Well, I've finally figured this one out.

Do your 4x6 prints sometimes feature lighthouse towers without the ventilator balls? Do you sometimes lose the edge of say a building when you knew it couldn't have been your doing?

Depending on the developer I suppose, your 4x6 prints aren't always 4x6 but a bit smaller especially horizontally. So if you take a vertical shot of a lighthouse tower and cut it a bit close you may just lose those ventilator balls!

Measure your prints and compare them with your negatives and see if you are getting your full photo. If not, try to remember to allow a bit extra room along the edge(s)that don't get printed.

If you do find your missing [ventilator] balls are on the negatives, most photo finishers will do a remake on those photos for free.

For those of you who shoot slides, the other thing to remember is that a small percentage of the edges of what is really on your slide will be obscured by the mount itself. If you're really desperate for some special photo that's missing just a skosh on one edge or another, the slide can be unmounted and remounted to more carefully position it in the slide mount so that you can see that crucial millimeter or so of image. Slides are mounted in a machine and aren't checked to see if that ear or whatever is obscured by the mount!

And John's certainly correct, if they cut off your ventilator ball, they should reprint it for free or you should find another processor for your film.

Gary

Well I have returned some photos and asked that they be redone. But some of them I didn't realize what happened until way later. I could always have some prints made of just those pictures as it's cheap enough. It's just much easier to try to avoid it happening in the first place. I should have remembered this from years ago. On my first trip to Chicago after the Sears Tower had been built, in 1989 I believe, they cut off the top. So I went back and said, "Hey this is the tallest building in the world and I want it all!" They reprocessed the whole roll and the pictures were extra sized!

The Sears Tower is the tallest building in the world?? I'll have to remember that when I eventually get to Chicago! Hmm, I wonder if my 17-35mm lens will be able to get all of it?

Hey Terry, there's your excuse to buy a 14mm f2.8 ultrawide... for those "ultra tall" buildings!
Here's a website that lists the 100 tallest buildings in the world:

http://architecture.about.com/library/bltall.htm

And actually, the Sears Tower isn't the tallest bldg in the world. The tallest is currently the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia. They're 33 feet taller than the Sears Tower.

http://architecture.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.kiat.net/towers/

There are two still taller buildings in the works. One is in Shanghai:

http://architecture.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.mori.co.jp/forest/world/top%2De.html

...and the one that will eventually be the world's tallest is planned for India in the for whatever it's worth dept.

Gary

Note the year - 1989. The Sears Tower was the tallest then!

Sorry, Sue, missed the 1989... oh well...

Gary

Well, obviously, though, it's still ONE of the tallest!!

I believe that the Sears tower is still considered the tallest "occupied" building in the world as it has office/living space higher than any other building, the Petronas Twin Towers is taller because of the height of the antennas on top.