Here is my entry in the "I can't believe I did that!" cOMpetition:
As we have at last had some decent weather in the UK, I decided to take out
a newly-acquired pre-loved OM body for a test roll of film. When I got back
home, I started to rewind the film, and thought "Mmm, this is stiff". I
continued winding, and thought "Mmm, this IS stiff". Wound some more and
thought "My g*d this is stiff". I continued winding until suddenly the
rewind
knob came loose from the rewind crank. Now I started to panic. I used the
film advance lever to wind on the film -- that worked and confirmed that the
film was still attached to the spools at both ends. At this point I was
completely nonplussed (my dictionary defines that as "reduced to hopeless
perplexity"), so I opened the back and removed the film, which was indeed
still engaged at both ends. Since I don't have a darkroom, the contents of
the film were lost. It was only after I had done this that I twigged what I
had done.
If you have ever removed the rewind knob on an OM body (I had done this on
a previous body), you will know that the knob is screwed on to the rewind
crank in such a way that rewinding a film tends to screw the rewind knob
more tightly onto the crank. The fact that it had become unscrewed meant
that (gasp!) I was rewinding the film the wrong way (that is, anticlockwise
when viewed from the top of the camera). No wonder it was stiff! I
refitted the rewind knob (easy if you use the right tools/procedure), and it
seems none the worse for its ordeal.
But I still cannot believe that I made such an elementary mistake. Doh!
-- from Cy in the UK
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