Disasters

[sandman]

we've all had them, big ,little, life changing or just plain funny, lets share them.
Mine was a long time ago in the 60's, a group of us went to scotland on motor bikes for a two week camping holiday. I packed my praktica and a shed load of film and partied. We went everywhere, loch lomond, ben nevis, glasgow , john'o'groats, took about 200 shots , all the gang, landscapes irreplaceable shots.
Put them in a haversack, got blind drunk and left them and my camera under a tree in a field near aberdeen, i think.. could have been anywhere.
Got home two days later, unpacked , and was totally gutted. I had the mick taken out of me for months after that. none of my mates were into photography so they just didn't understand , it was'nt about the price of the camera and film, it was the lost memories, the waste of all that time. Ah well , had plenty of little ones since, but i still feel sad when i think about that summer.

[Swampy]

Photographic disasters or disasters in general? :)

I think my only photography disaster was shortly after I got my S2. I grabbed the wife and son and went to a local hillside to do some hiking and photo stuff just to get out of the house. I pull out my camera to take a shot and it comes up "No Card". DOH!, I look through my bag and all I can find is a cheesy 80mb Lexar CF. At this point, I've already been hiking for 30 minutes to get away from the "city". I had inadvertantly left my 512mb card at home in the card reader as I was still happy as a lark shooting pictures left and right and copying them up to my PC all day and all night. Oh well, wasn't much to shoot that day anyway - surprise since I didn't have the capacity to shoot much.

[sandman]

I think we had better keep this to photographic disasters, i could fill up about 1000 posts on the general ones, guess all you guys could to. It would be nice to hear from the real pro's out there on this topic , they must have been human once?

[RacerX]

Thanks for sharing those stories. They all had a feel of humor mixed in. Thank God I haven't had any disasters so far with my S2. I'm trying to remember when I use to use the Canon AE1 Program, and now I remember when I went with the family to Swizterland and took the AE1 with us. After a 14 hour flight and taking a train for an 1 hour, I was ready to take the first picture of our adventure. The only bad thing is that the camera wouldn't work. Seems like the guy at the airport was a wee pit to heavy handed with the bag and must have dropped it. The shutter wouldn't open.
Damm! I still hate that camera! :D

[CaptJR]

Everyone in my office is wondering what the heck I'm doing. I guess they think I'm nuts or something. Since we're keeping this to photographic disasters, I went through the office and knocked on every piece of wood I could find.
JR

[sandman]

capt
You can post any disaster stories you like.
If you've never had a photographic one, either your very lucky, don't ever use your camera, or your telling fibs. come on you can tell us. we won't laugh .......honest.
As for touching wood, won't help. you'll proberbly skin your knuckles ,then get it infected , won't be able to work , so you'll loose your job and have to sell your camera to eat, But go ahead and hit things , just don't say i didn't warn you.

[CaptJR]

I really can't recall any photographic disasters. I'm remember some times when I got to the pictures and was disapointed in the results, but that wasn't a disaster, that was just goofing up.

When I think of the disasters of my life there is one that was so devistating at the time that anytime this type of topic comes up, it is the first thing that pops into my mind. That might not seem so prominent except when you considering it happened 38 years ago. I laugh now every time I tell the story.

JR

[Ron Green]

I was shooting at an industrial site and asked if they would lift me up on the tongs of a fork-lift for a better angle. Once up all the way, I motioned to the driver asking if he could swing the forks, he though I meant for him to drive forward. I lost my balance, fell, grabbed the forks going down, and dropped my Nikon F5 with Nikkor 17-35 attached to the pavement below. The lens (unbelievably) was repairable, the F5 totaled. The metal body had cracked in two.

[sandman]

Ron
Know how you feel, years ago i had to clean out a gutter in my yard ,so i got a mate to drive the forklift and lift me up on a pallet while i cleaned out the moss.The forklifts only had 2 gears, foward and reverse on a floor mounted lever , i asked him for a knife to loosen the moss, when he got off , he caught the lever in his jacket , causing the forklift to suddenly go backwards leaving me dangling 15 ft up hanging on to the gutter. luckily the gutter was strong enough to hold my weight untill he got it back under me,needless to say ,when the lease was up on the forklift ,the next one had a column mounted lever.

[X-Sync]

A few years ago when people still used film (remember that) I was shooting a job that required several rolls of film to go through the camera. Having always been methodical when using film I placed the exposed rolls back into the film canister of the film I am replacing it with, the canister then goes into a pouch for exposed rolls. At that time I had custom on my Dynax 7 set to leave the leader out when rewinding (to save time when processing B&W).
The film went to the lab, but one roll come back blank. Knowing the Dynax 7 also had a load error feature if the new film didn't wind on correctly I had to assume that I had mixed an exposed roll with fresh film. As the leader would be left out on the offending film I had no option but to send all the films of the same speed to the lab. There was no way I could just right one film off and risk getting a roll of double exposures later.
Several blank films later and a whole load of money wasted my exposed film turned up. I took the time that day to set the custom film rewind to take the leader into the canister.

Thats my mistake (not my only one though)

Simon

[sandman]

that reminds me , years ago ,i shot a wedding , now to change iso speeds you had to change films, that meant using the mid-roll rewind, now ,when you put back the oridginal film you have to put the lense cap on , and fire off the number of frames + 1 for luck.
I forgot how many frames i'd taken, as i only had one 36 exposure film left i did'nt want to loose the remaining film on the roll, so i guessed, 12 i thought and fired of 13, used up the rest (36) for that day went home and processed them (B&W).

Oops, i'd taken 20, so i had 7 double exposures of my mother-in-law mixed with the church wall , best pictures of her i've ever taken.

[snapthepicture]

Smunky is so cute!
But I will stick to the subject. I had my RZ 67 on my bogen tripod with a 15 foot sync cord to it. I was adjusting my softbox that I just bought and for some bored reason wanting to test it out in my kitchen. Did I say Smunky is cute? Anyways. I was metering how much light I was getting from my flash in the softbox and was behind it pulling it further away to test it's limits. Well, being a 6ft soft box I couldn't see the camera. All I heard was a horid crash and glass breaking as I pulled the camera over onto the marble floor. It was like hearing your child scream and the screeching of tires. Well, I don't have kids nor am I even dating anyone Smunky. :) JK! My 140mm floating element was shattered, my RZ was fixable but spent some time in the shop and never felt it was as sharp. It wasn't a week before I went with wireless syncs.
bye
Bruno
www.snapthepicture.com

[sandman]

at the last count thats at least 3 photographers you've pulled smunky, must be that remark about '' so many handsome men''. and that's just on showing only half your face, god knows what the reponse would be on a full face avatar.