I'm A Moron...

[Hutch]

'S true...I just froze my proverbials off walking a mile to photograph car light traces at a roundabout, set up my tripod, camera etc. and discovered that I'd forgotten to load a memory card into it and didn't have any with me. - Mission aborted.
Please tell me I'm not the only one who does this sort of thing.

C'mon - 'fess up...

[SwissJon]

Nope... Never forgotten anything.. Ever.. Not even my underwear when I went away for a week.

[Hill Country Hack]

Don't feel alone. I went out for some night cityscapes. Camera...check, tripod...check, memory card...check, battery....check, locations and route...check. Ten shots in the battery dies and no spare. Mission aborted.

[Rentham]

Originally Posted by Hutch

C'mon - 'fess up...

Thankfully I've saved my really massive screw ups for mess around shoots with my wife. Two that stand out:

1. Drove around town for about an hour, found a location just as we were losing light at sunset, got the lights set up, go to take a test shot… nothing happens. Forgot my camera batteries in their chargers at home.
2. I hump about 100lbs of gear up a steep hill in the middle of summer, including the 18lb Vagabond battery pack for the Alien Bee strobes. I get the stands, camera gear, lights, and modifiers to the top of the hill and I'm sweating like mad. Get everything set up, test fire teh Alien Bees. Nothing. I had forgotten to charge the Vagabond so I had about 50lbs worth of useless lighting gear.

[mosgood]

Back in my film days, I had loaded my camera with a roll, & went to the zoo to burn it. Only later to discover that I'd never quite got the roll loaded on the sprockets correctly. No shots, just blank negs. Had some awesome "almost" photos too. The other thing that happened back in my film days was during class, somehow my roll of film got switched with another student's roll during developing. His negatives came out, but mine were ruined...not enough time in developer equals a blank roll of film. :-(

I've also had batteries fail, forget to load a memory card, etc. It's something fairly common I think. I had a pro admit that even he has had similar things happen to him.

Still it sucks!

[NathanFranke]

Forgot charged batteries once. Memory cards once. I've forgotten strobes before. But, they were all for personal shoots, nothing for clients.

[Niresangwa]

Only thing I can confess to is not blanking a memory card before a wedding. The card filled just as she was coming down the aisle, and I was wondering why nothing was happening when I was firing.

Not a huge issue, I just switched to my other camera. Finally figured out what it was as I retreated to the side and could take my eye away from the view finder, deleted the older folders and carried on... I was just grateful the camera hadn't broken down.

Interestingly enough, the exact same thing happened 3 weddings later. I have since learned my lesson of double checking after formatting.

[ravncat]

Climbed to the top of a mini mountain large hill, steep difficult desert climb, with a backpack and a giant case with a large format 4x5 and a giant tripod to support it. left the film holders in the car on the road below (see left side)



Not quite aborted, but close, I ended up doing the climb down and up, and it added 2.5 hours to the time taken - (the shot's taken with my old digital, I used it as a sort of "test" for exposure

[scootermcq]

Um how bout my wife getting up the courage to para-sail.... I left all my gear in the shack because "it's gonna get wet mon" and we just took her little point & shoot with us in their little dry box. She is just lifting off the back of the boat, I bring up the camera to take an image.................... memory card full! The really amusing part is somehow it is my fault.

[NgaiHill]

On Sunday I was visiting a local cemetery (doing genealogy research), went to take a photo of a headstone to find I had no memory card in the camera. Luckily home was very nearby and not too much time was wasted going home to get the card.