What's your best/worst/most embarrassing LF experience?

[J. P. Mose]

Back in 1973, at the age of 15, I was in the local high school auditorium where the Port Washington (NY) school board, union officals and teachers were discussing a potential teacher strike. I thought I hot ---- because the local town newspaper would send me out on local assignments. Now picture this.....there were 4 -5 professional photographers, all with Nikons as I recall. Then there's me...a 15 year old kid with his 4 X 5 Crown Graphic taking shots! I got many strange looks! (my first camera was a Crown Graphic at 13 years old, thinking I'd learn more about photography with a large format than the typical 35mm) I had just purchased a junky condition Grafmatic back, which I loaded with 6 sheets of Tri-X. I took a shot and was so anxious to take a second shot I quickly cocked the shutter and yanked the Grafmatic back so hard that the dark slide (which is suppose to lock) pulled all the way out and all six septrums popped out, sprung forward and landed on the ground! I was in the front of the auditorium when this happened....I received a lot of laughs...much to my chagrin!!!!

J. P. Mose

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

One day I went to take some pictures with a friend and we stopped at a field, I set up my camera on a flower and got under the dark cloth, no matter how I fiddled with the focusing or the lens opening I could not see an image on the ground glass...after about 5 minutes of trying I went to my friend and asked him what did he think was wrong, he looks at the camera, and then looks at me with a small smile and tells me: "if you take the film holder from the back, it is easier to focus".....:-))

[Pat Kearns]

It seems I have a habit of putting a red filter on and forget to compensate and adjust my exposure. One of the worst episodes was on a cold morning in Monument Valley. It was about 25 degrees and I was setting up my tripod. I wasn't wearing gloves and pinched the end of my little finger opening the legs. I closed the legs to extract my finger and saw that it had cut the fleshy pad off. Luckily, my hands were so cold there was no pain or bleeding. I had to drive 20 miles to find some bandages. Needless to say, bandaids and antibiotic ointment is always pack in my camera bag. Pat.

[Duane]

A once in a lifetime opportunity to capture a steam locomotive that was due to pass by about a mile away from home. Got the camera ready and checked out. Decided to use a rollback to capture a sequence. Got the lens swing all set, the darkslide out and forgot to advance the film between shots. I ended up with a ghost train on a heavily overexposed & slightly jiggled background...

To provide a backup, if I had two tripods I would have set a motor drive 35mm camera on the other one and let it rip.

[Roger_235]

I haven't had any embarassing moments. I have had a bakers dozen of what might be termed 'learning experiences'! <Yah, right!>

1) Using my new Jobo CPP-2, developed 5 8x10 B&W negs in Ilford fixer.

2) Forgetting to refocus camera after moving it and then taking picture.

3) Not changing asa on my light meter when changing film

4) Shooting with 72mmXL lens and not moving bag bellows fold out of the way entirely, thereby prevening one corner of the film from getting exposed.

5) Fiddling around with the cable release and taking the picture while not noticing that my fiddling with it caused it to change positions so it fell directly in front of the lens.

6) Loose knobs on view camera or tripod connection

7) Stopping down lens so much that diffraction became readily apparent (Fuji 600mm)

8) Having sheet film shift positions slightly by settling while the picture is being taken, which gives a horrible astigmatism effect on the slide/negative.

9) Unscrewing rear element of enlarging lens and dropping it on floor. Twice, within 30 seconds.

10) Going out on a shoot doing long exposures without a timer. Believe it or not, I have found a piano metronome works just as well, plus it is audible!

11) Making prints and not noticing a big hunk of dust on the glass neg holder in the enlarger, until I have gone through about 5 or 6 negs and examining them while they are drying. Same dust spot showing up in the same position on multiple pictures.

12) Taking portraits with empty sheet film holders.

13) Going out to shoot skiers and not going to the ATM first to get some cash to be able to pay the entrance fee. For myself and wife, while she's complaining about freezing from the cold.

[Bill Hahn]

I'm also relatively new to large format photography, and I have a motto: sometimes it helps if you make an even number of mistakes!

Example:

I was shooting a stream, had focused, metered (it was overcast and not bright), set aperture and shutter speed, cocked the lens, made sure the cable release wasn't in the picture (a specialty of mine), closed the lens, inserted the film holder. All of this took some time.

