Stupid mistakes you have made!

[Unframed Dave]

Yesterday, the hottest day of the year, we made an extremely arduous trek from the car to a well known North Norfolk beauty spot.

It is with some painful hindsight, that today I viewed my several hundred shots to discover that the front of my lens was filthy.

It was an exceptionally windy day, which I guess contributed to the crud all over my front element (lens hood was in place), I even had a set of three cleaning brushes and a blower in my bag.

To say that I feel a right muppet is an understatement.

Guess I'll just have to go back and try again.

Anyone else want to confess anything?

 

[FowlersFreeTime]

Too many mistakes to count as I'm still a novice: from leaving the lens cap on to improper exposure.

 

[AlphaWorld]

Too many mistakes to count as I'm still a novice: from leaving the lens cap on to improper exposure.

That’s not a novice mistake; that’s a professional mistake!

I’m not a pro, but I have taken a shot with a cable release, looked at the shot, wondering why it’s completely black: did my strobes not fire? is my trigger working? are my strobes turned on? Only to realise that the lens cap was on…

My favourite description of a lens cap is ”An ND-1000000 filter”.

 

[MrFotoFool]

Many, many years ago (over 20) I went to Florida for a short trip and was at a zoo to photograph a golden tabby tiger. When I was driving back to the airport that night and stopped at a rest stop, I noticed I didn't have any film in the camera!

 

[Uncle Kevriano]

I'm always forgetting to change settings when going from one subject to the next and have so often stuffed up what should have been a good shot by having the wrong shutter speed or focus mode etc. I think that because we can shoot thousands of images in a day we forget to concentrate on things like this on every shot, like you had to when shooting film.

 

[AlphaWorld]

I'm always forgetting to change settings when going from one subject to the next and have so often stuffed up what should have been a good shot by having the wrong shutter speed or focus mode etc. I think that because we can shoot thousands of images in a day we forget to concentrate on things like this on every shot, like you had to when shooting film.

I was shooting with studio flash (f/8, x-sync) and moved to shooting natural light (f/1.2), then back to studio flash (at f/1.2…). That’s over 5 stops overexposed - oops.

 

[pmenear]

I was use to using plastic underwater housings and ports then bought my first metal dome port. The first time I used it was on an archiolgical survey, hired boat and skipper financed by national heritage. I knew something was wrong on the bottom but didn't know what and kept going with the dive didn't notice the port was steamed up from the temperature change untill back on the boat.

 

[FowlersFreeTime]

I was use to using plastic underwater housings and ports then bought my first metal dome port. The first time I used it was on an archiolgical survey, hired boat and skipper financed by national heritage. I knew something was wrong on the bottom but didn't know what and kept going with the dive didn't notice the port was steamed up from the temperature change untill back on the boat.

I've often wondered how one mitigates fog in UW housings? Or do you have to keep everything in a humidity controlled box until ready to use? My little experience with snorkeling and scuba diving, my mask ALWAYS fogged up!

 

[Janice]

Mistakes? "Let me count the ways....." Too many to count, but one that I made me laugh was when I was new to my a6600. I didn't know why my LCD screen kept turning off then on, then off. Took me far too long to realize my finger was blocking the viewfinder now and then causing the LCD screen to go black. hahaha

 

[pmenear]

I've often wondered how one mitigates fog in UW housings? Or do you have to keep everything in a humidity controlled box until ready to use? My little experience with snorkeling and scuba diving, my mask ALWAYS fogged up!

The simple solution I use is to keep the housing in a bucket of water so the air inside stays cool and no misting, if thats not possible a silica gel desiccant packet inside works. For misting mask I'm old school and just use spit on the inside.

 

[Charles Jones]

While shooting a product with a simple two-light setup my strobes were malfunctioning, the light meter giving different exposures for the key, the fill light firing when it wasn't supposed to so my ratio was constantly off. I spent 45 minutes puzzling out what was going wrong. Turned lights off, turned lights on, checked the batteries and connections. Switched out my flash trigger with the backup one. I even went through the manuals for function details and didn't find anything. At one point, just for a few seconds, I considered someone was nearby with the same strobes and a trigger set to the exact channel as me. Channel 8 because I never use channel 1.

So I continued negotiating with my lights and getting weird meter readings. I changed camera settings to meet them which resulted in a long series of over/under-exposed images, each worse and more confusing than the last.

Then I figured the problem was my trusty Sekonic L-308X. It's a very basic light meter. So it was failing, no big deal, I could order another later. I put it away and then as I was setting flash exposures "to taste" I suddenly stopped and thought about how it was a basic light meter. Part of me didn't want to because I knew what was coming, but I looked for an icon on my trigger screen and paid attention to my shutter speed. The whole time I was shooting in HSS.

I wasted nearly an hour because I forgot my light meter cannot measure high speed synch flash.

 

[Cαscαdian]

On my Sierra '97 hike I chose to let my camera cross a narrow log without me. It gently landed in a shrub on the other side - the shrub sprang back, rolling the camera many feet down the bank and into the water I ran across that log, fished it out, pulled batteries and let it dry that evening and much of the next day. It was fine! Can't say that about the lens though, the mount self-converted to a left-right tilt lens and I brought no spare.

Got a few decent half-frame slides out of it though.. ..

 

[Jeff A]

Too many to choose one screw up. Lets just say, if you learn from your mistakes, I must be approaching Einstein level!

 

[FowlersFreeTime]

Thought I would resurrect this thread with some mistakes I made over Easter weekend (see what I did there?).

Family photos with kids is hard work: the more kids, the difficulty multiplies. I was so focused on using burst mode to try to get acceptable photos of 4 families with 5 kids between us... that I eventually ran out of memory card space

I'll also add another stupid mistake from the same day: having families pose for photos in the harsh light of a cloudless sky means I have a ton of photos with dark shadows under eyes and easter hats... and that's when they are not squinting at the sun

 

[iamdlewis]

I almost missed being able to get my pano of the Vegas strip because I forgot to pack the mount for the 100-400GM. That photo was one of the reasons I was going out to Vegas.
Missed a couple sunset shots because I grabbed my manfroto tripod and A7R4 which did not have the base for the manfroto (the reason why I won't buy another manfroto).
Missed some shots of Snow Buntings among other birds because my battery died but you know I brought extra batteries with me they were just in the car about a mile away across a mix of sand and a rock jetty with temps in the teens (about -8C) and 20mph (32kph) winds.
Once I let for an outing without a memory card in the camera. Now I leave the doors open if there is no card or battery in the camera.
As for the actual photographic process there are probably too many to name but one I do constantly is that I am in the wrong Drive Mode with the A1. Nothing like trying to capture that bird in flight while waiting for the 5 sec release delay. The A1ii will fix this with the * drive mode dial option.

 

[THXGEEK]

Nothing like trying to capture that bird in flight while waiting for the 5 sec release delay.

Laughing with you, not at you! I am equally guilty of that - as well as the opposite. Having my camera in high-speed burst mode (along with pre-capture enabled) and now I suddenly have 57 pics of the flower I saw...

 

[iamdlewis]

Laughing with you, not at you! I am equally guilty of that - as well as the opposite. Having my camera in high-speed burst mode (along with pre-capture enabled) and now I suddenly have 57 pics of the flower I saw...

I do that as well (just not with pre-capture yet). I just don't have as much of an issue with that because you know capturing those micro seconds of the flower/tree/vista lets you see those minute changes.
The new fun I've had since starting to use the focus bracketing is that more than once I've gone to photograph a bird/sunset and started a 500+ image stacking sequence.