Lost an entire roll because I didn't check the film door latch...

I was at the county fair last summer, shooting with my Pentax K1000. Got some really nice shots of the ferris wheel at dusk and the prize pigs in the barn, probably 24 exposures total. When I went to rewind the film at the end, the rewind knob just spun with zero tension... my heart sank. Opened the back and the whole roll was just sitting there loose, completely exposed to light. Turns out the little latch on the camera door had popped open halfway through the day and I never noticed. That was the day I learned to always give the camera body a gentle squeeze after loading film, just to double check. Anyone else had a similar gut punch from a simple mechanical fail?

2 comments

2 Comments

jason5625d ago

Man, that hurts just reading it. So did the latch actually snap shut again after you opened it or was it just loose the whole time without you knowing? I'm asking because I've had a similar thing happen with an old Canon AE-1 where the latch felt fine but the foam seal was so dried out that the door didn't fully close. Just wondering if you checked the foam after that happened or if it was purely the latch.

wren3075d ago

Oh man, the foam thing is such a sneaky issue too, right? I had a Pentax K1000 that I swore was fine for years until I noticed a tiny light leak on a roll of Portra. Turns out the foam around the hinge was basically dust, and the door was just resting against the metal with no seal at all. I replaced it myself with some adhesive craft foam from a hobby store, which felt janky but actually worked perfectly. The latch on that camera always clicked shut, so I never would have guessed the foam was completely gone without looking really close. Did you swap out the foam on your AE-1, or did you just live with it and hope for the best?