I rounded off 2010 by delveloping a batch of C41 films, a job which I had to keep putting off for months. It's been a very thin year for me for various reasons but I was at least hoping for a few pleasant suprises from these 8 or so films. I should have known better
A few films were shot in a mutilated Vivitar UW&S left over from a wide aperture mod experiment the results of which totally failed to impress. Trouble was I didn't spot this and shot away several rolls over several months, resulting in loads of over exposed and out of focus snaps.
Another was a roll of very expired, really crap cheap ISO400 print film which for some reason I'd loaded into my ME Super and then forgotton it was in there. Horrible results.
The next was a roll of 120 which I'd loaded into a Diana clone which I'd forgotton had an out of focus central area and was sharper at the edges. Damn.
Last but not least, a year or so ago I added some black tape to the frame edges of a matchbox pinhole camera just to get straight edges for a change rather than the usual ragged cardboard frame edge. The tape came unstick inside the camera obscuring big chunks of the frame. Rather than do sensible thing and dispose of the camera, I put it to one side ensuring that I would use it again this year... and then reload it for yet another roll! Lightleaks, happy accidents etc I can cope with. Two more totally ruined rolls I can't!
I can't put any of these mistakes down to technical faults or bad luck - it's all down to my own stupidity. Just got to make sure 2011 isn't like this - to start with at least it's going to be one camera, one roll at a time - less room for "senior moments"!!!
I think this matchbox photo sums it up....