Just as I pressed the release, I noticed that I was standing in bright sunshine. The sun had come out and my meter reading was obsolete. Just as I was thinking that I had dreadfully overexposed the film, I noticed with some relief that I had failed to pull the dark slide out of the film holder!

[Roger_235]

Oh yah, almost forgot:

14) Getting my exposed film holders mixed up with my unexposed film holders. Has a tendency to put a lot of question marks and explanation marks in the air all around my head.

15) Changing lenses and forgetting to refocus.

[David R Munson]

I somehow managed to avoid most of the newby mistakes when I was still a newby. They seem to be catching up with me now that I've been doing the sheet film dance a few years. About two months ago I was struggling to get a shot on my 8x10 before the light faded. I clicked the shutter, got one good one. Then I flipped the holder around and pulled out the darkslide- the wrong darkslide. Swearing, I pulled the proper darkslide and the light promptly disappeared. So there I was with one unexposed sheet and one previously good sheet that was duly assasinated by sheer idiocy.

By far my most tiring episode occurred when I was photographing in a natural area near my home which has all sorts of running trails around a largish area filled with lots of narrow, steep-walled valleys. I was in the bottom of one of these valleys photographing while trekking down the course of the stream at the bottom. I noticed it was starting to get dark, so I decided to scale the side of the valley rather than backtrack, which I figured would take me long enough that I'd be walking back to the car in the dark. So I start up the side of the valley. Now the site I deemed appropriate looked deceptively easy to climb. Granted, the first 40 feet or so were fine, until it pitched up to about a 80 degree elevation of wet shale for about 80 vertical feet. Maybe I'm a closet thrill seeker or was particularly thick- skulled that day, but I decided to press on. So there I am clawing my way up this wet, lose shale grabbing occasional rotting tree roots, and jamming my tripod legs into the ground. I eventually worked out a system of slowly jamming in my tripod above my head, kicking my boots into the ground and moving maybe 3 feet every 4 minutes. I eventually made it to the top and just laid there amongst the hemlocks for a while caked with mud, shins cut to hell by the shale, backpack still on. Eventually made it home about an hour after dark. Not an experience I'll likely repeat soon. Then again, there is a reason I carry basic climbing gear with me now.....

Oh yeah, and when I got home I botched the film processing.

[Peter Brown]

I think this could be called a "natural" embarrassing moment. I was shooting in Borneo for a travel company and was asked to visit one of the nature reserves for orphaned orang-utans and photograph some of the baby orang-utans being re-introduced to the wild. After about 40 minutes of trekking through the jungle to one of the pre-release stations, my partner and I and the representatives of the reserve (including the director of the research station) were surrounded by three young orang-utans who proceeded to delight us with their antics, walking along with us, swinging from tree to tree and even at one stage, taking my hand and walking along beside me. My delight turned to some concern though, when one of the youngsters decided he liked my tripod, grabbed it from me and took off through the rainforest with it and with me in hot pursuit.

These little blighters can run pretty fast and he was able to move through the thick rainforest quicker than I. After a few minutes I gave up and thought that I'd probably end up having to balance my camera on a tree or something or give up the shoot. Arriving back at the trail my companions were still buckled over with hysterical laughter. We decided to carry on and fortunately, as we rounded the next bend in the trail, there was the thief, standing with my tripod (I'm sure he was laughing).

I gingerly edged closer to him and when I got within striking distance I lunged for the tripod, managing to grab one of the legs. Now I don't know if any of you have tried having a tug-of-war with an orang-utan, even a baby one, but these guys have muscles that'd put Arnold Schwarzenegger to shame. He almost hauled me into the jungle along with the tripod until the reserve director came to my assistance and we were able to wrestle my tripod off the "delightful" little creature.

The shoot went on according to plan and I have nothing but praise for the solid construction of the Manfrotto tripods - a lesser tripod would have broken in two and ended it's days as a plaything of the young orang-utans of the Borneo jungle.

Peter Brown

-- If at first you don't succeed - skydiving is not for you.

[Dave Schneidr]

The third trip to a location up the side of a butte in the Missouri River Valley to finally get the right shot. Lugged all the equipment up the hill about a mile and a half, set up the tripod and the camera and realize the reason I didn't like the view of the first two trips up to this spot is that the place I parked my car was right in the middle of the picture. The light for this shot is only good for a short period of time as dusk, the spot is 600 miles from my house. Maybe next summer I'll try again.