Your biggest "D'oh!" moment?

[dangoldman]

<p>surprised to see so many people missing shots because of no card, i've had the shoot without card option set to no for a long, long time...</p>

<p>losing photos, wrong ISO with film, custom functions on that i had forgotten about, all very high on repeated mistakes...</p>

[yog_sothoth]

<p>The mirror lock up custom function on Canon digital cameras has annoyed me on many an occation. </p>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>No major D'oh! moments recently. Forgot to reset the D2H from hi-rez JPEG only to JPEG plus NEF, but no biggie for that particular set of photos, they were lens tests that I can easily repeat.</p>

[User_2000406]

<p>Taking out the exposed film, closing the camera back without putting a new roll in right away, and then later forgetting there was no film inside. I then shot a whole 'roll' of blanks including an irreplaceable shot of my class in front of a funny sign 300 miles from home. Gee, this 36-exposure roll just keeps on going...</p>

<p>At least I've since learned to see if the rewind handle is turning to confirm that the film is properly engaged.</p>

<p>On a smaller scale but still silly, becoming accustomed to shooting autofocus, autoexposure, digital point-and-shoots for months at a time. Then going on a photography expedition with a fully manual Pentax 6x7, and forgetting to set the exposure and focus before shooting. Hey, my eyesight is blurry without glasses so I just thought the blurryness was my eyes...</p>

[peter]

<p>At the end of a two week holiday on a live aboard dive boat in the South Pacific twenty years ago. I had bought a new Nikonos but apparently did not know how to load it properly. 14 days and twenty rolls later I found out the hard way back at home when I discovered that only the first roll had turned out. Oh well, it gave me the perfect excuse to go back again next year. My photography skills have since improved.</p>

[Ed_Ingold]

<p>Doh! Finding out than an F100 will blithely snap away after automatically rewinding the film in an environment too noisy for you to notice. The "secret handshake" needed to rewind an F5 was a welcome improvement.</p>

[yog_sothoth]

<p>How about "Your light meter reads "4" so you expose at 1/4 a second, and then a few shots later you realize that there is a little "s" next to the 4, meaning that you need 4 seconds, not 1/4 a second. </p>

[mt4x4]

<p>1) Every single time I forget to put my exposure compensation back where it should go.<br /> <br /> 2) Locking my keys in my car before a parade because I was too focused on getting all of my gear together, then having to stand by my car with all my gear after the parade while I waited for a ride to go get my spare keys!</p>

[vancouverphotographer]

<p>In the old days, I also shot without film - I remember being in a dark theatre and I needed to change film so I took the full roll out and just waited until I got some light so that I could put the new roll in - I guess I waited a while and totally forgot I had nothing in there and started shooting, eventually I was wondering how come I had so many shots (since the max. I could shoot was 24 or 36) LOL ... good thing I shot a lot or I never would have known until after the show<br>

More recently, I was shooting with my Rebel and in putting the camera down etc. I accidentally put it in timer mode ... so whenever I hit the shutter button, there's no apparent response (clueless that it was in timer mode and also I could not see any indication it was in timer mode) I guess before it took a shot, I turned it off thinking something was wrong ... so I powered it off a few times and assumed my shutter was dead. It was not until I was showing my friend my camera that he figured it was the timer on and I did happen to see the light blinking as he was handling it too. LOL</p>

 

[joseph_leotta]

<p>I have 2 , one with a happy ending and one that didn't<br>

The happy ending - Back in the mid seventies when I was in college, I would take my precious Nikon F/Ftn to school to shoot for the newspaper and yearbook. I remember hanging it off the back of a chair during one of my morning classes. I went thru the day, left shool at about 4pm and took a 1 hour long subway ride home. When I walked into my house, I realized that I left the camera on the back of the chair 8 hours ago in a classroom that had classes in it all day. I kissed it goodby in my mine, but was going to make a effort to save it. I called a friend and he drove me back to the school. I walked into the classroom and there was the camera hanging on the chair. TRUE STORY<br>

The not so Happy ending - I finallt saved and got a 2nd Body to shoot with. The obvious choice for Nikon shooters in those days was a Nikkormat. I could not have been happier getting a 2nd Nikon. I carefully unpacked it, set it up for use, loaded film and mounted a lens. I took it and was going to a park to shoot and try it out. I walked outside with the camera hanging off my neck from the strap. THE STRAP THAT I PUT ON WRONG - And watched it bounce down a full flight of concrete stairs. Never got to shoot a single frame with that camera, and to add insult to injury I lost my 50mm 1.4 lens to boot.</p>

[Lou_Meluso]

<p>This just happened the other day. I had just received the correct Ricoh fan flash for my vintage Ricoh Five-One-Nine rangefinder. I put a flash bulb in it. had a bit of trouble putting it on the hot shoe so, being quite nearsighted, I took off my glasses and held it very close to my face with the camera pointed at me, so I could see the small foot better. As soon as the foot hit that hot shoe contact..POOF...the flash bulb went off right in my face about 8 inches away! D'oh!</p>

[summitar]

<p>In my photo life, my senior moments have been fairly mild compared to every other aspect of life. Things like forgetting to turn the exposure meter switch off and running the battery down, or pulling a camera out of a pocket and not noticing that I had inadvertently rotated the mode dial. Maybe the worst is that I occasionally believe a seller's description on the auction site.</p>

[thomas semesky]

<p>Finding a forgotten roll of slide film that I had shot many years earlier at the bottom of a little used pocket of my camera bag! Of course when I got the roll back from the film processor the color had shifted, but on the bright side I was able to salvage a couple of nice photo's from the roll. I was able to convert a few of the slides into black & white, toned prints that looked rather nice!</p>

