How Not to Take Photos on Film

With film making a resurgence, especially among younger photographers, these are some of the critical mistakes I made while learning to use the medium that I had to learn the hard way. Throughout the video, I go through a few of them and will expand on them as well to hopefully help any photographers newer to film photography avoid making the same errors I did.

Learning the mechanics of a film camera cannot be emphasized enough when you’re getting used to it. I’m someone who rarely reads instruction manuals and would rather figure it out. Don’t be like me. Look up how to use things properly.

Now, if you’re a seasoned photographer who started on film and switched to digital, prepare to laugh at me. Actually, I encourage it. Fortunately, all of these happened before trying to shoot film for any job, as I wanted to iron out all the kinks first.

Make Sure the Film Is Secured

This sounds obvious. In fact, many of these, in hindsight, are. There is no worse feeling than when you think you’ve shot a full roll, then you start winding and realize that you never shot anything. You keep winding and winding, and your hopes slowly fade away, and all you’re left with is the memory of the shots you could have had.

It sounds super simple, but give that film leader an extra wind to make sure your film is secure, even if you lose one photo, because making sure it’s secure will actually save all your photos as opposed to getting the most out of a roll and ending up spoiling the whole thing. This was an incredibly humbling experience, especially as a photographer who’s been shooting professionally (strictly digital) for years. Suddenly, there was a lot more to learn.

Now I always make sure to have no doubts that the film strip is firmly on the spool, as I (obviously) never want that to happen again.

Don't Force It

If you’ve shot using an SLR film camera before, you’ll know there is this very handy small button on the bottom of the camera. This wonderful invention makes it so you can release the film leader and wind the finished roll back into the canister.

Now, if you’re an ignorant photographer learning to shoot for the first time and don’t bother looking up how to use the camera, you wouldn’t know this. Because I didn’t. So I started winding, and it didn’t want to go. So naturally, I gave it an extra tug and felt the entire thing give way. To my horror, as I popped open the back of the camera, the entire roll was out of the canister.

Now, if this does happen to you, here’s how I actually salvaged the roll. I closed the back immediately, trying to prevent any undue exposure. I went into a completely black room with some aluminum foil and an opaque container that the 35mm canister came in. With gloves on, I carefully unrolled the film and rolled it back up. I sealed it tight in tin foil, then packed it into the container and added some “Exposed Film” tape to the container. When I passed it off to my lab, I made sure to note what happened. As humbling as that is, it does make it so you can at least recover your photos, and fortunately, I was able to do just that.

Call this making the best out of a bad situation, but unlike some of the others, this was somehow recoverable. Now, the easiest way to mitigate this is just to simply hit that wonderful release button before you start winding, but I suppose you live and learn.

Loading Backwards?

This one is for my medium format shooters and has only happened once but makes me feel particularly dumb. Shortly after getting my first 120 camera, I loaded a roll and began shooting, only to wind it and realize that it was backward?

I was either distracted or clearly not paying attention while loading the back, and ended up putting the wrong side of the film facing the shutter, leading to, well…nothing. So again, I shot a full roll (or thought I did) of absolutely nothing.

Funny enough, this is when I thought I was over the hump of making mistakes with film cameras, as I had been shooting 35mm for some time and had started dipping my feet into the medium format realm. In short, I got cocky and thought I knew everything. Clearly not, as I would come to learn.

But this goes to show you, any time you get a new camera, just play around with it. Shoot a bunch of stuff to get a feel for it and read the manual!!!! Like I mentioned, fortunately, none of these issues were particularly damaging, as I did it all on photos that were just for me—no work, no test shoots, or creative projects, just playing around with cameras and ironing out the kinks. Fortunately, since a series of very humbling experiences, it would seem I’ve learned my lesson, but I’m careful not to think I know everything, as I know how quickly that can change.

I’m also glad that I’m able to laugh about these experiences because they weren’t ultimately detrimental. Hopefully, you’ve found the humor in this as well, and if you are newer to film photography, then I hope that this helps you to not learn these lessons the hard way. With all of these little silly mistakes, I don’t want to make shooting film seem intimidating. It’s ultimately a similar art form but, like any different medium, has its own nuances and learning curves.

Perhaps to make me feel better, or just for solidarity, I would love to hear if you’ve had any similar experiences, as it does seem most film photographers I’ve talked to have had at least one or two similar things happen. So if anything, I suppose I’m not alone?