What’s the worst gear mistake that’s happened to you?

[olafphoto]

Over the years Ihave plenty of bad days ...

The day in Sedona when my Phase One DF/P40+/75-150 slipped out of the Arca quick lock on top of the Cube and hit the rock with a WUMP destroying the hood, locking up the lens and jettisoning off the P40 from the body. Only the lens suffered and I learned to significantly tighten the clamp on the Cube.

3 months later the shutter failed in that Phase One DF and exploded. I removed the back and the entire shutter had cut into itself and blew out leaves - luckily not hitting the sensor/IR glass on the P40+. It looked like a fire cracker had gone off behind the shutter.

The day my buddy hit the remote trunk release in our rental car and I watched in slow motion my camera bag withFuji XPro and lenses plummet out the back of the SUV - snapped the mounted X mount lens clean in two. Luckily the last day of the trip.

And then two very similar situations, one on a bridge over a raging river at Gullfoss, the other on a rock at Bar Harbor lighthouse. In both cases my Alpa Mount wasn’t locked at the top and the back (IQ260) fell off the body and only the sync cable and my lightening fast reactions caught the back before it hit the bridge or tumbled into the sea. The Bar Harbor light trip was another GetDPI trip and my assistant with me from CI I swear almost passed out in shock when he saw me catch the back! After those two situations I became absolutely paranoid about checking MFDB amount plates on bodies when swapping from horizontal/portrait orientation!!

Now I’m not extraordinarily clumsy but if you’re out enough, you WILL eventually have a mishap.

It looks like you had your fair share of "adventures." "If you're out enough you WILL eventual have a mishap" - 100% agree. Thank you so much for sharing.

 

[pegelli]

I don't know if it's the "worst gear mistake" I ever made, but it's certainly one that wrecked 36 exposures. Developing a roll of FP4+ in Ilfosol 3 that had been in a bottle for > 1 yr and coming back completely blank. Not even the negative numbers and/or film designation did show up outside of the perforation. After checking the bottle and a few internet references I found that after opening Ilfosol 3 you can only use it for a maximum of 4 month.

I've made many other mistakes, but this is the only one that caused a loss of exposures, all the others were just money to get something repaired.

 

[MGrayson]

And, of course, the worst gear mistake was buying my first camera - an Olympus XA. I should have heeded that large creaking doorway opening onto the abyss.

Then there was shooting my first roll of film on a Leica M2, thinking that I would explode this silly Leica myth. I swore loudly all day when I got the photos back.

 

[jdphoto]

I misunderstood the the thread title as I thought it implied, "worst camera purchase mistakes". That should be an interesting read too.

 

[olafphoto]

I misunderstood the the thread title as I thought it implied, "worst camera purchase mistakes". That should be an interesting read too.

No problem

 

[tcdeveau]

At the start of a weeklong trip to the Canadian Rockies, I was shooting some skyline shots of Vancouver. Was somewhere where a cannon was about to go off, so I put in earplugs - which dampened the cannon sound but also caused me to not hear the sound of me accidentally bumping into my tripod. The tripod then toppled over and my H4D-40/35-90 did a face plant into some rocks. The UV filter of the lens took the impact and shattered, but somehow the rest of the rig was otherwise unharmed. Removed the shattered filter, blew the glass out, and carried on with the trip...

Had a gig another time where my camera and 24-70 did a barrel roll out of my camera bag when I was getting setup. Again shattered the UV filter, but I couldn’t get it off and i wasn’t able to use it for the gig.

 

[JAB]

My biggest mishap occurred while shooting details of Bridal Veil Falls in Yosemite. I had a 400mm 5.6 lens mounted to a Canon 5D Mk II with the lens mounted to my tripod. This was being shot from a paved area. My vehicle was just behind me and to my right. I swung around from looking in the camera to get something from the car. My left foot caught the tripod leg and down went the camera into the pavement. It landed on the right edge of the back of the camera and virtually split the camera in half. It was a total loss. The flange of the lens was slightly bent. After $400, the lens was back to working again. Tripods can be quite deadly to cameras and lenses!

On another occasion, I had mounted on my tripod (or thought I had) my Hasselblad 500 C/M with a 250mm lens. The shutter release cable had a loop that I always hooked to my tripod. I went to open the hood and the camera went screaming to the ground (soft meadow grass) and just before impact, the cable went tight since it was hooked to the tripod. The tension slowed the camera down and it landed with a light thud. No damage to the camera, but the cable release was toast. Again, near death by tripod!!

