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Re: [OM] Mysterious brain beater -- explanation

Subject: Re: [OM] Mysterious brain beater -- explanation
From: AG Schnozz <agschnozz@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2002 13:33:38 -0800 (PST)
Hans was pretty close.

I bring up this subject because there really is a
lesson to be learned here.

I had shot an event with my OMs but only used about 10
shots on a particular roll of film.  Since this was a
freebee, I decided to finish the roll with personal
shots.

The event was shot using the OM-2S with NO DATA back.
In a standard SLR the film travels left to right. 
Several days after the event, I rewound the film, but
left the leader out so I could reload it in the IS-3. 
When reloading, I always put the shutter speed up to
the highest speed, and use the smallest aperture and
leave the lenscap in place.  I try to use a darkened
room to further prevent double exposure.  Always go
three or so shots beyond where you left off to account
for variations in loading.

Well, I did all this without any problems.  Well,
almost.  I accidently left the date stamp turned on in
the IS-3.  Since the IS-3's film loads backwards
(right to left) all the previous shots are now upside
down in the camera and getting date stamped as I fire
through the first half of the roll.  A couple of shots
had "the mark of the beast" right across their
foreheads.

Dumb!

This is the second time this year that the data back
in the IS-3 has haunted me.  The other occasion was
during a portrait session I needed to wrap it up with
the IS-3 because of battery failure (all of my
rechargable AA's were drained so I used the built-in
flash of the IS-3 to trigger the slaved studio
strobes). It was late in the evening, we were tired
and mamma and poppa of the senior portrait girl were
"hovering".

The pictures taken with the IS-3 were very
nice--except for the date stamp.  How unprofessional! 
What saved the day is that I have a tendency to give
myself plenty of cropping fudge-factor so every single
shot was usable with very minor cropping adjustment.

The picture she selected for the year-book couldn't be
cropped.  Gulp!  It looked like I'd have to scan the
neg and do some serious late-night photoshopping. 
Well, the senior pic was supposed to be B&W, so I took
the neg down to my darkroom, ratcheted the contrast up
to grade 4 1/2 and ran a test print.  The date
disappeared!  She was sitting backwards on a chair and
the date stamp was in the chair.  For some reason, the
poly-contrast paper and filters had muted out the date
stamp and it was completely gone.  The grain of the
wood looks a little unusual right where the numbers
were, but nothing either identifiable or even
observable.  Without comparing to the color proof
print, I'd never find it.  Definitely can't read it.

BTW, mistakes or not, this particular portrait session
has turned out to be one of my more profitable of the
year. Were at 600 wallets, 25+ 5x7s, 10 8x10s, digital
scans, a dozen B&W's and counting.  Almost justifies
the three sessions and five rolls of film it took to
pull it off.

Almost.

AG-Schnozz

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