Photography - Manufacturing Defects That Made It Out To The Real World: If you hang around any hobby long enough, you will find something that evaded the factory QC process and got out...

Shutterbug57

If you hang around any hobby long enough, you will find something that evaded the factory QC process and got out into the hands of customers. What photography-related items do you have or have you seen that came with a manufacturing defect.

I have some Fuji Acros medium format film that was marked 135 rather than 120.

Shutterbug57

The shot is not much to write home about. I was trying to dial in the development time for a bunch of out of date film a friend gave me. The “scan” was a digital (iPhone) snapshot of the neg still in the protective storage sheet, but you can clearly see the “135” and tell it is not 135 format film.

Bill_de Loc: US

Are you sure that the 135 was supposed to indicate the size of the film and didn't indicate something else? Do you know what the 17 is for?

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Pablo8 Loc: Nottingham UK.

Shutterbug57 wrote:

The shot is not much to write home about. I was trying to dial in the development time for a bunch of out of date film a friend gave me. The “scan” was a digital (iPhone) snapshot of the neg still in the protective storage sheet, but you can clearly see the “135” and tell it is not 135 format film.

Well, you obviously didn't try to load it into a 35 mm camera. You could not see the 135 number till the film was processed.

GGerard

My guess from looking at the Fujifilm professional data guide page 79 is that the "135" is the emulsion number which can be 101 to 999.

Shutterbug57

Bill_de wrote:

Are you sure that the 135 was supposed to indicate the size of the film and didn't indicate something else? Do you know what the 17 is for?

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No, not positive and based on GGerard's post, I may be quite wrong in assuming that is film size. The 17 is some sort of counter/reference mark, but it does not line up with 6x4.5 and would be even more out of synch with the larger size negatives. That is consistent with Acros & HP5+. Tri-X has 6x4.5 markings on one margin and 6x6 markings on the other.

Shutterbug57

GGerard wrote:

My guess from looking at the Fujifilm professional data guide page 79 is that the "135" is the emulsion number which can be 101 to 999.

Good info, learn something new every day. Thanks.

Shutterbug57

Pablo8 wrote:

Well, you obviously didn't try to load it into a 35 mm camera. You could not see the 135 number till the film was processed.

I may not be bright enough to know the emulsion numbers, but at least I figured out which type of camera could shoot the film :)

Pablo8 Loc: Nottingham UK.

Nothing was mentioned on the box, but when I opened the 5 x 4 sheet film in the darkroom, I realised they were all Portrait format. I really wanted some of them to have been Landscape format. So I went back and bought another box. Glad I did, they were all Landscape format in the second box. Wonder why the outer box does not indicate this.

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Have a Laff!!

Bill_de Loc: US

Pablo8 wrote:

Nothing was mentioned on the box, but when I opened the 5 x 4 sheet film in the darkroom, I realised they were all Portrait format. I really wanted some of them to have been Landscape format. So I went back and bought another box. Glad I did, they were all Landscape format in the second box. Wonder why the outer box does not indicate this.

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Have a Laff!!

Good chuckle!

LFingar Loc: Claverack, NY

Pablo8 wrote:

Nothing was mentioned on the box, but when I opened the 5 x 4 sheet film in the darkroom, I realised they were all Portrait format. I really wanted some of them to have been Landscape format. So I went back and bought another box. Glad I did, they were all Landscape format in the second box. Wonder why the outer box does not indicate this.

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Have a Laff!!

Judging from the videos sent in to TV news stations, Facebook, etc, apparently a lot of people have the same problem with cell phones!

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Shutterbug57 wrote:

No, not positive and based on GGerard's post, I may be quite wrong in assuming that is film size. The 17 is some sort of counter/reference mark, but it does not line up with 6x4.5 and would be even more out of synch with the larger size negatives. That is consistent with Acros & HP5+. Tri-X has 6x4.5 markings on one margin and 6x6 markings on the other.

Well, there are different 120/220 film formats with different numbers of frames per roll. See the chart, Frame Sizes, in this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/120_film.

There are no standards across manufacturers for film edge markings. Refer to manufacturer literature (PDFs) found on their web sites. Some of the codes are used for quality control purposes. The manufacturer wants to be able to pinpoint problems to a specific master roll and slit roll, if you call and complain about a problem... It helps them fix their issues.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

LFingar wrote:

Judging from the videos sent in to TV news stations, Facebook, etc, apparently a lot of people have the same problem with cell phones!

Even worse, you can inadvertently lock your cell phone in vertical orientation. OR, you can use an app that is only vertical. My mother-in-law gets confused...

leftj Loc: Texas

Shutterbug57 wrote:

If you hang around any hobby long enough, you will find something that evaded the factory QC process and got out into the hands of customers. What photography-related items do you have or have you seen that came with a manufacturing defect.

I have some Fuji Acros medium format film that was marked 135 rather than 120.

How about the new Nikon and Canon mirror-less cameras?

Riggson Loc: Tucson, Az

Not exactly a defect, but I have a 28mm Vivitar made by Cosina that's labeled with a serial number QMOD instead of the normal 09xxxx pattern. QMOD is short for Quality Management & Organizational Development, so it appears to be a preproduction sample. Too bad there's no way to find out how it got out into the 'wild'.