Unpopular opinion: that $40 film changing bag from Amazon ruined 3 rolls before I figured out my mistake

Margaret Nelson · 2026-10-11T12:50:03.207448+00:00

So I bought a cheap changing bag to load my own film at home and thought I was saving money over paying the lab $12 a roll. Three rolls in a row came out fogged and scratched, and I blamed my camera, then my chemicals, then the light seals on my Canon AE-1. Turns out the bag's zipper had a tiny gap and my hands were sweating so bad inside it that the film got damp and stuck to itself. I lost about $60 worth of Portra 400 plus a cassette of HP5 that I had shot at a family cookout in Savannah. My fix was dumb simple, I put the bag in the fridge for ten minutes first and taped over the zipper seam and now I get clean rolls almost every time. Has anyone else had a cheap bag leak light on them or am I just unlucky?

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Unpopular opinion: that $40 film changing bag from Amazon ruined 3 rolls before I figured out my mistake | Analog Photo Fixing - HW Forums