Worst screw ups?

[My2Girls66]

What kind of screw ups have you done while taking photos?
My 1st big one was in Switzerland in 2005. I was skiing with my family and somehow the Coolpix 4500 I was using had the settings changed mid day. Since it was so sunny I wasn't using or checking the preview screen- I was just taking pictures thru the viewfinder. Later that day when I went to look back at the day, I had around 50 shots that were all white! I was so mad at myself. The lucky thing was I was also carrying my film N80 and got plenty of shots with it. I drove everyone crazy- not only did they have to stop for photos, they had to wait for me to take some of them with 2 cameras. On the way down the mt toward the end of the day- I went to take a picture with the Coolpix- the camera wouldn't turn on- I looked at the bottom of it- the battery compartment had opened and the battery was gone! I looked behind me and there it was. That was luck because I was skiing with it around my neck- it could have opened and dropped anywhere.
Another-In 2006 I bought my D50- body only- since I had lenses from my film slr's. I used it for months- it view seemed different but I didn't pick up on it until in April we were standing in front of the Trevi Fountain and I could get the whole thing in the shot. I was so I felt it should have fit easily. I took my DD's N75 and looked thru her viewfinder and I could see the whole fountain. Everytime I came across something that I couldn't photograph I called my DD over to take the shot. That was aggrevating! It wasn't until I got home I found out about the 1.5x crop factor and immediately went and bought an 18-125mm lens.
I still forget to check/change back my settings sometimes- you think I would have learned after losing once in a lifetime vacations shots.

 

[handicap18]

My worst was sometime back in around 1995 or 96 I forget exactly when. The girl I was dating at the time was a nanny. And the parents she work for was going to have a bowling party for the daughters 5th birthday. I volunteered to take the pictures for them. I was using a Nikon N6006 at the time and was in the middle of doing lots of photo stuff (lots of travel and family stuff and sporting events).

So I go through the whole day. I think I took 2 rolls. Which in the film days for an amerture was a lot of pictures in one day. I knew I had some great shots.

A week or so later I get the pictures back and the are ALL WAY UNDEREXPOSED. I had the right film and there was enough light. What the heck happened. I looked at the camera and I had it set to Shutter Priority at like 1/500th or some crazy fast speed because of a basketball game I had gone to a week or so before the birthday party. I never looked at the settings and reset them for the indoor party. I was very embarassed when I had to give the pictures over. Fortunately that wont happen with digital as I can view the pictures real quick for at least a near correct exposure and make adjustments as I go.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

I realized after I posted it that one of mine is on the Valentine Photo Contest this week.

 

[Amy]

I have a hard remembering to put all my setting back to normal after I've been experiementing. My DS's are both in marching band, they had an all-day competition (BOA) in October, bright sun, 95º, so it was diff. to see the screen on the back of the camera. I tried using the viewfinder, but I was sweating too much to get a really good look. All of my photos were underexposed because I had been playing with my camera a couple of days earlier and didn't set the exposure back to 0. Thank goodness for Photoshop!

My other screwup (also a marching band one, since that's when I take the most photos) is with rechargeable batteries - but I've learned my lesson!! I had charged both the set in my camera and my spare set about 3 weeks earlier. The band marched at our local amusement park, DH and I got the PERFECT spot for photos - on the porch of a restaurant, right where the parade route turned. I took a few photos of the beginning of the parade to be sure my settings were ok. Then right when I saw our band coming, the viewfinder went dark and the dreaded "change the battery pack" message came on. No problem; dug out my spare set, put them in, and nothing! I double-checked to be sure I hadn't put them in backwards or anything, but they were dead also. Now I charge my batteries the night before, whether they've still got a charge or not, and my spare set is regular old lithiums.

 

[jann1033]

i don't have them any longer( to embarrassing to look at so ...click delete click delete click delete ) but holy cow when i went to digital i have green lions, shockingly white bird of paradise flowers...all sorts of strangely colored objects! i don't really know if it was just getting used to white balance or what....and am glad i haven't had one for a while

 

[MarkBarbieri]

My wife took the boys to Florida for a week a couple of years ago. On the second day out, she accidentally adjusted the exposure compensation to +2. She noticed that the pictures looked odd on the LCD, but she figured I could fix them when she got home. Nope. We had almost no useful pics from the whole trip.

 

[3ForDisney]

We went to WDW this past Thanksgiving. I have 40 minutes of high def video….uh, correction, audio, standing on line for “Thunder Mountain Railroad”. Didn’t switch the thing off and must have hit the standby/record button. The worst part, I was going to record the ride. When I got into the seat and the car left, I just pointed the camera forward took off the lens cap and hit the standby/record button. Putting the camcorder IN STANDBY. THEN when the ride was over I started the thing recording again. But this time after I replaced the lens cap I turned the switch off. BUMMER…. Oh wait, no it isn’t… I’ll have to go back. YEAH!!!!