[flatulent1]

<p>I started in photography when auto-wind and auto-rewind were new; as such I never had much to do with thumb levers and rewind cranks. A few years ago I picked up a Canon F1 for cheap. Jazzed, I loaded it up with film and started shooting. All too often I would focus, meter, frame, and try to shoot to no effect; I had repeatedly forgotten to wind the frame on (to my disgust, this still happens too frequently for my liking). At the end of the roll, I started cranking on the rewind lever; jeez, it isn't supposed to be this tough to rewind, is it? I kept at it until I heard the film part from its moorings. Looking in the manual later that day I discovered what the little button on the bottom of the camera is for. And I've done that twice.</p>

[mohir_ali]

<p>I sometimes change film mid-roll in order to use a different speed. This time I had finished a roll, rewound it, but left the leader out to "assist" the lab tech. Guess what? You know it, I reloaded the roll and shot my GF's sister's baby baptism (in Spain)...all double exposure. No flash was allowed in the small church, so no one shot the ceremony. I shot with a Leica and Noctilux (f1.0)...no photographic record of the event. You should've seen everyone's faces.</p>

[kari v]

<p>I think most d'oh! was my first MF macro test. I had both set wrong ISO and calculated wrong light loss factor resulting in about two stop overexposure. Couple of frames were quite interesting light pastel stuff though.</p>

<p>Also learned the hard way that Canon T70's light meter display has rather annoying qualities in manual mode. Two stops under is not a place to be. Luckily I figured out there was something wrong after couple of frames.</p>

<p>Opening camera back and finding unwound film inside? Yeah. And what film? TMZ. Whuupii.</p>

<p>Second hand d'oh.<br>

Forgot to focus with manual focus camera? Actually no, but my friends tend to even when I tell them it's not AF. Quite interesting, I think they hear me ok but something just fails to register. So portraits of me on my film has something like 70% failure rate.</p>

[flatulent1]

<p>The sequel to my F1 travails is that, because I rarely shoot a whole roll at a time with so many cameras demanding my attention, I sometimes pop open the back of an older camera and find it's already loaded with film. Naturally this happens in broad daylight.</p>

[the celt 2]

<p>When I was in the USAF as a "still photographic specialist", I was given an assignment to do some color slides of one of the new senior officers recently arrived at the base. These were to be used in the new personnel orientation briefings. So I loaded up my trusty Srt-101, and off I went to his office. Upon arriving at said office I was imedietly informed by the officer that he hated being photographed, and that he resented the need for the whole thing. I assured him that I would take as little of his valuable time as possible. I hooked the flash up, and started shooting as fast as possible, making sure to get as many angles as possible, and make a hasty retreat to the Base Photo Lab to proccess the slide film. Do any of you remember that the Srt-101 had two flash sync sockets? Do any of you know what happens when you plug your electronic/strobe flash into the socket marked "FP". Well I found out, and so did the officer when I had to call him, and reschedule the shoot. He was not overly thrilled to see me again. One other "DOH" moment from my military days. We used Graphlex XLs for just about everything (besides the color slide work). I was out o another assignment and the pc cord from the graphlex flash kept falling off of the sync terminal on the camera. Of course this was at a rather serious medal presentation. So as I alwys did in the past I took the the sync cord, and used my teeth to tighten up the connection. Unfortunately for me, I neglected to turn off the power from the 510 volt battery that the flash was plugged into. I had a blister on my tounge for 2 days, and I'm still surprised that I managed not to scream when it happened. </p>

[john_robison3]

<p>Putting exposed B&W film in the not clearly labled fixer first, my fault, thought I was pouring D-76. Should'a seen the look on my face when I pulled out the cleared film.</p>

[cametacamera]

<p>not telling<br>

;~]</p>

[william_supko]

<p>I drove a little over three hours to Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park, VA. Stepped out of the car at the first stop and pulling out the camera. I had completely forgot that I was doing test shots with 800 iso. I was in the beginings of my career and was trying out the sunny sixteen rule. The only problem was I thought my ISO was set to 100 so everything was coming out over exposed even at the highest shutter speed. I started to panic, thinking I just drove almot 200 miles and was going to have to turn around because of a faulty camera. Luckily I saw the ISO before turning around and going home.</p>

[chris_waller]

<p>Despite a decade or so of darkroom experience, one day I was having problems getting a sheet of paper to line up in the easel. I couldn't see what was getting in the way so - I put the light on!</p>

[lex_jenkins]

<blockquote>

<p>Putting exposed B&W film in the not clearly labled fixer first, my fault, thought I was pouring D-76. Should'a seen the look on my face when I pulled out the cleared film.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>John, you may be the first person in the history of photo.net to admit to having done that. Sure, many of us have done it (me too), but we usually blame the camera, the film manufacturer, faulty developer, gremlins and the moon being in a grand trine with Merde and D'oh.</p>

[Gerry Whitmarsh]

Grabbed my back pack and took the train into town to shoot some street scenes. After an hour or so I took my pack off and opened it only to find I had bought my laptop instead; the packs look the same! Ended up traipsing around all day with a laptop on my back and no camera :-(

[joe_jackson4]

<p>I once walked across a crowded city square in Eastern Europe, only to realise in horror that the lens cap was slightly misaligned. The manufacturer's logo just wasn't parallel with the base of the camera... :( I was left with little choice but to blame a passing small child for the incident, just to save face...</p>