What have you lost, did you ever find it again, how devastated were you?

[Paolo Bonello]

On a scale of 1 to 10 I scored 11 tonight for a few hours.

Was going through my neg sleeves to find some negs I wanted to print. I realized that a very important chunk of them were missing. Over 20 full sheets of negs had vanished.

It had been many months since my last visit to the darkroom facility that I use. They were my most cherished negatives and were all together in a bundle that day so I could pick a few for prints. My fear was that I had left them somewhere between packing up my gear at the darkroom and home. I recall I was being rushed out of there because it was near closing time so I opted against putting them back into the ring binder but I didn't remember that part.

In my haste I stuffed them in an empty paper satchell I had in my bag. I looked in there at least half a dozen times. It felt just like a packet of print paper so I never opened it fearing I might have not sealed the internal liner and I'd fog the paper. Anyway it has a happy ending and I began to breath normally again once I checked inside the cardboard satchel.

Bonus points: My study is really tidy now. Sometimes you gotta clean up to find stuff.

 

[Keith]

I had/have a 17.5 f0.95 Nokton somewhere. I bought it when I had my OMD and it cost near $1100.00 ... and I can't find it! I don't need it for anything other than I've decided to sell it ... I've searched through all my gear and it ain't a small lens that can hide!

Maybe there's happy ending to my story ...... if not! :bang:

 

[Ronald M]

A visoflex 3. I took the eyepiece off and gave it to a a needy person. It is in the house SOMEWHERE.

In the meantime, I am using demo one I got from the Leica rep around 1896. It fits the M9 and M6.

 

[Sparrow]

... I once returned to the car to find my four year old son and his younger sister missing ...

 

[sanmich]

gear, almost any gear, is replaceable.
I feel your pain loosing a bunch of good negs.

 

[Canyongazer]

While a student at Brooks Institute of Photography I placed my Weston Master V meter on the roof of the car and drove off. Back tracked with no luck. 40 years later it may still be somewhere off Modoc Road, Santa Barbara California.

Also, there's a 135mm lens for the Mamiya C-330 I've not seen for years.

Still, I agree that prized negative loss is worse.

 

[raid]

... I once returned to the car to find my four year old son and his younger sister missing ...

Did you find them later on?

 

[sreed2006]

I'm afraid I could add another page or two to this thread just listing the things I have misplaced and either never found again, or found them exactly where I had left them, but only after very long and worrisome searches.

Tripod mount plates, grey cards, background material, lens caps, light meters, and even cameras, have all given me fits.

A Stouffer White Balance Zone System card, for example, took me over a year to find, after looking in every single location in the house except where I had put it, which was in the carry bag for my studio strobes. :bang:

I actually ordered another tripod plate to replace one I had lost, and within a day or two found the lost one. It was on a camera, in a camera bag.

Now, I make a deliberate effort to be more organized, and to put things in a designated spot after every shoot. It takes a few minutes, but can save hours and hours of time.

 

[raid]

I go through such an "ordeal" almost each week. I cannot find some adapter, or sometimes, some lens. I emptied out my camera RF shelf on December 25 to find all lenses. I dusted them off, and then I put them back ordered by lens size. The next step is to take out all camera bags. They are stuffed with gear too. I have somewhere a small bag with ltm adapters. I miss it.
I don't think that I have ever lost any camera gear.
When I was doing projects on lens comparisons, and RFF members sent me their valuable lenses, I always returned the lenses to their owners with all acessories.

 

[back alley]

still searching for my long lost virginity...

 

[Sparrow]

Did you find them later on?

... almost straight away, but even twenty years on it gives me a cold shiver

 

[Paolo Bonello]

Thankfully i found my prized negs after a few nervous hours.
Was kinda like getting back to your car and the kids are gone (as Sparrow mentioned) but then you wake up and it was just a bad dream.

 

[f16sunshine]

still searching for my long lost virginity...

What do you need that for?

 

[raid]

I guess, it is about lost things that never were lost.

 

[Paolo Bonello]

I always thought losing virginity was a win.

 

[Canyongazer]

Oscar Levant famously claimed he knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.

 

[Spavinaw]

Was driving a car home I had just bought. Parked by a large white truck and spent the night in a motel. At breakfast at the motel I looked out the window and there was the truck, but my car was not parked beside it. I finished breakfast as calmly as I could and went outside. Low and behold, there a few parking spaces over was another similar white truck with my car parked beside it. What a relief! Part of the building had blocked my view of my car and other truck at breakfast.
Also, I once saw this on a card at a friends house, "I lost my virginity, but I still dearly love the box it came in".

 

[willie_901]

I lost some mundane photographs of a rare 1968 Porsche 908 factory race car that was special built for hill climb competition.

I know the owner and had free access to document the car. I have searched high and low for the negatives/prints with no success. I had to give up because I have no idea where else to look.

Race cars from this era were built for extreme light weight and driver safety was irrelevant. Shockingly narrow aluminum tubing and an extremely thin fiberglass shell was all that stood between the driver and immovable objects. The car delivered 350 HP while weighing a bit over 1,100 lbs. With proper gearing the top speed was 200 mph. When you look at the car with it's body removed, it's hard to believe anyone would accept the risks required to race it all out. I started to photograph the car because it was rare, but before the session was over I focused on the horrific combination of fragility and speed.

The car was sold to a collector in Japan.

 

[mdarnton]

I'm pretty sure there is an OM1 with a zoom on it somewhere in my house. Zero sense of loss but it I am curious how it's evaded me for at least a decade.

 

[back alley]

What do you need that for?

don't need it...just like to visit with it for awhile...