Stupid things you did

[Spider67]

Normally I stop trains with my right hand, while I write a poem with my left.
I discern the bouquet of 123 sorts of whine while simultaneously watching at OOF areas and recognising 345 lenses and their year of production by the bokeh....Also I am modest beyond comprehension

Then there is today....

I take my Retina IIIS with me, the lens is mounted it's my trusty 50mm f 1.9.
But somehow the 1.9 does not let itself to be chosen....:bang:
I turn and tweak. I ask people if I can photograph them and they have to wait while I need so much time preparing the camera I could have easily built a pinhole camera in that time. I watch through the VF....well at least the parallax correction works like a charm. The frame's filling out the greater part of the VF but I see it wandering diagonally through the VF.....enough with that. I try again to get to f1.9. Whatever I do it always ends up f4:bang:.....I try the 85/4 nice little frame inside the other one....Then I try the other lens again. Darn still it's not possible to get from 4 to 1.9 or at least 2.8.

Then I realize it's the 28mm f4 I have taken and not the 50mm.....
Yes that was my story of utmost ignorance and blissful stupidity...😱

What's yours

 

[SolaresLarrave]

Stand up very proudly with my M6TTL in the middle of a blues concert, compose and focus and then fiddle with the aperture ring of my 90mm lens. Why aren't the values changing in the viewfinder? I turn and turn and turn until I hear a voice:

"Your lens cap is on!"

I took it off, thanked the stranger (who had an ear-to-ear grin), took the photograph and sat down... for a loooooooong time.

Talk about feeling dumb.

 

[Keith]

Wandering around at a gallery opening recently taking pics with my M8 which was temporarily hanging by my side on a Y strap (highly recommended) while I had a much needed glass of red wine.

Walking throught the assembled patrons scanning the crowd and deciding who may be my next victim and walked straight into a knee high concrete block. No I didn't fall but the jolt jerked my arm sufficiently that all the wine flew out of the glass up into the air and rained down all over me and the M8!

😱😱😱

 

[35mmdelux]

Have another drink!

 

[SolaresLarrave]

Keith... there goes your thoughtful guy image! 😀

Bump. This thread needs more stories.

 

[gavinlg]

Forgetting to lock my 5d in to my manfrotto tripod while at work.
Trying to wrestle open a gate with said tripod and 5d in one hand, gate latch in other.
Tripod slipping out of hand and both me and client watching 5d + 17-40mm f4L fall onto concrete floor from chest height.
Watching 5d + lens bounce on concrete.
Me picking up 5d and trying to act like it's not a big deal.

(the camera + lens ended up being fine - hood took the brunt of it)

 

[payasam]

Taking a picture of two men from several yards away because the lens was 50mm but the accessory finder was set to 90mm.

 

[nikon_sam]

I set up a Mamiya m645 along with a fill-flash/w umbrella...checked my set-up with the Gossen meter with Flash head...checked and rechecked the set-up, focus, background and everything else one should do...
This all took place in someone else's backyard along with about 15 young high school couples that were getting ready to go to their Prom...oh, did I mention their parents are there too...
Well, I shoot maybe 6 or 7 happy couples and am now tearing down my little production...the kids are gone and a few parents are left...
It's at this time my wife asked how many shots did I get...I check the camera's counter and it's telling me it still at #1...my heart just sinks...I quickly go over what could have happened and remembered that earlier in the day I was checking things out and had set the camera for Multi-Exposures...
The camera never even exposed the first frame...it never even got to the first frame...
Needless to say I felt like such a fool and lost a bit of sleep that night...
We don't talk about that night and I'm pretty sure it was my wife that told my daughter what happened because she never me asked about the photos...
Lesson learned for me...if something doesn't feel right, question it...when I loaded the roll of film that night it didn't feel right...two turns of the advance knob and it stopped...I knew that wasn't right but I never questioned it...

 

[Roger Hicks]

No film in the camera...

Cheers,

R.

 

[Ronald_H]

Never shot with no film in the camera, but I accidently opened backs a few times (ouch), or worse still, shot with the film not properly on the wind-up spool. You see that counter click to 39 and know you have scr*wed up.

Had my Nikon FE on a strap, hanging from my shoulder (I bought it like that). The previous owner did not fasten the strap correctly so it slipped, bounced and broke. Film was ruined too.

Dragging my whole 'studio' (strobes, stands, reflectors) to someone to do a shoot. Finding out that the IR trigger does not work in bright daylight (DOH!) and then realizing that your sync cords are at home....

But the worst was buying the Nikon D200 + a do-all 18-135 DX lens, to replace the D70. Ok, the D200 is very nice, but I never use that lens and the number of pictures that are actually better because of the D200 can be counted on the fingers of a blind butcher's hand...

 

[Muggins]

Hearing everyone else does dumb things always makes me feel so much better!

I've done many of them... lens caps, film not winding on, you name it, but the one that keeps coming back to haunt me is a horrible mental block when using a scale-focus camera. Just because everything is in focus in the viewfinder does not mean that it is in focus... I think it's related to SLR usage, where if the vf is in focus then my image should be (please don't pick holes in that statment - I'm trying to state it simply!) and I look out for it, but every now and again the little barsteward still bites me, and I forget to check the scale. :bang::bang::bang:

Adrian

 

[pakeha]

so far only high post count folks ,mmmm
Well at least most of yours had a recovery , me arrive Sheremetyeovo all keen and eager, in fact so keen i got of the plane and left a two week old FE2 under my seat, got to Metropole hotel before i thought about it.
There was i positive though, on departure i found a gold seiko watch in the mens, ha, and that came in handy when i ran outa cash in Ceuta.
If anyone sees Yuri the retired aircraft cleaner in Moscow tell him i want my camera back.

