c/analog-camera-club

That $18 bulk loader from a garage sale turned out to be a money pit

Picked up an old bulk film loader at an estate sale in Dayton for $18. Figured I'd save on rolls by loading my own. Took me 4 tries to get the film spooled without fogging half the frames. By the time I burned through a 100 foot roll of HP5, I had maybe 60 usable shots. The savings basically went to wasted film and chemistry. Has anyone else gone back to buying pre-rolled after a bulk loader experiment?

A friend's advice about pushing film ISO ruined 2 rolls of Tri-X

Buddy said to rate my Tri-X at 1600 to get more contrast in overcast light. Followed it. Got crushed shadows and grain like sandpaper. He shoots digital mostly, should've known better. Anyone else get bad film advice from people who don't develop their own?

Hit 100 rolls developed at home, now I wonder if I'm just cheap or actually good at this

Found a tiny scratch on my negatives and almost lost the whole roll

Was scanning a roll from last Friday's walk around Piedmont Park and noticed this thin line running through three frames. At first I figured it was a lab error, but then I checked the camera and felt the pressure plate. There was a tiny burr on the edge, probably from when I dropped it on a sidewalk last month. I buffed it smooth with fine sandpaper and a q-tip, but now I'm paranoid about every new roll. Has anyone else chased a defect like this and fixed it without needing a full camera service?

My old Pentax meter was off by 2 stops and I never knew

I was talking to a guy at the camera shop in Portland who checked my K1000 against his Sekonic and found the needle was lying to me. All those rolls of Portra I thought were just flat? It was underexposed the whole time. He showed me how to test it with a known light source and a simple app on my phone, took like 10 minutes. Has anyone else run into a meter that drifted and had to learn their camera's quirks all over again?

TIL stop down metering on my OM-1 saved 8 shots of slide film

I kept blowing highlights on Portra 400 until I tried closing the aperture and metering the shadow at a swap meet in Portland. The old timer selling lenses swore by it, and my last 3 rolls came out with tones I actually want. Anyone else trust their built-in meter less after trying this?

Old timer at the camera swap meet told me to stop metering for shadows

I tried his advice on a roll of Tri-X in Golden Gate Park last week and my highlights finally stopped blowing out, has anyone else had luck trusting the sunny 16 rule over a light meter?

Found my old darkroom light meter in a drawer, took me 20 minutes to remember how to use it

Cleaning out my basement last weekend and found my Sekonic L-398 from the 90s. I've been shooting with my phone for so long that I actually had to pull up a manual on my phone to figure out the dial again. Made me think about how I used to know that thing like the back of my hand. I was at a wedding in 1998 in Cleveland and the power went out during the reception, no battery meter needed, just that dial and some guesswork. Got the shots anyway. Anyone else still keep their old handheld meters around even if they don't use film anymore?

Roll 40 finally gave me a keeper, and I learned something about my meter

I've been shooting a Pentax K1000 since March, and I just finished my 40th roll of Tri-X last Saturday. About 15 shots came out way overexposed, even though my light meter said the settings were fine. Has anyone else had a meter drift slowly like that, or should I just replace the battery and see?

The $78 darkroom timer that turned out to be a glorified egg timer

I dropped real money on that fancy digital timer for developing prints, but it drifts like crazy past 90 seconds, so now I'm back to counting Mississippi's with my phone, has anyone else found that cheap mechanical timers hold up better than these new electronic ones?

The neighborhood photo lab changed hands and my negatives came back different

I've been dropping film at the same place on Foster Ave for like 4 years, no issues. Last month they got new owners and I swear the developer mix is off, my shadows are all muddy and the highlights blow out way easier. Same camera, same film stock, same settings, I even shot a roll of the exact same street corner to compare. It's night and day, the old lab gave me clean scans with proper contrast, now everything looks like it was pushed two stops. I asked the new guy about their chemistry schedule and he just shrugged, said they change it when it 'looks dirty.' Has anyone else dealt with a lab changing hands and losing their mojo? I'm thinking about just doing my own black and white at home, but I've got like 12 rolls of color I don't want to waste on bad processing.

Is fixing scratched lenses worth it or should we just embrace the haze?

I was talking to my buddy Dave at the Oakland camera swap meet last Saturday and he said he never bothers repairing scratched glass, he just shoots it and calls it character. Meanwhile I spent 3 hours with polishing compound on a 50mm f/1.8 and it came out maybe 10% better, but now I'm second guessing if the time was worth it at all. Some folks treat lens damage as a creative tool, others see it as a defect that kills sharpness and contrast, and I genuinely don't know which camp makes more sense for a hobbyist. Where do you draw the line between a happy accident and a ruined shot, especially when replacement glass runs $80 or more?

