I came back from a lovely holiday in sunny Queensland and sent 4 rolls of film off to the lab to be developed. With great expectations I go and pick up my film. 3 rolls more than meet these high hopes, but there was something very wrong with the 4th. The negatives were very dark and splotchy and my photos over exposed and hardly salvageable.
Bad Negatives
Bad Negatives next to normal ones from the same camera with the same film taken only days before
My first suspect: Heat
While I know most of the lomography community is wandering snowy streets and dreaming of a sunny day however down here in Australia we are having the hottest summer ever with temperatures of over 48 degrees Celsius recorded in the past few weeks. I keep all my film in the fridge until it goes in the camera but the end of this roll was unlucky enough to be exposed on a 30+ degree day. All the photos of the horses were taken on this day yet they seem the least affected, which to me seems strange.
My second suspect: The Lab
Living in the inner west of Sydney, I have many options when getting my film developed. theres the super high end, treat your negatives like gold, offered by Foto Reisl, down to the little man and his scanner in Newtown. I am a super poor uni student so when it comes to developing I send my photos to a chain who then sends them to someone else who develops them and sends them back. While it seems like an overly complicated process it only costs me $6 a roll so I’m not complaining. However, if someone in this process has opened my precious undeveloped 35mm cannister to the burny sun then I might think about taking my film elsewhere. to their defense though, all of the other three rolls were clean, unscratched and perfectly developed.
My last suspect: The Camera
I have grown to love my Nikon F80. I bought it in Prague for $100 to use as a light meter for a 1930’s Czechoslovakian TLR. However it became redundant for that purpose when I realised I owned a phone with a free app for that. For a while I considered selling it but then started to realise I really liked the fact i could load it with film, set it how i want it then push a button and the auto focus and light meter handle the rest. Its my lazy camera that I rely on for good photos, so the thought of it leaking light all over the place like my Diana is worrying indeed. But I don’t actually think it is the culprit. The photos above are taken with the same film in the same camera only days before and they are perfectly fine, but I suppose i won’t know until I buy more film and take more photos.
Do you have any ideas?
I’m still only relatively new to lomography and still finding my feet. I pick up cameras everywhere i go and try to get the best photos I can out of them, learning new things every time from how to get 12 pictures from a diana F+, to finding the right sized battery for a Bronica ETRS, to loading film properly in a Flexaret TLR and to figuring out what went wrong with my Nikon negatives. And maybe if I can figure out what went wrong I will be able to take more pictures like these
3 comments
asharnanae
How did you travel to queensland, was it by plane? Some airport scanners have been known to put strange marks on film. Though it just being the one roll, makes this seem unlikely.
Without seeing the negs, My first guess would be processing, those marks look a lot like ones I have seen from my own darkrooms when things have been developed wonkily, or two quickly by my students. But there again, heat can mimic that. Hodachrome boils film in all sorts of things to create colour hazes and the like.
Was it cheap film? I have had bargain film do weird things before.
How easily does your camera double expose? Because, could be unintended double exposure?
lastly, Do the markings cover the whole of the negative right to the edges and sprockets? and where on the roll is the worst effected area(s). If you could upload a pic of the negs themselves it would be helpful in diagnosis. :)
luciasrose
@asharnanae
Thanks for all your ideas. I've uploaded some photos of the negs to help- http://www.lomograph(…)os/17736763 and
http://www.lomograph(…)os/17736767
I went by air conditioned car, not plane so no scary x-rays. It was new lomography 100 iso 35mm slide film and i've never been bored enough to read the nikon manual so have no idea how to make it double expose.
asharnanae
It looks like they have been light fogged by something..... am i correct in thinking it's worse the start of the roll, and slowly gets better? thats what it looks like from the film numbers. I have seen the same thing in reverse when the back of a camera pops open, and the last frames are fogged, and it slowly gets better the earlier you go in the film. Does the emulsion side of the film appear to be milky looking, or is it normal, and just over exposed. Milky looking emulsion points to bad processing. I have seen this sort of thing happen in hand processing when people have forgotten to put the black plastic inner to the film loading spool in the tank, thus its not light tight, and fogs the film in the centre part of the tank, which would be the start of the film.