 

[ItsReallyDarren]

Packed my bag with my usual set up; 2 camera, 2 lenses. Packed my light meter. Packed my water canteen. Packed pens and paper for notes. Packed a sweater.

Took an hour long train to get to the city. Open bag to load cameras...

Forgot to pack film.

 

[Sparrow]

Over the summer I got up before dawn drove sixty odd kilometers to a place called Lake Korrison, then in a totally unsuitable vehicle 3km out onto a spit of exposed sand, I had to walk the last bit in blazing sun and 40 degree temperature. All to photograph a narrow channel that drains the lake into the sea.

I took 30 or 40 shots on two bodied, I got to the end of the roll on one body and despite being desperate to get back to the car and avoid too much heat I rewound immediately (been caught by that before)

I made it back to the, by then sauna like, car retraced my step and eventually made it back to a tarmac road, on to civilization and straight to the nearest café for one of those beers they had in “Ice Cold in Alex”

I relaxed started looking at a map picked up the camera and took the bottom off …. the wrong camera, the one with the part used film still on the take-up spool

 

[degruyl]

Prewinding the M6 and putting it in my pocket.... (this camera needs a lock out switch).

Often forgetting to take the lens cap off. Once forgetting to check the roll for take up and getting to 39... at an event. Some important shots were missed because they were on that roll, but otherwise not so bad.

My worst, and best, was walking out of an air conditioned hotel room with an ice cold camera in southern mexico. The humidity outside was about 100%, give or take, and instantly there was condensation on the lens. I took about five or six shots before realizing that if I could not see through the viewfinder, then the lens was probably also fogged. The pictures that I thought would be ruined turned out beautifully. Happy accident.

 

[HMFriedman]

2nd roll in my new-to-me M6 didn't affix to the take up reel. A morning's shooting on one frame of leader... On the plus side, I have the pleasure of imagining the perfect composition, exposure, and focus of every shot without the pain of the reality of 90% + of my images.

 

[Iceseven]

It happened two or three times that after taking more than the 36 exposures I could do with my film, I wondered why I can still take pictures. After trying to rewind the film, it took only two or three windings and the film was all the way rolled back. I put the film in the camera, but it didn't have sufficient contact with the spool, so the winder wouldn't pull the film at all. Bummer.

 

[ZeissFan]

Do you mean in life or just photography? The list for me is long on both accounts.

But in photography, I've forgotten viewfinders, left the lens cap on, double-exposed film, forgot what film was loaded into the camera, didn't properly load the film (happened just once -- actually learned my lesson) and a number of other not-paying-attention things.

 

[DGA]

I set up a Mamiya m645 along with a fill-flash/w umbrella...checked my set-up with the Gossen meter with Flash head...checked and rechecked the set-up, focus, background and everything else one should do...
This all took place in someone else's backyard along with about 15 young high school couples that were getting ready to go to their Prom...oh, did I mention their parents are there too...
Well, I shoot maybe 6 or 7 happy couples and am now tearing down my little production...the kids are gone and a few parents are left...
It's at this time my wife asked how many shots did I get...I check the camera's counter and it's telling me it still at #1...my heart just sinks...I quickly go over what could have happened and remembered that earlier in the day I was checking things out and had set the camera for Multi-Exposures...
The camera never even exposed the first frame...it never even got to the first frame...
Needless to say I felt like such a fool and lost a bit of sleep that night...
We don't talk about that night and I'm pretty sure it was my wife that told my daughter what happened because she never me asked about the photos...
Lesson learned for me...if something doesn't feel right, question it...when I loaded the roll of film that night it didn't feel right...two turns of the advance knob and it stopped...I knew that wasn't right but I never questioned it...

I had the digital version of this story.
A friend of mine asked me to take pictures of his wedding (along side the paid photographer, I must mention).
Once I got to the garden where the event took place and after kissing the bride and groom, I took out my (then new) 20D with 17-40mm and started
taking pictures of the place and the guests.
After I was pleased with the wide angle shots (I looked at each on on the LCD and even examined histograms),
I switched to the 70-200mm and had some wonderful portrait images of the friends and family.
Everything worked great and I even was referred as "The photographer".

After an hour of shooting wonderful photos, I took a short break and a glass of Icy water (I never drink while on duty).
One of the guests whom I'm familiar with came to the bar for a refill.
I remembered I took a great shot of her with another friend and I just had to show her that image.
I switched the camera on and pressed the [Play] button.
Then the camera said to me something I'd never forget:
The LCD screen was black and in the middle there was a dull-laconic sentence:
"No CF Card"
:bang::bang::bang::bang::bang:
(Of course! stupid! It remained at home, on the table, after playing with the camera the day before!)

 

[Merkin]

A few years ago, I took a long weekend to stay up all night and sleep during the day so I could do a series of long nighttime exposures. Delta 100 film, sturdy tripod, cable release, and a Seagull TLR. I shot a roll over the course of the weekend, and when I went to process the film on tuesday, none of the shots came out, and a lot of them had these really strange light trails running across the film. I had cooked the shutter the week before by changing the shutter speed after I had advanced the film and shutter. The light trails were caused by me flicking my lighter in front of the camera between shots to be able to see to adjust the camera settings and to check for dew on the lens. D'OH!