 

[Jorgen Udvang]

This one is easy, and although it's more than 15 years ago now, I still feel pain just thinking about it:
One of my customers, a travel agent organising tours and events for incoming tourists etc. to Thailand, wanted some spectacular photos of their 30-40 strong staff with Bangkok as a backdrop. So they rented or borrowed the helicopter platform on top of one of the city's luxury hotels and stopped all their activities for a full day to have the photos done.

The chosen photographer was me, and knowing that this was a once-in-a-lifetime event, I brought all the gear that I had available at the time, Olympus OM-3, OM-2S and an OM-10, all of which were in regular use. Long story short: the OM-10 didn't advance the film, but since it was the least used camera (for the all important single portraits), I didn't notice until I rewinded the film after coming home. The metering of the OM-2S, my main camera, was suddenly way off. The OM-3 worked very well, but I had just acquired that camera second hand, and wasn't very comfortable with it, so only used it for the large group shots with the 21mm.

So I ended up with some very few usable photos and a day wasted for 40 people. Ironically, I had a Canon A95 with me that I had bought a few days earlier. I took a few shots with it, mostly to show off the new digital gadget. I would obviously have been much better off doing the whole job with the Canon, but I didn't trust that camera yet, and my whole body screamed in agony just by the thought of doing a paid job with a point-and-shoot.

It was after this that I reluctantly bought my first digital SLR, the Fuji S3.

Every time I see a "The photographer ruined my wedding" headline, I think about that day, knowing very well that anybody can screw up. "There ain't no such thing as too much backup, too much checking, too much quality control".

 

[GrahamWelland]

I’ll add another ...

Back in the days when I used shoot a lot more wildlife, I used to use a Nikon D3s & 600/4 regularly, mounted on a wimberley gimbal. One thing I can HIGHLY recommend and used to religiously do was lock the gimbal before moving the tripod with the camera mounted. Well, one day I forgot ... lo and behold the camera & lens swung around and I was essentially hit in the side of the head by the D3s which was acting like the equivalent of a sledgehammer. Dazed and confused after clobbering myself with the swinging end of a D3s at the end of a pendulum, I vowed right there to NEVER do that again!

Camera & lens damage? Absolutely zero.
Damage to self? A ringing head, bump and bruise along with associated Turette‘s syndrome for a minute or so.

 

[JeRuFo]

Maybe not the worst, but definetely one of my more stupid mistakes was right here, only about 20 minutes earlier. It was a perfectly calm morning and I was setting up my 4x5 Chamonix when all of a sudden the wind picked up and a storm seemed to come out of nowhere. I quickly tried to get my bag closed and heard the carbon fiber ground glass protector on my closed camera (that was sitting on the tripod) vibrating in the wind. I thought about what a coincidence it was and was surprised at the frequency. While I was looking at it, it must have vibrated into the exact position where it could come off the mountings and it flew off the side of the hill, never to be seen again. Not a big loss, but completely avoidable.
It was an extremely short snow/hail storm, it was all over in about 5 minutes. I was quite happy with the white dusting on the ground. Unfortunately it quickly melted in the early morning sunshine, it was about all the snow I saw on Skye that february.

That morning was also the first time I heard frozen waterfalls break off and fall down the cliff. A very eerie sound.

 

[Jack]

Over the years I've had plenty of bad days ...

The day in Sedona when my Phase One DF/P40+/75-150 slipped out of the Arca quick lock on top of the Cube and hit the rock with a WUMP destroying the hood, locking up the lens and jettisoning off the P40 from the body. Only the lens suffered and I learned to significantly tighten the clamp on the Cube.

Graham, does this image look familiar?

IIRC, this is precisely where that happened? It was a pretty good trip other than that. A few days later in Canyon De Chelley :

 

[GrahamWelland]

Graham, does this image look familiar?

IIRC, this is precisely where that happened? It was a pretty good trip other than that. A few days later in Canyon De Chelley :

It certainly looks familiar. I blame the drop now on the Cathedral Rock vortex ...

