Topic: Stupidity in the darkroom

[Francois]

Something just happened to me while in the darkroom and I thought I'd share for a laugh.
Has anybody ever had their brain glitch while doing something you've done correctly hundreds of time?
Well, this afternoon was the first in a long time when it comes to darkroom blunders. Lucky for me, I caught it just in time so the negatives were properly salvaged.
I was developing a roll of Arista.EDU 400. It was a run of the mill process. After the developer, I did the stop bath; 30 seconds like usual.
But once it was done, I started to wonder if my old rapid fix was still good. So, I left the stop bath in the tank and took some time to do a film leader test. The fixer was fine as usual. So I took the graduate and poured it all in the tank, sealed the lid and proceeded to do the agitation. While doing that I kept wondering why the tank was so heavy all of a sudden. When the time was up, I started to suspect that something was off... so I open the lid to the tank only to notice it was full to the brim while I had only a single roll in there... oops.
I now had very diluted fixer and stop bath mixed... what to do?
I dumped it and had to re-mix some fixer to finish the job.
It looks like I didn't mess-up this time. The film is drying and there are actual images on it. Pfew!

[John Robison]

 My last major darkroom blunder (several years ago) didn’t turn out recoverable. I picked up the amber bottle I thought was developer and filled the tank. Imagine my surprise when I discovered I’d poured fresh rapid fixer onto my exposed undeveloped film. From that day on not only were the bottles labeled on the side but I put ‘D’, ‘F’, and ‘S’ on the caps also.

[grit]

What a timely post - I just blundered yesterday by loading two 4x5 negatives into the same side of the holder of my Stearman Press tank! (For those who haven't used one of these, it has two holders, and each holder has a baffle in the middle to keep the negatives separate; one negative should go on either side of the baffle.) Nice to know that at 40 my brain can still find plenty of new and exciting ways to screw things up. Fortunately, I loaded the other holder correctly and so managed to get two correctly developed negatives out of the process.

[Francois]

At least they weren't emulsion to emulsion so that's a relief.
And at the same time you discovered that with just two pieces of tape you could make the Stearman Press a 4 sheet tank

[jojonas~]

My last major darkroom blunder (several years ago) didn’t turn out recoverable. I picked up the amber bottle I thought was developer and filled the tank. Imagine my surprise when I discovered I’d poured fresh rapid fixer onto my exposed undeveloped film. From that day on not only were the bottles labeled on the side but I put ‘D’, ‘F’, and ‘S’ on the caps also.

a classic. I'm glad I've only done it once... or twice haha.

last week when I was about to pour out developer in the quite full 20 liter tank I came up with the bright idea to tilt i a bit to be able to fill it up more. ofcourse I lost the grip and a good amount of spent developer spilled out on the floor and on my hands. quite the mess on the floor and my hands but thankfully managed to atleast getting it all over my clothes and shoes 

[Francois]

At least you didn't manage to empty an entire C-41 machine on your parent's basement floor like Ethan Moses of Cameradactyl Cameras once did 

[jojonas~]

oh wow haha I had missed that! is it something new or did he do that before?

[Francois]

He did that when he was a kid, so it's a long time ago.
He's always had the entrepreneurial spirit. When he was in High School he managed to acquire a C41 machine and offered processing services.

[astrobeck]

Just last week I was developing some 120 in a Cinestill color kit and the developing tank slipped out of my hands after taking it out of the hot water pre-soak and the lid came off and the loaded wire film spool popped out of the floor!
I quickly put it all back together and developed it anyway, but as you might imagine the negs were terrible.
This is the first mishap I've had in quite some time.
There must be global gremlins about!

[jojonas~]

Gotta give you cred for continuing the development after that, astrobeck!