Your Worst Nightmare in Photography

[desmo]

On yr honeymoon?

I wonder what was on those films..............................

have you checked the porn sites?

😀

First time I ever travelled out of the country I went to Paris on my honeymoon (17 years ago). Spent an amazing 2 weeks there - had never experienced anything like it. Between my wife and I we had a dozen rolls of film or so. We weren't photographers then, so we took them to a discount place to be developed. A week later we came back for them and half of them were missing. When we asked about them, the place responded that they had no record of any other rolls than what we turned in and there was nothing else they could do for us. My wife and I still alternate between fuming and laughing over that one.

 

[raid]

What kind of photos were they? Hopefully, not "honeymoon photos" ?

 

[ch1]

Heck, I've been misfiring for thirty years! 😱

Recent ones:

1) Carefully stopping myself from trying to take the bottom case off of my R2S while standing and carefully going to a place to sit down and carefully removing said bottom case and carefully placed it down and carefully rewinding exposed roll and carefully removing same and carefully loading a new roll and carefully closing back and advancing two "spent" shots and carefully standing up and walking away only to realize I'd left the damned half case bahind - fortunately only twenty steps away and still sitting there waiting for me! Thank goodness we New Yorker's are honest! :angel:

2) Forgetting over the course of a week back in NYC that I really had already loaded film into my upstate F3 (on which I had replaced the "memory" plain back with a data back that I never look at!) and carefully removed the bottom case and popped open the camera back only to realize that: A) yes, it already had film in it, and B) I had put a box flap on the bottom of the case to remind me of that! :bang:

 

[FrankS]

We should have a special section for those, don't you think? 🙂

 

[Kin Lau]

Shooting a whole roll on our only morning in Venice on the canal only to realize "boy, that was a long roll". Opened it up to see that it didn't catch. Saved by the fact I did finish the roll on the trip back on the canal.

Having my wife lean the monopod + lenses mount on a raling and watch it slip into the water... that was about $300- worth of equipment. I did eventually fish it out after a couple of months.

 

[dostacos]

well I had one TODAY.

I have a Nikkor 85/2 that when I first shot with it looked like I was into Pointillism which was NOT the affect I was going for. So I sent it off with Spotmatic for a CLA, the tech cleaned it but was not sure if it was set up correctly. 2 weeks ago I tried it out and the shot at infinity looked good. Today I took it out to try it wide open, stopped down and close in.

AFTER I took the shots and dropped them off for developing I noticed the front ring was loose [I wondered why there was no dot to mark the apature settings on the barrel :bang: ]

so the last half of the roll may or may not come out and if they do I still won't know if the lens is saleable 😕 😕 and a little 😡

 

[FrankS]

Watching my Luna6F lightmeter bounce along the road behind my car after it fell from the roof where I had placed it while putting my other camera gear into the back seat. I still have the pieces and the meter is still responsive, but the main dial broke off from the top.

Ending up with grossly under-developed negs from a paid photo shoot because I hadn't learned yet that Diafine wasn't completely temperature independent. It does need to be at least 18C/68F.

 

[Bobbo]

Back when I was in high school, I was in Madison, Wisconsin. I was really sick...bad strep throat...and I ended up at a frat. After my first three shots of JD, I was quite a happy camper, so went on my merry way. I was walking towards the capital building, and I dropped my camera in the street. It got hit by a speeding cab.

Of course, I was drunk, and I was also poor. I was terrrified, and I picked up the camera. The vivitar 2000 flash was roadkill (no pun intended). The lens was dented up to the point where I tore it apart and made it a loupe.

The rewind knob bent on the camera...that was it. I took it off and hammered it back with a brick from a nearby construction site. It was good as new🙂

Have a nice night,
Bob Clark

 

[raid]

A friend asked me to take photos of his family as his parents came from the old country for a rare visit. I took along my trusted Rolleiflex TLR, and got back unsharp images. Turns out the mirror had moved and was not showing me correct focus.

 

[StuartR]

Two bad occasions:

1. When I was graduating high school I took a bunch of pictures of the final parties with my friends. Since I was not very interested in photography then, I did not really have any pictures of my friends before then. So I finally took a bunch of pictures, and I left the camera in my car, which was unlocked. When I came back, the camera was gone. I was so pissed. I would not have even cared if they left the film, but not only did they steal the camera, but my only pictures from high school.

2. The second one was this fall. My first time using a Hasselblad I loaded it like a normal medium format camera. That is, I had the light side of the backing paper facing me. Of course, loaded that way it means the backing is between the lens and the film. So, I went out all inspired to use the hasselblad, took some of my favorite pictures of the trip. They were all blank however, as the light never reached the film.

 

[x-ray]

About fouteen years ago or so I shot the launch campaing for the new Gerber baby formula before introduction. This was a very major shoot with a serious budget. I needed a grocery store that would allow mw to close the store and restock a large area with different products inclusing the Gerber baby food. I found a nice store and was able to pay the store for the lost revenue for the night and pay a rental fee for the use of the store for an entire night. I flew models in from out of town and the clients and art directors attended the shoot. I had makeup, stylist, assistants, and and a major lighting and restocking job. Years of experience is a better teacher than being 16. The job was to be shot on 4x5 transparency film. I brought 100 holders loaded with Ektachrome E100 dlt. and always backup shoots like this with medium format E-6. The shoot went great and the clients loved the polaroids. All was smooth and everyone went home at 4:30 AM. The next day I took about a hundred and thirty sheets to the lab and my roll film. Yes you know whats coming. I shot all the film in each setup at the same exposure based on polaroid and experience. I do this so that every frame or sheet is a perfect exposure and the best frame of the models isn't an over or under bracker. I'm ususlly never more than a third stop one way or the other. I had the lab pull one sheet and run it normal. It was perfect. I instructed them to run half and when it wwas out of the processor and it looked fine run the second half but hold the 120 E^. They didn't listen to me and ran it all. The first eight sheets were fine and then the machine went nuts. The next half of the fil was pushed two stops and the last half was pulled two stops. Fortunately the 120 wasn't rum. This was bad news because the cost of this job was well over $15,000. Fortunately the 120 came out fine a
when it was run later. The really good part was I didn't kill anyone and there were three excellent images in the good sheets of 4x5. I had worked with the art director for years and when I told him what had happened he looked at the good 120 and 4x5 and pick the three excellent frames and said " these are great, we'll mat them and present these as my pick of the shoot". He did and the Gerber folks loved them. Thank you Dave, I'll never forget you!


