In Jerome, AZ, I found out the hard way that ziplock freezer bags aren't watertight. I was using them to store film in a cooler that was about a third full of ice & water. Luckily I only lost 20 or 30 rolls of 35mm B&W. Somehow the bags with the good stuff managed to stay upright.
Once I loaded the cardboard covers from the film box into the holders. Tight fit. Got kinda soggy in the developer.
Luckily, I've only broken other people's cameras - finger through the Titanium shutter curtain of an Nikon FE, dropping a 6-hour old Canon 5D last Fall, tripping over numerous cameras, cords, cables, and light stands while being an assistant.
Again, not in the relm of some of the really cool mistakes already mentioned, but I've been using the same ARCA-SWISS 4X5 field camera for the past four years or so, always with the same 100TMax readyloads, and this weekend, as Mark maybe knows, I made my first ever double exposure. And there was no way in [AZ] that I was going to go back, set everything back up and retake the previous image.
Being relatively feeble minded, I HAVE forgotten my tripod on one trip, my film holder on another, and film on a third. I now have a checklist hooked to my photography vest (the vest which I once left on a photo location about an hour and one-half away).
i love the story of the guy setting the bellows on fire with his lens. not a bad argument for a metal camera.
though erik dropping the field camera on the pavement (i still remember the sickening crunch) is an argument for a styrofoam camera.
so far my vote goes to jorge for taking his own picture and not recognizing himself.
i bet you could sell that one by the dozen if you found the right audience--they're on ebay right now, and they don't believe that the face in the clouds is you. they know in their hearts that it's the virgin mary. or jesus. or elvis. and they're in a buying mood.
I was photographing an art installation in a bank a few years back, when my even-then-ancient Norman power pack blew a capacitor - sounded like a shotgun blast - with the requisite column of smoke! Much panic ensued. Not really my screw-up. Then again - my list of screw-ups is likely long enough to crash most computers - so I'd best not go there!
Another "not my screwup" - screwup: A class of 15 of my basic photo students at Dartmouth - all dutifully loading their developing reels, when one of these students leans against a lightswitch - suddenly illuminating the scene at the exact moment when everyone had their mostly loaded reels in hand. The students reactions were fascinating - some looked at their film - frozen with a mixture of panic, confusion, and astonishment. Others tried quickly covering their films - under armpits or rolling up in shirts. Still others looked up at me, not fully assimilating the implications of what had just occurred. But the lights were switched off again within a few seconds, and we actually managed to salvage a few useable frames!
Anybody take a shot, remove the film holder, walk around to the front to open the lens, and
find themselves exclaiming: "Oh, so *that's* how you remove the bellow from the front standard!" ?
How about doing your bosses Christmas family portrait. Packed up all my lights, power pack, stands, etc from the studio, and drove to his house 45 min from mine.
When setting up I discovered the sync chord was missing. I put the pack on a chair and did an open hand sync at 1/8 sec. Every exposure was perfect and the slow speed picked up all the christmas tree lights nicely. Pictures were georgous.
I have never done any silly things like kicking a tripod leg, making double exposures, pulling the slide with lens open, or using a wide angle on a long rail Calumet without putting the front standard all the way forward so you don`t get a pic of the rail inthe frame. Naw, those are amateur errors!
This comment falls under the category of "gullible." When I was learning photography, an old, veteran photographer told me that if I dropped a film holder that had exposed film in it, it would knock the image out of focus. I actually believed him for awhile.
Twenty five years ago I was working for a photographer and we headed to Boston from NYC for the day for an annual report shoot. We had tickets for the Boston flight and we thought we were on the Boston flight but we had gotten on the wrong airplane and went to Washington DC instead. We then flew from DC to Boston, the crew on that flight thought the whole situation was so hillarious that they told the entire plane about it, and got to Boston four hours late.
We then drove half an hour in the wrong direction and then half an hour back before we found the location. After it was all done, the photographer then just had to have dinner at his favorite Boston watering hole so we did that instead of just heading to the airport. We got done eating and drinking and drove to the airport to get the last flight back to NYC but we missed it by ten minutes so then we had to drive back to NY and finally got home at about 4 AM completing a twenty hour day.
What the client paid two idiots for two bland office portraits: $4000. A story that I'm still telling twenty five years later: priceless.
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