[Rover]

Haha, same here. Didn't think that anybody else would do that, but hey... nice to know.

Well... forgetting a (much needed) lens is trivial. A few days ago while out on a shoot I discovered, to my horror, that I left my 16-35 at home. I had to make due with a 24/1.4 - thankfully I had that one in another compartment. Don't think that I've ever left a camera body at home though.

[toni-a]

speaking about camera bag: don't forget to close your camera bag before carrying it.

This is how I smashed my sigma 14mmf2.8 

[Rainer]

Take Backup-Equipment if you go to an important shoot.

 

I was just recently on a large vintage-car exhibition ... and I

took only the 5D + EF 24-105 + 430ex with me to keep things light.

 

Guess what ... the 24-105 started to show the typical behaviour

when the internal flex-cable breaks ... Err01 whenever the

camera tries to stop down. So I hat to take most of the

pictures at f/4 ... I had really preferred to stop down a bit.

 

However ... I shouldn't complain ... the mirror of my old 5D could as

well have fallen out.

 

Rainer

[toni-a]

And one from today.

If you put your gear for service and they call you it is finished verify they open on Saturdays otherwise you will have your gear too late after the weekend

[Guest]

On one of the camerass I used in the not so distant past I had been playing with it before a trip and set it to manual mode. While the shutter and aperature were decent the exposure was totally in appropriate. Unfortunately the view finder auto-adjusted to meet my viewing need (evf) and not the actual exposer so more than a few photos were totally blown or nearly absolutely black.

-

The current camera I am using the evf adjusts to the actual exposure so you know instantly if over/under exposed

[toni-a]

Dunno what's happening today while taking flash portraits at sunset at the best moments batteries died... Of course I had spare batteries but I took the other bag, they were in still in the hotel room 10 minutes walking away enough to miss the magic moment...

[JJ_SO]

toni-a, I know you started the thread and contributed some pretty funny experiences (at least, after some time we should be able to laugh at our mistakes). It just could look like, that if 6 of 16 posts are from you, you're kind of photographing with no lens in front of the camera - and I'm pretty sure this would be the wrong impression.

 

How about of giving advice to dumb photographers by writing the moments, when looking back and feeling pretty clever by making the best out of a potentially catastrophic situation? I'm afraid, we don't learn a lot out of our or others mistakes, otherwise we could just stop making them.

 

Sometimes I was not telling the person in front of me that I was taking pictures with wrong exposure and/or AF-setting. The situation was still there and gave me - funny enough - courage to ask for some pictures twice in a way that I wanted to have a better photo. It depends, of course: Admitting my failures could relax the model ("he's only a man and also struggling with gear...") or make him/her thinking of "this guy is wasting my time with his dumbness".

 

Next to it and not meant as an excuse: We have to look at quite a lot of menu crap, button desasters and energy solutions which make us helpless, sometimes on purpose of the manufacturers as well. Yes, I could have thought about spare batteries or closing the zipper of my slingshot-bag before I saw a camera on short air-travelling towards a marble floor. But we should be aware, our misfortune sometimes has many fathers:

• Which camera let me take AA-batteries instead of proprietary ones? Except some Pentax models?
  
• Which cameras let me charge the batterie with USB? Except Sony?
  
• Which camera has a really foolproof menu? Except the analogue ones without any menu?
  
• Which bag has not to be opened occasionally?
  

Of course, we choose what we use, so again, our mistake?

[toni-a]

Thanks JoJu, as said from the beginning this is a rather funny thread to post our errors laugh about them and learn from them.

We are all human and we commit errors... Normal we shouldn't be ashamed.

Ok my preferred lens is ready however the shop is closed on Saturday, couldn't pick it up, I used another one and made great pictures and plenty of keepers. Tonight I will be printing once home. We will always do mistakes, my tutor as medical student once defined experience:

"Experience is doing the same errors less and less frequently" I think it is very well said.

[toni-a]

Just a note to add: gear has never been a limiting factor, I can live very well with whatever camera body plus any mid range prime or zoom. even if it is a single prime. Remember the time when people where very happy with nothing but a manual focus  camera with 36 exposures film plus a 50mm prime lens  attached without any possibility of changing the ISO or viewing the pictures before going back home... 

[JJ_SO]

That's a bit too simple to me, toni-a. Those times you're talking about meant also manuals with less than 100 pages - now we are around 200...400 pages, which is a lot of information to digest. By "limiting factor" I mean as well "overly complicated". I think, with an old mechancial non-AF Yashica FX-3 I would not loose much more shots in "normal" situations than with a contemporary DSLR. Except I'd set it to P and Auto-AF and just bang on. Which I never tried.

 

Set up a current DSLR occassionally can also mean "not always prepared for what happens in front of the camera".