Film completely being removed from the 35mm canister?

[Canoneer]

Guess it's worth talking about anyway. If you open up the camera and see the film is still stretched across, close the camera immediately. Then, put it in a changing bag where it is protected from any light to open the camera, remove film, and in the case reported by Silly Goose, roll up the film holding only the edges and put it in a light-proof container like the black ones used by Kodak with the gray cap. Tape the container up and label it and hand it over to the developer.

If you don't have a change bag then use a large heavy double closed winter coat all zipped and buttoned up with the neck opening clothes-pinned shut. Working in dim light, just in case.

Lately I've been opening cameras in the changing bag with the film not quite rewound so as leave a bit of film leader sticking out of the cassette. I scratch the camera name & number on the leader as a reminder of what camera the film came out of. One of the hassles of having too many cameras and forgetting what was where.

 

[StoneNYC]

If you opened the back of the camera for more than say 5 seconds, even the stuff that's wrapped deep in will probably be ruined.

I'm not making fun of you, but you seem to not understand the basic concept of how film works, when the shutter opens, light comes through and hits the film, and exposes it. That image then needs to be developed in chemistry to be permanent. If you expose the entire roll to light before the film has been chemicals processed, then you "over expose" the images that were on the film and so you ruin the film.

Opening the back in daylight and looking at the film is a silly move you silly goose you..

Next time, if you don't have a dark bag, wait until night time, turn off all of all the lights in the house, and go into the darkest room and then sit in the darkest closet with the door closed, take your camera and a flat head screwdriver.

Then using only your feeling fingertips and no light whatsoever, you open the back of the film take out the film spool/canister and stick the screwdriver into one side of the canister, as you turn the screwdriver it will start to roll the film back into the canister, try and go in the "logical" direction, ya know away from the opening side. That will roll it all back inside.

Once there's no film sticking out anymore, then it safe to turn the lights on and look at the camera and trying figure out what went wrong.

If the sound is not roll back into the canister when you're turning the screwdriver, then you have snapped something inside of the canister, in this case it's best to take the whole camera down to your lab, not a local pharmacy, but I mean a real lab where they have a real dark room, and ask them to take the film out for you and develop it for you. If on the other hand you have your own dark bag and developing chemicals, you can just take it all apart and loaded into a spool to put in a developing tank and develop it yourself, but either way you do not want to expose the roll to light before it has been processed. Remember that the shutter speed is something like a fraction of a second usually, so if you open the back you're ready exposing the light for more than a second which usually will ruin at least the portion that is exposed to the light directly, the stuff that is wrapped up will slowly also absorb light and become ruined so that's why I said five seconds, because eventually the whole entire roll even deep inside it's wrapped up will become exposed given enough seconds of time.

I hope some of that made sense.