Maybe you can learn from my mistakes?
- thought I shot an entire roll of film until I got to frame 40 and realized the film had not been advancing since I started the roll. Now I am much more careful about winding up the slack and checking the rewind knob is turning as I wind.
- accidentally double-exposed a roll of film which was not fully rewound: the leader was still out.
- broken film in the camera trying to advance the film at the end of the roll. In fairness, this was with a panoramic 35mm camera so I was unsure of how many frames I should get on a 36 exposure roll.
- broken film in the camera trying to rewind the film, I did not know I had to press and hold the rewind button on the Miranda DR1.9.
- overexposed film by touching a rotating shutter knob during exposure on both the Leica IIIf and Miranda DR1.9.
- wasted most of a roll of 620 film in a folder by not checking the bellows for light leaks before using it.
- wasted a 24 exposure roll trying to cut the extended leader necessary for the IIIf. I kept cutting it, attempting to load it, mangled it, and had to cut it off and start again, until I'd used up more than half the roll and gave up.
- ran an entire roll of film through a Rolleiflex because I failed to slip it through the rollers which recognize where the film starts. I also tried to rewrap the film in a changing bag and managed to mess that up too.
- lost eight 6 x 9 cm frames from the end of 120 rolls since I was misindexing the rollfilm back on my Pacemaker Crown Graphic.
- lost many frames by failing to remove the darkslide on my Pacemaker Crown Graphic (now has bright orange duct tape to help remind me).
- lost many frames by failing to remove the lens cap on my Leica IIIf. I think I am going to put an orange duct tape flap on that as well that will be visible through the viewfinder...
- lost many frames by incorrectly loading film onto reels for developing - it takes practice, and I would still do it occasionally if I was rushing.
Of course it seems that large format shooting offers many new and exciting ways to miss or destroy photographs.
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Many of the above list are rather esoteric from the perspective of a 35 mm SLR 'snapshooter'... but, FWIW, I had the pleasure of mishap #1 on the list WITH THE VERY FIRST ROLL OF FILM in my mamiya/sekor, ca. 1973. I was - and am, to this day - very careful about that ever since.
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