Spidersnaps: The problem roll
Apr. 27th, 2023 09:40 pmMy troublesome first foray into a new film :-\
(ETA: [Checks tag count] Fittingly, it's my 13th roll)
With my sis and her family returning to the motherland for the first time since the pandemic this past February, I was due to take a beach trip to Pattaya with them (and mom), so I decided to change things up a bit and bring along some Kodak Vision3 250D for the ride, both in half-frame and full-frame :-) Emulsive.org's pseudonymous owner EM said of this stock: "Kodak 250D feels like the best of every colour negative film rolled into a single package. ... If I had it my way and I was some kind of worldwide dictator-in-chief, every man, woman and child would be required to shoot a single roll of this film at least once in their life." And beach means plenty of sun, meaning plenty of opportunity for 250D to shine, even with a point-and-shoot...
Except that as it happens, however, I ended up running into such troubles with this particular roll (shot full-frame on the Kodak M35) that only 26 of the 36 exposures turned out, with the first 7 or so exposures going missing :-\ After I took a shot of a river we were crossing on the van ride to Pattaya, the camera just wouldn't stop winding to the next exposure, and I realized that the film leader must have somehow slid off the sprocket tooth I hooked it on when loading the film :-O Now, I might be new to this art, but at least I knew enough that I'm supposed to keep undeveloped film out of the light, so I emptied my shoulder bag, put the camera as far down as I could, and opened the back to re-hook the film, which ended up involving pulling out the film all the way to the leader, before re-spooling and closing the back... and I had to do this all in the back of a moving van to boot :-\ As well as I'd like to think I did it, I would have expected at least some fogging, just not the pictures going completely missing :-\
(I suppose having, say, a jacket would have helped with this... see this example of someone improvising a dark bag from one; probably would have sufficed in my case to just stick the sleeves in the bag and try to keep the rest of the jacket on top of the unzipped opening)
And it happened again on our last morning in Pattaya, but this time, I managed to find a windowless bathroom at our hotel with its light switches inside, so I turned off the lights and entered a toilet stall, and did this same routine all over again (with the added twist of having to remove the cartridge to, well, un-twist the film while re-spooling), and thankfully, since the bathroom was relatively secluded, no one barged in and turned the lights back on :-)
And again, after my last exposure, I couldn't get the rewind button to go down, so back home I had to turn off the lights in my bedroom at night and shove my camera in the bottom of a backpack, open the back, nudge the film a bit and close the back again... Like I said, problem roll :-\ (I had no issues with the roll shot in half-frame, BTW)
Anyways, on to the pics...

This camera and film picture looks different because after finishing my Fomapan on the Silom Edge, I loaded the new film at the nearby Silom Complex, for this was where I was to meet my sis and family... but as noted above, the first few shots (which I shot in the Silom area) ended up going missing :-\

The first pics to come out in the scans were the ones taken at Pattaya Beach (ETA: I actually took a closer look at the film strip, turns out they scanned part of the roll in reverse order from the rest, so the first pictures to come out were when we arrived in Pattaya; this is the 2nd day)

Another hotel balcony shot (ETA: Came before the beach pic)

Airplane at the Terminal 21 Pattaya shopping mall

Street between Pattaya Beach and our hotel (not the Holiday Inn, the Amari next to it)

Action shot with one of my nieces jumping into the pool at the Amari

Tree at seafood restaurant with colorful lanterns hanging from it

My sister's family getting splashed by the Super Splash ride (a shoot-the-chute ride) at the Dream World amusement park (I last went to the park when it was still brand-new, before they took over rides from a closer-to-town amusement park that shut down in 2000, leaving just an out-of-place castle, that then became the centerpiece of a go-kart course, and is now about to become the centerpiece of a new night market)



Assorted flowering trees at my uni

Show DC shopping mall, on our way to sending my sister's family off at the airport

A masked giant statue at the airport (blighted by a lack of flash due to flat battery)

A glimpse of the airport control tower, taken from inside the airport

A different angle for the Sound of the Northeast statue at uni, plus a flowering tree

