Expensive lessons...

[kenj8246]

are the ones we learn best. :( Left my Cambo 45SR with an excellent Bosscreen GG in my car in the parking lot at work. Should NOT have done that. The paraffin between the glasses melted and ran, rendering it useless. Bet I don't do THAT again. :D

Kenny

[Bob Salomon]

Sorry for your problem but there have been lots of threads here about that very problem with a Boss Screen. But where do you think you will find another one?

[kenj8246]

Probably won't unless these folks are still in business: http://www.stabitech.nl/Bosscreen.htm Don't know that I want to pay their price, though. I just robbed a glass from an older Calumet I have. For now.


Sorry for your problem but there have been lots of threads here about that very problem with a Boss Screen. But where do you think you will find another one?

[Robert Opheim]

A friend of mine lost her Hasselblad equipment by being left in her car. Cameras can walk off quickly!

[StoneNYC]

Yup, I learned very valuable or rather very expensive one the other day, which is don't try to grab two camera straps at the same time, for two different cameras, because sometimes it's not really two different camera straps and it's really one that's bundled up and you end up picking up half of the other one and then having it fall onto the ground literally breaking the lens of the camera...

121409

[alexn]

Dropping a box containing 24 exposed sheets of 4x5" E6 onto the floor, watching said 24 sheets spread across the kitchen floor, destroying months of shooting, hours of driving and potentially the best images you've ever made... Can you really put a price on that kind of stupid? Why did I not have rubber bands on that box? Why? what went through my head to make me think "Naah,... She'll be right buddy.. you're only walking across the living room to the fridge.. dont worry about it.." Not realizing that with a 3 year old and a 1 year old child my living room is a minefield of sharp, tiny solid plastic landmines hellbent on sending me through the roof and my box of film plummeting to the floor...

[StoneNYC]

Dropping a box containing 24 exposed sheets of 4x5" E6 onto the floor, watching said 24 sheets spread across the kitchen floor, destroying months of shooting, hours of driving and potentially the best images you've ever made... Can you really put a price on that kind of stupid? Why did I not have rubber bands on that box? Why? what went through my head to make me think "Naah,... She'll be right buddy.. you're only walking across the living room to the fridge.. dont worry about it.." Not realizing that with a 3 year old and a 1 year old child my living room is a minefield of sharp, tiny solid plastic landmines hellbent on sending me through the roof and my box of film plummeting to the floor...

Shit man, wow that's way worse than my broken lens :(

I always do 2 things with my boxes, ONE I only break the tape seal side but never the bigger label side so that it opens like a hinge, and TWO I always get a piece of gaffers tape and use that to re-seal the tape side, it will stick and unstick easily and repeatedly without losing adhesion and thick enough it's easy to feel in the dark.

This system has saved me a few times from your unfortunate event...

Example

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121412

Elastic would add "fool proof" to the system but doesn't stack well.

Just having the hinge bit is really a much bigger grantee of non-spillage.

Good luck with future navigation through the house.

[Kirk Gittings]

are the ones we learn best. :( Left my Cambo 45SR with an excellent Bosscreen GG in my car in the parking lot at work. Should NOT have done that. The paraffin between the glasses melted and ran, rendering it useless. Bet I don't do THAT again. :D

Kenny been there-done that. That was the last Bossscreen I bought.......

[kenj8246]

Thanks, guys. I am now reassured that we all STILL do stupid stuff. I'm still out one Bosscreen. Did discover that someone has one for offer. We'll see.

Kenny

[pierre506]

It's a lesson.

[Kodachrome25]

I have had worse things than the following happen....and this recent one could have been far worse:

Last week, after getting my Mamiya 6's 50mm F4 wide angle back from a cla to loosen up the focus, it took a fall. Somehow when my door was open on my truck, the lens slipped out of it's compartment when I was removing the camera to unload it the used film. It bounced off the door jam of the truck and hit a big rock.....this lens looked brand new until this point.

The only damage that I can tell thus far is a very dented filter ring that was easily fixed at home with a lens vise tool and a scuff to the paint where it hit. I'll soup some film later to see if everything else looks right...ouch....

[Vaughn]

Buying a new 4x5, checking it out, but not having enough experience to check it properly (even with a test trip of backpacking in the Grand canyon with it for a week or so) -- then taking a 3 month hitch-hiking trip in NZ with it. Massive light leak. Considering the years it took to save for the trip, the time and effort to photograph, etc. the trip could be written off as a major loss. But I took the lesson to heart, paid the price and had an incredible return of my investment when I returned to NZ with a new 4x5 camera for a 6 month bicycle tour.