 

[Bill Caulfeild-Browne]

My horror story took place in the Adirondacks in 2011. I had just acquired a brand new Phase One IQ180 and had used it for just a few hundred shots.. While photographing a river, the back fell off the camera into a foot of water. (The catches on the back were weak and didn't require much to open them.) This was the first day of my trip and I was devastated. There was no visible damage but of course it was soaked.

Fortunately I had already learned two things - always have a back-up camera and make sure you have insurance. My back-up was an M9 which got a lot of use with the Fall colours of NY and Vermont that trip. The back cost over $4,000 to repair but it only cost me the $1,000 deductible. So a relatively happy ending.

Phase have since greatly strengthened the catches on their backs but to this day I check the back is truly firmly attached to the body. One other precaution I take is never to carry the tripod over my should with the camera attached - never mind whichever clamp you're using. The late Michael Reichmann had his Hassie detached that way...for another horror story.

One last lesson I nearly learned the hard way - always have a lens shade attached. I dropped a brand new Canon 400mm lens but it landed on the hood and came away unscathed except for an ugly crack on the hood.

 

[olafphoto]

My horror story took place in the Adirondacks in 2011. I had just acquired a brand new Phase One IQ180 and had used it for just a few hundred shots.. While photographing a river, the back fell off the camera into a foot of water. (The catches on the back were weak and didn't require much to open them.) This was the first day of my trip and I was devastated. There was no visible damage but of course it was soaked.

Fortunately I had already learned two things - always have a back-up camera and make sure you have insurance. My back-up was an M9 which got a lot of use with the Fall colours of NY and Vermont that trip. The back cost over $4,000 to repair but it only cost me the $1,000 deductible. So a relatively happy ending.

Phase have since greatly strengthened the catches on their backs but to this day I check the back is truly firmly attached to the body. One other precaution I take is never to carry the tripod over my should with the camera attached - never mind whichever clamp you're using. The late Michael Reichmann had his Hassie detached that way...for another horror story.

One last lesson I nearly learned the hard way - always have a lens shade attached. I dropped a brand new Canon 400mm lens but it landed on the hood and came away unscathed except for an ugly crack on the hood.

Wow! Quite a story! Thank you for sharing.

 

[Shashin]

My horror story took place in the Adirondacks in 2011. I had just acquired a brand new Phase One IQ180 and had used it for just a few hundred shots.. While photographing a river, the back fell off the camera into a foot of water. (The catches on the back were weak and didn't require much to open them.) This was the first day of my trip and I was devastated. There was no visible damage but of course it was soaked.

Fortunately I had already learned two things - always have a back-up camera and make sure you have insurance. My back-up was an M9 which got a lot of use with the Fall colours of NY and Vermont that trip. The back cost over $4,000 to repair but it only cost me the $1,000 deductible. So a relatively happy ending.

Phase have since greatly strengthened the catches on their backs but to this day I check the back is truly firmly attached to the body. One other precaution I take is never to carry the tripod over my should with the camera attached - never mind whichever clamp you're using. The late Michael Reichmann had his Hassie detached that way...for another horror story.

One last lesson I nearly learned the hard way - always have a lens shade attached. I dropped a brand new Canon 400mm lens but it landed on the hood and came away unscathed except for an ugly crack on the hood.

There is always catch, isn't there?

But those moments get burnt into your brain and you just never forget. (There is a pun there, but keep reading.)

During a trip to Tokyo with my Pentax 645D, I was shooting outside for hours every day. I had the camera on a tripod and just carried it around to shoot. (This is not a dropped camera story.) But they were very sunny days, but cool as it was December. After a couple of weeks of doing this, I was looking through the viewfinder and noticed what looked like ink or plastic oozing onto the edges of the focusing screen. The sun had entered the camera through the eyepiece and melted in area around the screen. Fortunately, it was not too expensive to repair and Pentax service did a great job. But I am far more careful with optical finders and how the sun falls on the camera.

 

[GrahamWelland]

One last lesson I nearly learned the hard way - always have a lens shade attached. I dropped a brand new Canon 400mm lens but it landed on the hood and came away unscathed except for an ugly crack on the hood.

+1 on the hood.

 

[GrahamWelland]

Doug - you are such a bore.

 

[GrahamWelland]

Doug - you are such a bore.

And poof ... he’s gone.

Btw, this is what happens when a DF shutter lets go.