 

[jann1033]

We went to WDW this past Thanksgiving. I have 40 minutes of high def video….uh, correction, audio, standing on line for “Thunder Mountain Railroad”. Didn’t switch the thing off and must have hit the standby/record button. The worst part, I was going to record the ride. When I got into the seat and the car left, I just pointed the camera forward took off the lens cap and hit the standby/record button. Putting the camcorder IN STANDBY. THEN when the ride was over I started the thing recording again. But this time after I replaced the lens cap I turned the switch off. BUMMER…. Oh wait, no it isn’t… I’ll have to go back. YEAH!!!!

sorry for your pain but i gotta admit this made me laugh...probably cause i can picture doing it myself...i might have to change mine come to think of it to include the entire roll of film i took yrs ago for high school photography class...with the lens cap on on a slr...don't ask me how i did not notice for an entire evening... probably cause i was with a high school crush and my mind was elsewhere

 

[JR6ooo4]

How about the time my wife spilled a drink on my XT.

Mikeeee

 

[Geoff_M]

In 1991 my primary body was a Nikon F3. Our first child was born and I took the camera to the hospital to capture the moments. My wife's water broke at 11 PM and we were off to the hospital. I loaded the film in the birthing room and ~16 hours later our daughter was born.

I took the film to the lab and went back to get it later. The clerk handed me the envelope and said with small chuckle "I hope nothing important was on that roll. It was blank!" As I fought the urge to throw up, I replied with a small bit of I-don't-appreciate-that-you-think-it's-funny sarcasm "No, it was nothing... just the birth of my first child." The clerk got a little sheepish after that.

The motor drive motor on the F3 had a heck of a lot of torque. If you didn't really jam the leader into the spool REAL good, it would jump out when you pressed the shutter release to advance the roll to frame 1. This was the first time it happened to me. It happened two other times later and was one of the justifications to upgrading to the F4s.

 

[manning]

Way back when in my young days as a wedding photographer a roll of film failed to advance, And it was some of the important shots.

Fortunately I knew what I missed and was able to recover without the bride and groom knowing what happened.

Once I had a camera malfunction, but I carried three. Nothing missed.

 

[handicap18]

We went to WDW this past Thanksgiving. I have 40 minutes of high def video….uh, correction, audio, standing on line for “Thunder Mountain Railroad”. Didn’t switch the thing off and must have hit the standby/record button. The worst part, I was going to record the ride. When I got into the seat and the car left, I just pointed the camera forward took off the lens cap and hit the standby/record button. Putting the camcorder IN STANDBY. THEN when the ride was over I started the thing recording again. But this time after I replaced the lens cap I turned the switch off. BUMMER…. Oh wait, no it isn’t… I’ll have to go back. YEAH!!!!

I did the same thing with my video camera back on our first trip in '01. For me it happened while we were standing in line and also part of the show, T3 at Universal Studio's. 50 minutes of the inside of my back pack. Great sound though!

I've done it a few other times, but never for as long as that one. The thing that was a pain is that when I went back to start recording others things I only had like 10 minutes left. Which I thought was very strange because I was sure I had put a new tape in. Ops!

 

[Groucho]

I had a similar problem happen to me back in Jan 06, when I was using my Minolta PnS... I was in movie mode and going to record us on Primeval Whirl. Well, somehow the settings got all wrong and I thought it was working until halfway through the ride, when I looked down and noticed that it was not doing anything - I managed to fiddle with the controls enough (which is quite tricky on that ride!) and managed to get about 10 seconds of us spinning madly at the end of the ride and laughing, which was pretty entertaining and makes me really wish I had the whole darn ride.

Then in Jan 07, I had my film SLR and my DSLR with me, and of course, managed to shoot almost a whole roll of film before deciding that it really wasn't advancing... which I suspected but wasn't sure about. I guess I was just out of practice on the whole "loading film" thing.

 

[BrerMom]

In 1991 my primary body was a Nikon F3. Our first child was born and I took the camera to the hospital to capture the moments. My wife's water broke at 11 PM and we were off to the hospital. I loaded the film in the birthing room and ~16 hours later our daughter was born.

I took the film to the lab and went back to get it later. The clerk handed me the envelope and said with small chuckle "I hope nothing important was on that roll. It was blank!" As I fought the urge to throw up, I replied with a small bit of I-don't-appreciate-that-you-think-it's-funny sarcasm "No, it was nothing... just the birth of my first child." The clerk got a little sheepish after that.

The motor drive motor on the F3 had a heck of a lot of torque. If you didn't really jam the leader into the spool REAL good, it would jump out when you pressed the shutter release to advance the roll to frame 1. This was the first time it happened to me. It happened two other times later and was one of the justifications to upgrading to the F4s.

 

[labdogs42]

I once managed to take a whole roll of film of my friend's college graduation on top of a whole roll of pictures of my dogs! All the pictures were double exposed! It was terrible! I still don't know how I managed to do that one. I had the Elan 7E at the time. At least you can't do that with digital!!

 

[klmall]

I once managed to take a whole roll of film of my friend's college graduation on top of a whole roll of pictures of my dogs! All the pictures were double exposed! It was terrible! I still don't know how I managed to do that one. I had the Elan 7E at the time. At least you can't do that with digital!!

Digitals can mess up too! I can relate labdogs42! Don't know how I managed to get three pics in one using my digital this past December, but I did! Actually, if you switch the two pictures on the bottom they match up with the top half. P.S. I am ordering a new camera this weekend!