06/19/2026
WRONG FILM and WASTED EYE SIGHT!
This is only an average photo that I probably normally wouldn't share but there's a funny story behind it... along with a not so funny story.
First day of my October trip back in 2024... Day 1 of 14.
The last time I shot previous to this image was the spring of 2024 so we're talking 5-6 months prior. I had Ilford Delta 3200 Film loaded and I was shooting black and white scenes at night. Mostly structures in the dark illuminated by 1 or more different light sources.
After finishing a roll, I had more shooting planned for the night so I loaded up another roll of this film and moved on. Well, I got to where I was going and ended up not being inspired by the conditions so I called it a night. I never ended up shooting that roll and it was left loaded in my camera.
October comes around and I completely forget that I had this roll loaded in my camera. I DID however notice that I still had my ISO dial locked in to 3200 instead of 100 which is what I normally shoot the Ektar film. Forgetting that I had a fresh roll of Ilford Delta 3200 loaded up, I flipped the ISO dial back to 100, moved on and started shooting these falls.
The difference between ISO 100 film and ISO 3200 film is 5 stops of light sensitivity. The 3200 is 5x more sensitive then the 100 so the time it takes to burn the image onto the film emulsion happens 5x faster than on 100 speed film. Therefore my shutter speeds need to be 5x shorter.
I shot this entire roll thinking it was color film at ISO 100. After finishing the roll, I opened up my camera to remove the film and load the next roll in and noticed that I shot the entire roll on the much faster and more sensitive B+W film.
At first I cussed to myself and thought the roll was a loss but after thinking about it for a second, I remembered there's a dark room process called "Pull Processing" where you can "under-develop" the film in the chemicals which cuts back on the photo-chemical reaction time... essentially under-exposing the negative and recovering the detail in the images.
After pull processing the negatives, I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to recover the entire roll as if it were shot at ISO 100.
Funny as well is, if I was shooting these falls at ISO 3200, the water movement would have been frozen completely... but since I was exposing it for ISO 100 speed and under exposing it in processing, I STILL obtained this smoothed over look to the rushing water that you see here.
So now the part about lost eye sight...
I am near sighted. I wear glasses to be able to see far. I also need them to look through my view finder and manually focus the camera on the scene since the scene is still "far". The viewfinder of the camera doesn't compensate for my poor eye sight so when I look through the viewfinder, I still need my glasses to get proper focus.
Well, October can still be warm and when you're balancing around on broken down logs in the middle of a rushing creek, you tend to sweat and your glasses fog up. After setting up my tripod and getting the focus dialed in, I take them off and put them down on my camera bag, which was also balancing on that same log in the middle of the creek.
After taking my exposure, a couple different images. I turn around to grab my glasses to move on and they were gone. They must have slid off of my camera bag and into the river.
In this picture, this creek looks shallow and slow moving but it's much larger, faster and deeper than it looks here. If my glasses hit the water, they were way long gone and down stream at this point. I spent maybe 20 minutes walking the shoreline and
through the river best I could, hoping to spot them but it was a lost cause.
So that was day 1 of 14 to start my trip. Lessons learned. Always mark your camera with the correct speed film and always put your glasses in a safer spot and NOT on a backpack on a log in the middle of a rushing river.
If you are wondering where this is... One of the many sections of Kakabika Falls SE a little bit of Lake Gogebic on the west side of the UP.
Mamiya 7ii, 43mm on 6x7 Ilford Delta ISO 3200 B+W Film ~ Pull Processed for ISO 100.
Thanks so much for sharing if you choose and have a great weekend!
