going to bring only analog and tons of film. I changed my mind. I’m carrying my digital camera and one film camera too. Now, about the film spots you had: perhaps it was x-ray related?
No, I had the film hand-checked, and X-Ray may cause fogging but I don’t think it can cause spots. I asked around and the consensus was that it’s likely lab’s fault. It could also have been a problem with film.
Sorry for your loss. The voiceover and the BGM felt tense and serious in this post, but there was determination in your voice in the last paragraph. This post also shows that photographers should be more valued. It seems that technology made everything easier but took away the rewarding experience of analog photography. However, digital photos are still capable of preserving good memories, like this pic we took, even though the process does not feel as rewarding.
Yes Thom! I agree. I think that losing these 3 rolls at a glance opened my eyes to the fact that digital is a safety ground!
I am so sorry about your loss! And I agree with something said here: I would never shoot film again if that happened to me! Maybe some things, when possible, should be taken twice, on film and on digital? I don’t know. I just congratulate you for your resilience on this accident I would still be crying!
Thanks Neuro! I think that it’s important to resist! Everybody always told me “careful not to switch orders between blix and dev”. And since then, I’m super careful with this. No one told me “careful when chemicals are close to their exhaustion time, because it’s a sudden death”, otherwise I would keep an eye on. Living and learning makes it better, giving up is not an option! 💙💛
Oh what a nightmare, happens to everybody at some point doesn’t it but you hope it’s not after a cool trip. I’ve always been unsure how much potency the chemicals lose sitting in a bottle after being opened so my new go to plan is to shoot a load a load of rolls, store them in a fridge and then develop them all together with fresh chemicals. It means I have to wait longer to see my images but I don’t mind so much because I get nice surprised when I see images I had forgot I had taken
Yeah. I was wondering about the same. Do you know if the dev suddenly dies? Or it fades out? I find it hard to believe that the dev just died from time, I must had done something to it. Like pinged a drop of blix or so.
Not sure, I think the problem is that the dev loses potency in the bottle but there’s no way of telling if quickly so it’s best to leave it in the bottle for a short a time as possible. It’s the exposure to the air in the bottle that affects the chemicals so there are special bottles you can get which squash down to reduce the amount of air in the bottle
one of many reasons why I'm still not bold enough to process C41 at home & will probably just stick with digital for color
That’s a very valid point!!
I'm gonna be honest, that's exactly why I never got my hands around C41. I am happy to do BW every once in a while with HC110/Rodinal or Amaloco74 for T-Max and Delta films. But the majority of the films are being sent to my lab whose owner became a friend over the years.
I don't wanna spend a few hundred or thousand bucks for a vacation, film shooting, cameras, and all that just to fuck up at the very last step at the kitchen sink. For me that is not worth it. If I have had that experience I would probably stop shooting film for ever,-)
You're da man!!
I do agree though with the conclusion of your post!
have a great weekend!
Thanks Hans! I believe that on the last developing I poured the blix back into the dev bottle, killing it completely. I’m still unsure if a Dev would be compeltely dead like that for no reason. It wasn’t light leak for sure, as the whole manipulation of the films were made with super care. The whole developing was carefully made because of the nature of the film subjects (trip abroad, etc.) — it must had been done inadvertently in a previous dev session.
Haha, shit happens ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This is very relatable. I began my darkroom journey developing HP5 in Ilfosol 3. It's an excellent developer, but when it dies, it is a sudden and complete death. I lost a roll or two in this manner and decided it wasn't a good fit for me. I prefer to develop my film as soon as possible, so shelf stability of the developer is a big plus. For black and white film we have HC110 and Rodinol, with near limitless shelf life. But for color film, there isn't a good option, is there?
That’s one question I had, about the sudden death. I thought that it would be just be gradual, as the previous session ran kinda ok! But after doing some research, I indeed found that it’s almost a binary thing. It’s like on/off. Very impressive!
There’s also a chance that I poured the blix back to the Dev bottle during the previous session. I think I’ll have to start recording myself with a GoPro when developing, for troubleshooting things like these. Like a dashcam.
Sorry about your film, though. It’s such a bad feeling.
It is! Such a bummer.
I’ve been burned by C41 too many times. Thankfully I have an awesome lab in my neighborhood with great prices on film as well. I do all my black and white, do my scanning, even do ECN2 because I have the dry chemicals to mix fresh developer every time. But C41, I’m happy to let my local lab do it for me.