[Liquid Artist]

Dropping a box containing 24 exposed sheets of 4x5" E6 onto the floor, watching said 24 sheets spread across the kitchen floor, destroying months of shooting, hours of driving and potentially the best images you've ever made... Can you really put a price on that kind of stupid? Why did I not have rubber bands on that box? Why? what went through my head to make me think "Naah,... She'll be right buddy.. you're only walking across the living room to the fridge.. dont worry about it.." Not realizing that with a 3 year old and a 1 year old child my living room is a minefield of sharp, tiny solid plastic landmines hellbent on sending me through the roof and my box of film plummeting to the floor...

This and the New Zealand trip sound like the worst to me.

While I've ruined my share of film, including a roll where I was less than 10 feet from a wolf while driving on the ice roads I've never lost that many sheets at once, taken over that period of time.

For me it was not having a camera case shut and lifting it up. My Rare M42 mount 200mm f2.8 Zeiss fell from my car onto the pavement. It bent the hood, however it still goes on very tightly.
The lens does still work good, and always gives me breathtaking images, when I shoot 35mm or digital.

[Drew Bedo]

I have perfected the technique of buying high and selling low.

I regre having sold off most of the large format cameras that I have ever owned.

Two in particular:

A Burk and James 5x7 that had been stripped of grey paint and refinished. I'd like another one now, but can't allocate the funds.

A 4x5 "Raja". This was a Deardorff knock-off made in India from beautiful exotic hardwood. It had a revolving back and worked well. I'd like another one but they never come up online that I see.

[Vaughn]

...A 4x5 "Raja". This was a Deardorff knock-off made in India from beautiful exotic hardwood. It had a revolving back and worked well. I'd like another one but they never come up online that I see.

Interesting...That was the that camera that had the massive light leak on my trip to New Zealand! But I got some good use out of it eventually. It was such an exact copy of a Deardorf Special that a Deardorf 5x7 back fit perfectly on it without any modification, so it was my 5x7 camera until it got stolen in 1995. I think I still have the revolving 4x5 back somewhere.

[Peter Gomena]

I have perfected the technique of buying high and selling low.

I regre having sold off most of the large format cameras that I have ever owned.

Two in particular:

A Burk and James 5x7 that had been stripped of grey paint and refinished. I'd like another one now, but can't allocate the funds.

A 4x5 "Raja". This was a Deardorff knock-off made in India from beautiful exotic hardwood. It had a revolving back and worked well. I'd like another one but they never come up online that I see.

Glad to meet a fellow master of the technique.

I try to reconcile my feelings of (monetary) loss by saying it's a small price to pay for being able to use that piece of equipment for X number of years. It usually doesn't work.

[Regular Rod]

A friend of mine lost her Hasselblad equipment by being left in her car. Cameras can walk off quickly!

Mum used to live in a quick paced part of town. Every Christmas, when the refuse collectors were on holiday and the rubbish piled up, Mum would save all the gift wrapping paper and boxes. Sometime in the week after Christmas she would carefully pack turkey carcass, uneaten Brussels sprouts, old mashed potatoes, in fact everything nasty that needed to be disposed of, into the boxes and gift wrapped them with the old paper and some fresh tape. Then she would pile all this onto the back seat of her old car and leave it parked unlocked in a convenient side street for twenty minutes to half an hour. On her return, all the rubbish would be gone and because the car was unlocked and of little value it would be left undamaged and not stolen.

Irresponsible of course...

:D
RR

[DrTang]

not remembering I had to also cock the flash lever everytime as well as the shutter lever.. and then wondering why 30 sheets of 5x7 were clear

good thing I was switching lenses back and forth so only half the pix were bad

[StoneNYC]

Buying a Schneider 150 SS XL thinking it was coming with a center filter and then discovering it wasn't included...

[Tim Meisburger]

I spent a month in Indonesia, doing landscapes and extended family portraits. Put all my film in a box and then, like an idiot, put it in my checked bags. when I got back to Bangkok I developed it all and all of it was banded; enough to ruin it, but not enough to hide the images that might have been...

Feels kind of like the computer crash where you lose that document you have been working on for a month, only worse.

I'm in Fiji now for a month (working unfortunately) and have a bottle of fixer and a bottle of D23 in the cabinet about ten feet from where I'm writing this.