Rainbow crosswalk, previously seen in my half-frame 500T roll

University main entrance

Regular tree in a corner of uni

The film strip from the lab, note the black top two rows where the first several exposures would have been (and it looks like the last exposure on row two didn't come out in the scans either)
(ETA: [Checks tag count] Fittingly, it's my 13th roll)
With my sis and her family returning to the motherland for the first time since the pandemic this past February, I was due to take a beach trip to Pattaya with them (and mom), so I decided to change things up a bit and bring along some Kodak Vision3 250D for the ride, both in half-frame and full-frame :-) Emulsive.org's pseudonymous owner EM said of this stock: "Kodak 250D feels like the best of every colour negative film rolled into a single package. ... If I had it my way and I was some kind of worldwide dictator-in-chief, every man, woman and child would be required to shoot a single roll of this film at least once in their life." And beach means plenty of sun, meaning plenty of opportunity for 250D to shine, even with a point-and-shoot...
Except that as it happens, however, I ended up running into such troubles with this particular roll (shot full-frame on the Kodak M35) that only 26 of the 36 exposures turned out, with the first 7 or so exposures going missing :-\ After I took a shot of a river we were crossing on the van ride to Pattaya, the camera just wouldn't stop winding to the next exposure, and I realized that the film leader must have somehow slid off the sprocket tooth I hooked it on when loading the film :-O Now, I might be new to this art, but at least I knew enough that I'm supposed to keep undeveloped film out of the light, so I emptied my shoulder bag, put the camera as far down as I could, and opened the back to re-hook the film, which ended up involving pulling out the film all the way to the leader, before re-spooling and closing the back... and I had to do this all in the back of a moving van to boot :-\ As well as I'd like to think I did it, I would have expected at least some fogging, just not the pictures going completely missing :-\
(I suppose having, say, a jacket would have helped with this... see this example of someone improvising a dark bag from one; probably would have sufficed in my case to just stick the sleeves in the bag and try to keep the rest of the jacket on top of the unzipped opening)
And it happened again on our last morning in Pattaya, but this time, I managed to find a windowless bathroom at our hotel with its light switches inside, so I turned off the lights and entered a toilet stall, and did this same routine all over again (with the added twist of having to remove the cartridge to, well, un-twist the film while re-spooling), and thankfully, since the bathroom was relatively secluded, no one barged in and turned the lights back on :-)
And again, after my last exposure, I couldn't get the rewind button to go down, so back home I had to turn off the lights in my bedroom at night and shove my camera in the bottom of a backpack, open the back, nudge the film a bit and close the back again... Like I said, problem roll :-\ (I had no issues with the roll shot in half-frame, BTW)
Anyways, on to the pics...

This camera and film picture looks different because after finishing my Fomapan on the Silom Edge, I loaded the new film at the nearby Silom Complex, for this was where I was to meet my sis and family... but as noted above, the first few shots (which I shot in the Silom area) ended up going missing :-\

The first pics to come out in the scans were the ones taken at Pattaya Beach (ETA: I actually took a closer look at the film strip, turns out they scanned part of the roll in reverse order from the rest, so the first pictures to come out were when we arrived in Pattaya; this is the 2nd day)

Another hotel balcony shot (ETA: Came before the beach pic)

Airplane at the Terminal 21 Pattaya shopping mall

Street between Pattaya Beach and our hotel (not the Holiday Inn, the Amari next to it)

Action shot with one of my nieces jumping into the pool at the Amari

Tree at seafood restaurant with colorful lanterns hanging from it

My sister's family getting splashed by the Super Splash ride (a shoot-the-chute ride) at the Dream World amusement park (I last went to the park when it was still brand-new, before they took over rides from a closer-to-town amusement park that shut down in 2000, leaving just an out-of-place castle, that then became the centerpiece of a go-kart course, and is now about to become the centerpiece of a new night market)



Assorted flowering trees at my uni

Show DC shopping mall, on our way to sending my sister's family off at the airport

A masked giant statue at the airport (blighted by a lack of flash due to flat battery)

A glimpse of the airport control tower, taken from inside the airport

A different angle for the Sound of the Northeast statue at uni, plus a flowering tree

Rainbow crosswalk, previously seen in my half-frame 500T roll

University main entrance

Regular tree in a corner of uni

The film strip from the lab, note the black top two rows where the first several exposures would have been (and it looks like the last exposure on row two didn't come out in the scans either)