My darkroom timer got replaced by a music app from a friend

I was complaining to my buddy Dave about how my old Gra-Lab timer kept sticking during development, and he said why not just use a metronome app on my phone. I laughed at first, but then he showed me how he sets it to 60 BPM and counts each beat as a second, so he never has to look at a screen in the dark. Tried it last weekend with a batch of Tri-X and honestly it felt way more natural, plus I can set different rhythms for different steps like agitation patterns. I still use the real timer for long exposures, but for dev times under 10 minutes, the beat counting just keeps me in the zone without fiddling with knobs. One thing I learned is to put the phone face down so the light doesn't fog anything, and keep the volume low enough to hear but not blast. Anyone else ever switched to audio cues instead of visual timers in the darkroom?

I stopped developing at 68 degrees and my negatives got sharper

Everyone in the club kept telling me to stick with the standard 68 degree development for my Tri-X. I read an old Kodak datasheet from 1972 that said higher temperatures with shorter times can actually reduce grain if you agitate less. Last month I tried 75 degrees for 6 minutes with only two inversions per minute and the difference in sharpness was obvious on my 11x14 prints. Has anyone else experimented with temperature outside the standard range and seen better results, or am I just fooling myself?

Rolled past 100 rolls developed and I stopped caring about the count

I hit 100 rolls of film developed at home about two months ago, which sounds like a milestone you'd celebrate. But honestly, it just made me realize I was keeping count for the wrong reasons. I used to track every roll in a spreadsheet, noting the film stock, developer, and time like it mattered. Then I got to 100 and thought, what did that number actually prove? I've still got plenty of rolls that came out blank or underexposed, including three from a trip to Portland last spring that I messed up in the tank. The ones that worked didn't depend on my count, they depended on me paying attention to temperature and agitation. Now I just write the date on the canister lid with a sharpie and move on. Has anyone else hit a number like this and realized it was just a number, not a skill level?

Developed the same roll two ways and the lab scan killed my home setup

I shot a roll of Tri-X 400 last month at my sister's wedding in Nashville and split it in half after cutting the film. Developed the first half in Rodinal 1:50 for 13 minutes at 20C, like I always do at home. Sent the second half to a local lab in town that uses Ilfotec DD-X and let them scan it on their Noritsu. The lab scans came back with way more shadow detail and way less grain than my home scans on my old Epson V500. I thought I was doing fine with my setup but the difference was pretty obvious when I put them side by side on my monitor. Has anyone else had a similar wake up call comparing their home developing or scanning to a pro lab's work?

Shot a whole roll with a yellow filter and it totally changed my contrast

I compared a roll of HP5 with and without a yellow filter on the same street corner in Brooklyn, and the difference in the sky and brick textures was night and day. Has anyone else found a filter that just clicks with their favorite film stock?

Spent 45 minutes chasing a light leak that was just the foam seal

I was shooting a roll of Tri-X last week and every single frame had this thin streak on the edge. Spent an afternoon checking my film backs, rewinding slower, even swapped lenses. Finally realized the light seal foam on my Canon AE-1 had turned into sticky dust. Replaced it with some craft foam in ten minutes. Has anyone else spent way too long troubleshooting something that dumb?

Spent $80 on a lens that was full of fungus

Picked up a vintage 50mm 1.4 from a thrift store over in Portland. Looked clean in the case but got home and the glass looked like a tiny forest. Anyone ever successfully cleaned fungus off a lens element or is it just a paperweight now?

Hit 200 rolls developed in my bathroom last night and it finally clicked why I started

I've been tracking every roll I develop at home since I started 2 years ago. Last night I hit number 200, which is way more than I expected. I used to think I needed a proper darkroom to get good results, but after 200 rolls done in my tiny bathroom in Austin, I realized the imperfections from my makeshift setup actually give my photos character. Anyone else keep a tally of how much film you've put through your own development setup?

Took me 4 hours to figure out I was loading film backwards

I got a new to me Canon AE-1 Program last month and could not figure out why my first two rolls came back completely blank. I thought something was broken with the camera. I spent like 3 hours online reading forums and watching videos about shutter issues and light leaks. Then I finally realized I was putting the film cartridge in with the spool knob facing the wrong way so the film never actually advanced. It took me a whole Saturday afternoon and I wasted two rolls of Portra 400 just to learn to look at the little arrow on the film canister. Has anyone else done something this dumb with a new camera or am I the only one?

Hit 100 rolls developed this year. Didnt expect that.

Just counted my film log and im at exactly 100 rolls developed at home in 2024. Mostly HP5 and Tri-X. Didnt realize I shot that much until I pulled out all the neg sleeves. Anyone track their yearly total?

After 6 months of fighting with a $40 bulk loader, I finally tried wetting the film before loading it into the cassette and it worked perfectly on the first try.

Anyone else deal with film jamming in those cheap plastic bulk loaders, or am I the only one dumb enough to not try this sooner?

Someone told me my negatives were too contrasty and I had been shooting Tri-X at box speed for 3 years without realizing

Turns out pulling it one stop and developing a minute less fixed my highlights blowing out, anyone else ever get handed a reality check about their film stock settings?

Just spent 45 minutes trying to fix a light leak that was just a loose back latch

I shot a whole roll of Tri-X last week and every frame had a fogged edge. Tore apart my Pentax K1000 looking for pinholes in the seals, only to realize the latch on the bottom was just a hair open. Anyone else spent way too long on something that simple?