[Drew Bedo]

Buying a Schneider 150 SS XL thinking it was coming with a center filter and then discovering it wasn't included...

You have just reminded me of another "lesion".

I bought a Wollensak 15' f5.6 Tele Optar, in a huge-ish Alphax shutter, for $250-$300 (memory burp here) to use on my little Wista (only 12" max draw). This year we went to Rocky Mountain national Park and Yellow stone. I thought it would be nice to have along something longer than 210, The price was acceptable and the lens and shutter are in great shape. However: (1) It didn't come with a mounting ribg and (2) the cable release fitting is as odd by today's standard as the bi-pole synch terminal. Well, I won't be using flash bulbs and a cable will turn up someday for a "few" dollars but . . . it seems that getting a ring that fits will cost over $100 from about anybody . . . .which pretty much kills the joy of the good deal aspect of getting the lens!

It is currently mounted on a board with a cross-threaded step-up ring backed up by tape. Not really solid , but it won't actually fall off the camera!

I am bummed, but resigned.

[jp]

Most expensive for me is that I stopped using my Epson 7600 printer after a couple years of use, and clogged up so bad I couldn't clean the nozzles when I wanted to print again. It's outdated anyways and replaced with an r3000 which gets used more often.

[koh303]

121694
Don't leave your camera on the edge of the kitchen table, it will fall and break.
This lens was never the same again, despite several trips to canon and local adjuster.

Dont ever lend your graflex to a friend who has never used one, and get it back with the focus rail broken, and a bunch of small metal balls rolling around, because he did not roll back the bed all the way before closing.

But - then again - while running down hill, as fast as humanly possible along with some other journalists, with a molotove cocktail throwing crowed in front, and live ammunition firing police in the back, a videographer was looking one way just as i was looking the other way, and we both collided, rolling down on the ground gear and all. a sore hip for a while, but not even a broken filter.

[Alan Gales]

I had a huge Pelican case sitting on my bed open and filled with early Bronica gear. I was reading something and like an idiot I sat down on the edge of the bed. Everything, case and all slid off into the floor. Several lenses actually bounced out onto the carpet. Fortunately, the only thing that broke was one of the catches on the Pelican case.

[Fotoguy20d]

Lots of relatively minor stupid stuff:

Cleaning a Goerz Syntor, I dropped the frontmost piece of glass into the sink where it promptly broke into two large and myriad smaller pieces.

Put the tip of a pair of pliers through the blades of a Compur 1 (which had been working perfectly until then). Fortunately the glass was sitting on the side.

Dragged a beautiful Century Graphic across an asphalt lot when I forgot it was strapped to the outside of my backpack.

Sold my Calumet Woodfield

[David Schaller]

You have just reminded me of another "lesion".

I bought a Wollensak 15' f5.6 Tele Optar, in a huge-ish Alphax shutter, for $250-$300 (memory burp here) to use on my little Wista (only 12" max draw). This year we went to Rocky Mountain national Park and Yellow stone. I thought it would be nice to have along something longer than 210, The price was acceptable and the lens and shutter are in great shape. However: (1) It didn't come with a mounting ribg and (2) the cable release fitting is as odd by today's standard as the bi-pole synch terminal. Well, I won't be using flash bulbs and a cable will turn up someday for a "few" dollars but . . . it seems that getting a ring that fits will cost over $100 from about anybody . . . .which pretty much kills the joy of the good deal aspect of getting the lens!

It is currently mounted on a board with a cross-threaded step-up ring backed up by tape. Not really solid , but it won't actually fall off the camera!

I am bummed, but resigned.

Yeah, 15' would be too long a lens for my 4x5! Never mind the shutter problems.

[Ian Gordon Bilson]

I swear it wasn't me..so anyway,my friend walked into the reception area, noticed me,and casually dropped his camera onto an overstuffed seat. Sproing..bounce..Clunk.

[kenj8246]

Damn! I don't feel bad now after listening to all these horror stories. Thanks, folks. :D

Kenny

[Vaughn]

The lesson has already been mentioned, but never lend out a camera unless one is willing to receive it back is worse condition without destroying a friendship. The Rolleiflex 3.5 I learn to photograph with in the 1970's is now just a paperweight.

[Drew Bedo]

Yeah, 15' would be too long a lens for my 4x5! Never mind the shutter problems.


Wow, you're right—it is only a 15 inch lense. Thanks for helping me out with that! :)