My negative carrier was upside down for 2 years and I never noticed

So Ive been printing 35mm negs for a while, maybe 200 rolls by now, all from my darkroom setup in the closet. Last week I swapped to a used Beseler 23C and the guys manual showed the carrier with the film base side down. I had it flipped the whole time, which meant my prints were always a touch soft and I kept blaming my lens. Has anyone else realized some tiny piece of gear was the culprit for months of so-so results?

2 comments

2 Comments

parker93810d ago

Ha, I feel that pain in my bones. I spent a whole summer chasing focus issues on my old Omega, swapping lenses and buying a cheap focus finder, only to realize my darkroom timer was adding a fraction of a second of exposure that threw everything off. It's like these tiny gremlins live in the dark just to mess with our brains, and honestly, I'm still not sure I have it right even now.

taylorc4010d ago

Man, that stings. Two years of blaming the lens when it was just a flipped piece of plastic. I did something similar with my enlarger timer, had the auto focus setting off for months and every print came out just a hair soft, kept thinking my negs were underexposed. It's wild how the smallest dumb thing can mess with your head for that long. At least you caught it, right? Some folks never do.