I shot a roll of 36 color pics (actually 37) in a M6TTL, proceeded to take off the bottom plate, saw something strange inside, and suddenly realized that I had forgotten to rewind the film. I quickly put the plate back on.

Has anyone done this before? (This is #3 in my growing stupid M6 pet tricks list, after #1 draining the battery on the first day, and #2 leaving the lens cap on while taking some carefully composed exposures.)

My real question is: What percentage of the film is salvageable? (How many good prints can I get out of the 37?) I left the bottom plate off for maybe 15 seconds.

Thanks for your experience and wisdom.

Feeling a bit stupid at the moment! (I hope I'm not the first to have performed this advanced technique.)

-- Vikram (VSingh493@aol.com), June 02, 2002

Answers

Vikram, you probably lost between 4-6 shots, although depending on the intensity of light, you could have fogged additional film. Just develop it & see. It won't be a total loss & you might be pleasantly surprised. I suspect we've all done the same thing at least once. Usually there's a corrolation between the importance of the film & the stupidity of the photographer, right?

-- Patrick (pg@patrickgarner.com), June 02, 2002.

Have it processed, with instructions to not print any fogged frames. Some of them may be passable, many will not be - depends on the brightness of the light, etc etc

-- Charles (cbarcellona@telocity.com), June 02, 2002.

Why not just have the film developed? Look at the negatives, and if you find any worth printing, have them printed. This way, at least you'll have a chance to minimism your loss.

-- Glenn Travis (leicaddict@hotmail.com), June 02, 2002.

I've done this and only lost 3-4 frames, as others have mentioned - I was very surprised at how well the M4/6 takeup 'tulip' protects the film wrapped around it.

As mentioned also - just have the lab ignore any fogged frames.

-- Andy Piper (apidens@denver.infi.net), June 02, 2002.

I have had this happen on other 35mm cameras..Mostly when I have set a camera aside for a few days! If the film was tight; only a few (2 to 6) frames get ruined.. In direct sunlight maybe more...If the camera was packed in airline bags then the film maybe loose on its core...then maybe alot gets ruined.........This same thing happens with movie film on regular 8, 16,35,70 mm cameras ....

Some of the weird ESTAR film bases will pipe in light alot more thru the emulsion...Also the anti halation coating varies with the film type....

The frames that get fogged may have weird effects like a reversal or the image; if the image was way underexposed..on the toe of the DlogE curve...This happened to me in 2nd grade when I dropped my 620 box camera; and a micro small piece of bakelight chip came out of the camera's two halves......I went on shooting my mighty 12 exposures; the light leak made all the underexposed areas on my negatives as positives!

-- Kelly Flanigan (zorki3c@netscape.net), June 02, 2002.

Vikram:

I did this last fall. All of the frames came out, some a little fogged, but they were family shots that were better than nothing. Give it a shot. For the price of processing and printing it is a cheap gamble. Unlike buying from ?-bay.

;)

-- Mark Johnson (logical1@catholic.org), June 04, 2002.

Thank you all for your advice. I got the film processed and printed, and out of 37 pictures, 30 came out fine, so the captured moments weren't lost. The rest had varying degrees of spoilage. The Leica film spooling is very tight, considering that I had the camera bottom plate off and held it under a 100 Watt lamp to look inside for a bit, trying to pry out a piece of lint. So thanks again.

-- Vikram (VSingh493@aol.com), June 09, 2002.