# worst thing that has ever happened while shooting?



## andrewleephoto (Oct 1, 2011)

Forgot to charge batteries? left lens cap on? forgot a certain lens?  I'm just curious because stuff like this happens to me sometimes ._.


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## K8-90 (Oct 1, 2011)

This happened while setting up for a (volunteer) portrait shoot of 50 grad students. Somehow (blame it on nerves) I put the batteries in my flash triggers in backwards. I freaked out, because I thought that the signal wasn't working, that I had it on the wrong channel, or some other terrible technical issue that I couldn't figure out. Was nearly in tears, when I checked the batteries, lol.

PS: Normally that's the first thing I would have checked, but I had just put brand new batteries in, and "knew" it wasn't them


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## molested_cow (Oct 1, 2011)

On the wrong ISO setting when shooting in 35mm.


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## Robin Usagani (Oct 1, 2011)

Forgot CF card and stupid radioshack sells it for incredible high price.


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## Compaq (Oct 1, 2011)

I may have shot in small jpegs instead of raw once. But no biggy, it was only my first northern lights in my 20 years young life!!!


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## Hickeydog (Oct 1, 2011)

I got mobbed by a group of teenage girls who thought I was from the newspaper.....


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## joealcantar (Oct 1, 2011)

Watching your flash or outdoor light topple over.  Ouch!, now keep the sand bags on the stands and rest the camera bag on one of the legs. 
-
Shoot well, Joe


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## Derrel (Oct 1, 2011)

Had the right lens of my eyeglasses fall out and shatter on the concrete as I was literally, getting into the car and on the way to an important videography job located about an hour away by car.


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## 480sparky (Oct 1, 2011)

Shaking pieces of the prism out through hole where the viewfinder _used_ to be after putting the camera ( in portrait orientation) on a 7' tripod then watching the whole kit-n-kaboodle tip over onto a concrete sidewalk......... just 3 days before I was to leave on a 2-week vacation.

Although maybe I shouldn't mention this because it was a film camera and this is the digital forum.


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## sierramister (Oct 1, 2011)

I had the the best shot of a football game a few weeks ago.  Receiver and defender went up in the air, I could see both of their faces, and I still had some daylight so I was only at 1000 ISO.  However, I inadvertently switched from aperture priority (which I use when the sun is setting, then I switch to manual when its just the stadium lights) to manual.  My last photo shoot?  FIREWORKS!  I've never had a 4 second exposure at a football game before...


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## bentcountershaft (Oct 1, 2011)

None of my shoots are ever actually critical but the most annoying thing I've done is get up at 4:30 to do a sun rise shoot, drive twenty minutes to the location and then a fifteen minute hike with a few minutes to spare just to find out that at some point I had removed the tripod quick release plate off the bottom of my camera and not put it in my bag. Why? No idea, but it was at home on top of the entertainment center.


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## DorkSterr (Oct 1, 2011)

Some big lady started cussing at me, she thought I was trying to take pictures of her... A few times she approached me and I thought she was gonna do something to my camera.

Other camera related technical problems, my shutter got stuck.


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## Stradawhovious (Dec 18, 2014)

I've watched a speedlight/umbrella/receiver tumble down the river after my subject's mom knocked over a lightstand..  half a second after this shot.







I've shattered a filter while carrying my camera attached to my tripod slung over my shoulder.  Smacked it into rock wall.  Luckily the lens was fine.

I slipped on some rocks on an almost dry riverbed and thought I dislocated my shoulder.

I left My SD card at home on two seperate occasions

And the absolute worst... I shot my neice for her senior portrait, and my sister took the JPEG I sent her (after I processed it) and she gave it to a friend to "touch up".  The friend blew all the highlighs and made it look like a piece of crap.  Then she sent it to all the relatives and said "Look what my brother did!"

Grrr...


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## 480sparky (Dec 18, 2014)




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## fotomonkey (Dec 18, 2014)

Camera quit writing to the card as the bride was walking towards me (beach wedding). That's why you have two bodies.


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## Ysarex (Dec 18, 2014)

Louisiana State Trooper.