http://www.rangefinderforum.com/pho...500&ppuser=2450

 

[x-ray]

After fourty plus years as a pro you accumylate a lot of stories. About three years ago I was shooting a major shoot for an unnamed home improvement tv network. We rented a six thousand square foot and built a backyard. We brought in truckloads of dirt, paving stones, full size trees, shribs, fence, a large truck load of germinated wheat four inches high to be used as grass. My client picked the models (take note of this) and my assistant and I did the lighting and carried off the shoot. I guess Ishot about fifty rolls of 120 E6. I sent the film to the lab and it was excellent. The AD approved the shots and the set was struck. The job billed and I thought it was over. Wrong, the job wasn't over. When the big dogs got together over the light box and took a look at the film, I figure the janitor walked through and commented on how young the models looked. Bad thing to say. Now everyone agreed and guess what. Yess we rented the studio, redid the set (big big bucks) and hired older models (not my fault they were young). In the end this single shot cost about $20,000.


http://www.rangefinderforum.com/pho...500&ppuser=2450

 

[dgray]

My "honeymoon" shots only included such boring subject matter as the 100th anniversary of the Eiffel Tower and 200th anniversary of Bastille Day on July 14th 1989 - a celebration where I saw President Reagan and heard Stevie Wonder perform in person - quite a festival for a young boy away from the Midwest for the first time!

 

[remrf]

Aside from a wedding shoot or two that had way more stress than was called for I can't think of any REALLY bad days shooting.

But something happened about a week ago that I thought was funny....well after it happened.
I recently put together a Mamiya 645 system and was out shooting. A friend who also has a 645 warned me that one had to be very careful when closing the back of the camera. I had put the camera on the seat of the car while driving to my shooting location. I must have at least partially hit the release button on the back when transporting the camera. I set up, took a light reading and put on a cable release. I pressed the shutter release for the first shot and the back flipped open like a jack in the box. 🙄

 

[ch1]

My "honeymoon" shots only included such boring subject matter as the 100th anniversary of the Eiffel Tower and 200th anniversary of Bastille Day on July 14th 1989 - a celebration where I saw President Reagan and heard Stevie Wonder perform in person - quite a festival for a young boy away from the Midwest for the first time!

Unless I have my dates wrong - Reagan would've been an ex-President on July 14. 1989.

 

[dgray]

Yes, he was (by just a few months), but don't we customarily still attach the title "President" even after the term is finished?

 

[ywenz]

When I took my roll of Kodak Tri-X to target to have it developed in their Fuji machines. Whats dumber than myself, is that the stupid Target employee actually took the film and ran it thru their machine only to have it come out completely blank. Then my dumbass self started to doubt my newly acquired M6, thinking I got a broken unit.

 

[varjag]

A local chemical supplier once sold me hypo packed and labeled as sodium sulfite; I used it to mix a developer.

I still cringe when remembering what was on those two rolls..

 

[BJ Bignell]

I've had a couple of incidents in the past weeks that made me rethink my previous answer that nothing bad had really happened...

Last year, I conceived a project to take portraits of my family. The whole family, everyone who was willing to sit for an hour or so and have a personal portrait taken. Not a small plan, but perfectly manageable. My project would be something simple, using (most likely) just b&w film and my Yashica 'A'. I never got around to doing it (too shy to start, busy planning my Europe trip, other excuses). <insert picture of me kicking myself in the ass>

About three weeks ago, my mom's uncle had a fatal fall down the stairs in his condo. It was the type of event that you just can't plan for. I wasn't able to go home for the funeral, and it's one person in the family of whom I'll never get that photograph. 🙁

About the same time, I learned that my grandmother was going to be tested for breast cancer. Yesterday she went to the hospital for the mastectomy and testing on the lymph nodes. Luckily, the cancer does not seem to have spread at all, and she'll be with us for many more years to come. 🙂 A sort of 'best-case scenario', thank God!

I think when I get home from Germany, I'll be digging the camera out of the box, buying a stool and a crate of film that I can throw in the trunk of the car, and making my rounds. Nothing in this world is forever, but a photograph will outlive us all and let us share our lives with the people who come after us.

 

[Theo-Prof]

These did not happen to me, but they happended to customers at a camera store where I used to work some years ago. They are not so much unfortunate but just payback for stupidity:

1) A man buys a brand new Leica M6 and 35 'cron. He is afraid to tell his wife that he spent the money, so he hides it behind the gas logs in his fireplace. Needless to say he was disappointed when he came home the next day to a roaring fire that his wife had started.

2) Another man buys a Nikon 6006, a lens, and a cable release so he can illustrate the cook-book his wife is writing. He comes back the next week with a melted camera. He had put the camera in the oven to take pictures of biscuits rising.

3) A woman returns from a cruise to Mexico with "fire in her eyes," ready to file a law suit against the camera store and Kodak. She had REPEATEDLY fired her Kodak Disk camera backwards/the wrong way around. She claimed that she had suffered permanent retina damage becasue the flash kept going off in her eye--again and again and again . . .

Kevin