Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/06/06
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Peter wrote: >Did someone experience this? How does one now handle the >embarrassing situation to explain to 24 people they posed for nothing? This is the kind of mistake that you will hopefully only do once.. mine was in College.. and fortunately it was no big loss.. I teach my photography students now (using Nikkormatts, some of which I have a hard time loading) to put tension on the rewind knob and then watch to see if it spins as they load the camera. It is a habit for me, I do it on my Leica Ms and Canon F1fn's every time.... I've caught many a misload by watching the rewind after I close the back... I use enough different bodies and am always changing film that the first thing I do when I pick up a camera is put a bit of tension on the film rewind.... if there is no tension... there is no film... I would highly recommend you tell the truth no matter what happened. I would never blame it on someone else like the lab who had no fault. You'll feel a bit stupid, but you'll take responsibility, have a clean conscience and you'll be a better example to the choir kids. Far too many people are unwilling to take the blame for their own mistakes these days... I would much prefer to lose a client or friend by telling the truth than lose one because they thought I was lying. Besides that, if they ask you what lab you use... you'll damage it's reputation and you always run the risk that the client or friend will know an employee there or the owner of that lab will live next door and the topic will come up at some point and you'll be caught wishing you had told the truth.... On a somewhat related point, I've known labs who cover up their mistakes by giving people a blank roll "developed but unexposed film" with a note that the film was not exposed to cover up their mistakes... I had a lab do that to a roll of mine I shot with my EOS 1n, It is impossible to misload and shoot the entire roll with that camera..... Those are labs I'll never go back to... Everyone has a bad day and we all make mistakes... I've taken family portraits on B&W film... thought I was shooting color slides and ran it through my E-6, which really killed it. I've done stupid things like not noticing that my background spot was about 4 feet off target... It was a rather unusual effect for the family portrait. I shot a outdoor family portrait once.... with 5 kids... I spent so much time working on arranging them and getting expressions right, I failed to notice a big ole Aloe-type plant was sticking out of the mother's head.... When I make a mistake, I try to contact the people involved immediately and tell them that I made a mistake and I would like to re-shoot whatever.... They may or may not ask what happened and if they do I tell them exactly what happened... but by taking the initiative as opposed to being on the defensive, I've not had anyone get really upset about it as we have always been able to get everything completed before their deadline. I have to run around and bend over backwards and I usually give them some extra prints and everything at no charge. (I'm a non-profit organization photographer and my "salary" is covered by people in the U.S., so I don't charge much to begin with) But in the end... everyone is happy and I hope I learn something else to never do again... Duane Birkey HCJB World Radio Quito Ecuador Duane's Photographs of Ecuador http://duane_birkey.tripod.com