Joe


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## Jay Vee (Dec 18, 2014)

Was shooting some night pics outside on the balcony. Thinking I'll come back later to do a few more shoots I went inside. A few beers in and I totally forget about it. Was woken in the morning saying I left my camera outside and it rained last night. Luckily it was just light showers and didn't damage anything.


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## 480sparky (Dec 18, 2014)

I was gonna answer it was the day the back of my camera accidently popped open after shooting a basketball game and exposed all the film, but since this is posted in the Digital Discussion Q&A forum, I won't mention it.

Nor will I mention the time my Pentax MX took a nose-dive off the tripod and smashed up the pentaprism.

I also won't tell you about the time a classmate opened up my brand-new box of 100 sheets of photo paper in class to see if it was any good.


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## Designer (Dec 18, 2014)

Good thing you didn't tell us.  I would have had nightmares for weeks.


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## runnah (Dec 18, 2014)

I took a self portrait.


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## Damion Hamilton (Dec 18, 2014)

Bride & father coming down the isle and my Camera shutter started to Leak light...a 1inch line of light horizontally across every photo.  Switch to second camera on shoulder to save the day....70-200mm stops working complete...no focus, no connection with camera.  Basically $6,500 worth of gear dead in the water within a minute!  But thanks to back up gear and a second shooter all was well!


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## Scatterbrained (Dec 18, 2014)

I once drove about an hour and a half out to get a very particular shot, only to get there and realize I had left the adapter for the lens at home.    One time in Old St Augustine (Fl)  I was taking a candid shot of my wife and I had a shopkeeper come after me with a broom.   I've had my camera and lens (5dII and 24-70L) fall off of my tripod and split the lens in half on a wrought iron fence. . . .while on vacation.  Yay me!


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## Nettles (Dec 18, 2014)

A dangerous rogue wave hit me and my EOS 50. I took the battery out immediately and left it on a towel on a radiator overnight. By some miracle it worked the next day, the lens too. Very lucky!


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## dennybeall (Dec 19, 2014)

At the beach last month and the sun was really bright!! Put camera up to my eye to shoot a heron fishing in the surf and dang the eyecup was gone and with my glasses on I couldn't see the setting in the viewfinder window. Ended up throwing a towel over my head so I could see........


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## SquarePeg (Dec 19, 2014)

Was at Hearst Castle where flash photos not allowed indoors.  Bumped up the ISO  quite a bit to get some shots of the interiors.  Hand held, dark rooms, no flash-they all sucked.   The tour moved outside and I forgot to lower the ISO back. Wasn't reviewing as I shot so didn't realize it until we got back to the shuttle and I started scrolling back... ended up with 0 decent pics from that stop which is a bummer because there were some gorgeous vistas from atop the hill where the "ranch" is set and some really interesting rooms inside.


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## snowbear (Dec 19, 2014)

Digital discussion . . . hmmm . . .Hey Sparky, how's this:

Snapped the film out of the canister (manual advance) while shooting a game for high school yearbook. No place to open camera so I had to quit early.  _*I would later want to scan those shots for Throwback Thursdays*.
_
Shot a roll of Ectachrome at the wrong ISO and didn't realize it until after I had sent the roll off to be developed. _ *Years later, I would want to scan those shots to JPEGs*.
_
Had loaded a couple of canisters from a fairly new 100' roll of Tri-X (high school, again).  We didn't have a bulk loader so I'd just use the arm stretch method, cut the film and spool it by hand.  The problem was when I turned on the darkroom lights.  I'd forgot to put the big roll back in the can.  _*Years later, I would have liked to scan the shots that were junk because the film was flashed.*_

When the DSLR was new and I still only shot JPEGs, I took a bunch of photos with the wrong white balance.


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## PWhite214 (Dec 19, 2014)

Robin Usagani said:


> Forgot CF card and stupid radioshack sells it for incredible high price.


+1 for this

Around '76 or '77 dropped me, my pack and my Pentax H1A in the Gila River on a two week packing vacation.  

Forgot the 'New' Sony A77 uses SD cards, took 2 CF cards.  Made a stop at Walmart.

