Just for kicks - there's bound to be some interesting stories out there about darkroom experiences (OK - so this may only involve the old farts...?) Personally - I was assisting teaching a darkroom class at a local college. There was one particular student who always seemed to wind up with grossly fogged negatives. I took a look at her camera and didn't see anything obviously wrong with it, so I decided to watch her as she processed her negs. I stood in the darkroom as she was winding her film on the spool - and she said something like "I can't see a thing" - then she bent over and wound the spool right at the crack of the door (hey - it wasn't a "real" darkrooom - we had a make-shift darkroom - so there was a minute crack of light coming through the bottom of the door) - by doing this she could "see" what she was doing - like the entire concept of a "darkroom" had escaped her. - SAME CLASS - a guy using the same crack under the door was counting how many sheets of paper he had left. (I should have recommended that they started dating) - the weird thing - these two usually had the best images (compositionally - by the "rules") of the entire class - overlooking the extreme fogging they both sustained.

I once shot a whole roll of images without ANY film in the camera......after the 40th or 50th exposure I realized something was wrong......

My worst in the darkroom was when I was printing an 8"x10" for a class, I didn't know there was a sheet of 4"x6" paper on top. When I chucked the sheet in the pan, out came the pic with a huge white rectangle in the middle. The small sheet was also exposed so now the thing looks like a jigsaw puzzle hehehehe... :-) Back in school there were a group of students who bought a big box of photopaper to split among themselves. They opened the box and started distributing the sheets of paper in broad daylight... d-oh! (*

Dunno, haven't really had any 'bad' bad experiences - when I was a young'un (about 9?) and the photography was my dads hobby, I was printing a picture of my sister in the cupboard under the stairs - exposed the print, then dropped it where it fell into the gap under the door (yep, we had one too!). Anyways, developed it, and it was real wierd - background clear, sister perfectly fogged with 'trails' eminating from one side. Had them going at school for WEEKS that I'd photo'd a ghost..... (",)

Hahaha. These are actually funny! OK. I've made this mistake sorta two time. 1. Processed slide film using the WRONG chemicals. Pretty neat everything came out with this golden color! 2. Processed color film using b/w chemicals EVERYTHING came out with this weird blue-green tint. The best I could do was get it reprinted as sepia. Bsteph

I haven't had a darkroom since I was a kid. stuff like the cat pushing the curtain aside, or mom turning on the light in my bedroom to see what I was doing, that kinda thing. But I do have some really ugly stories. 1. Finished up a flight (yeah, I'm a pilot) with IR film and didn't fix it right. When I squeegeed the roll after it came out of the tank, all the emulsion came off. 2. Made a ton of 8x10 prints for a group that I had spent a summer with on a Civil Air Patrol training camp in Oak city... Sent them all out. Noticed after I mailed that mine was turning yellow. They all wrote back of course. Seems I forgot the fixer. Ok, that's when I decided that darkrooms weren't for me. But I had a lot of fun experiences too and enjoyed the daylights out of it.

when i fisrt had a go in a dark room i tried printing on the wrong side of the paper.also did the timed test strips the wrong way round!

So these stories have to be technical? And not involve partners of the opposite sex?... Think I've come across most of those mentioned so far... Remember loading a roll of film onto the reel once, and saying to myself, "Hey, this just doesn't look right..." Then asking myself the next obvious question. Think I've pretty much managed to supress all the others. These new digi people are sure missing a lot of fun.

Dunno why - but whenever I roll a spool in the darkroom - I have to keep my eyes closed...? (Kind of a "listen - do you smell that?" sort of thing).