I may think of others later

Phil


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## Nevermore1 (Dec 19, 2014)

Went camping at the beach and did not realize until we got there that i had forgotten to pack color film in my bag.  I only had about 15 rolls of B&W film which was for my Forensic Photography class.  

As for digital, I can't remember where I had gone but it was some touristy place.  I didn't know I had forgotten the CF card in the laptops card reader until I got to the place.  It was a 5 hour drive each way so I wasn't going back and there wasn't anyplace nearby that sold the cards.


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## paigew (Dec 19, 2014)

Fell while shooting and dropped camera in thick sticky mud


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## Gary A. (Dec 19, 2014)

Getting trapped behind enemy lines and holing up for 24 hours in a French bakery with some Marines. I remember thinking to myself that "I don't want to die this way ... with frosting on my face".


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## kathyt (Dec 20, 2014)

I am known to lay on the ground, climb up on things, run after people, but this particular day my pants were not up to the task and split right in the crotch. I put my sweatshirt around my waist and kept shooting!


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## FITBMX (Dec 21, 2014)

kathyt said:


> I am known to lay on the ground, climb up on things, run after people, but this particular day my pants were not up to the task and split right in the crotch. I put my sweatshirt around my waist and kept shooting!



Duct tape works to!


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## FITBMX (Dec 21, 2014)

I've gone to shot before, just to realize that I left my camera on after downloading last. I've done this twice, it's like I have a disease!!!


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## rexbobcat (Dec 21, 2014)

It didn't happen to me but to a friend while we were shooting together with a few other people. 

We were shooting a rather large waterfall (by volume;it wasn't very tall) and the rocks were slippery.

My friend, who was carrying his tripod and stepping from rock to rock to get to the other side, is a bigger guy and has a bad leg, slipped and fell.

He was fine with just a few scrapes but his camera almost went over the falls.


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## rexbobcat (Dec 21, 2014)

Oh and one time I was shooting a friend and his son at a skatepark for a journalism assignment and I had set my 70-200 on my bag. 

Well he picked up the bag not noticing and the lens just rolled off onto the concrete. It was like a slow-motion car crash.

It didn't break but it almost ruined the filter threads.


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## Murray Bloom (Dec 22, 2014)

I was shooting a catalog cover in the woods.  It was for a leather company which made gun cases, holsters and accessories.   I was using an 8x10 camera on a heavy tripod.  While hiking to the location, I bashed the rear of the camera against a rock, breaking the ground glass into several pieces, which made composing and focusing impossible.  I gathered up the largest of the glass pieces and after arriving at the proper spot, threw the dark cloth over the camera and proceeded to set up the shot by holding a piece of the ground glass in various places in the focusing frame.  I lucked out and got the shot!

By the way, the ad agency guy who set up the stuff was hiding behind a rock.  We didn't think to bring a walkie-talkie (pre-cell phone era) and had to communicate using hand gestures since we couldn't hear each other over the rushing water.




Bucheimer by artist21227, on Flickr


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## FITBMX (Dec 22, 2014)

Murray Bloom said:


> I was shooting a catalog cover in the woods.  It was for a leather company which made gun cases, holsters and accessories.   I was using an 8x10 camera on a heavy tripod.  While hiking to the location, I bashed the rear of the camera against a rock, breaking the ground glass into several pieces, which made composing and focusing impossible.  I gathered up the largest of the glass pieces and after arriving at the proper spot, I threw the dark cloth over the camera and proceeded to set up the shot by holding a piece of the ground glass in various places in the focusing frame.  I lucked out and got the shot!
> 
> By the way, the ad agency guy who set up the stuff was hiding behind a rock.  We didn't think to bring a walkie-talkie (pre-cell phone era) and had to communicate using hand gestures since we couldn't hear each other over the rushing water.
> 
> ...



All of that happens, and you still pull off a great shot? You have some insane skills!!!


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## calamityjane (Mar 6, 2016)

Being bullied on a daily basis, which increases with every visible success. (6 years and counting). Worst, individual, instance of which was having my camera bag kicked so hard (deliberately) the hard drive on my laptop failed and I had to take a day out getting it replaced at the Genius Bar - luckily, it was still under warranty. (Other, tricky, situations/hardware fails pale into insignificance)


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