Photography Freak Accidents

[DF]

So there I am, standing on the artificially constructed concrete embankment circling the lakefront with my heavy SRT around my neck.
Then all of a sudden as I stand looking out on Lake Michigan, my camera falls to the ground hard while ONE end of the strap still attatched flutters
in the wind. One of the straps on the left side somehow unhinged ! How could this happen? They're so secure. I then hooked it back on.
Thank goodness for the old leather casing for protection, but unfortunately, I then couldn't see through the lens - the mirror or lock-up felt the hard hit
and let go. Mirror lock up knob then wouldn't budge. So I advanced the frame anyway and shot (sacrficed) one frame of Velvia (appr.$1.00), Mirror now
back down but not sure If 'ole SRT is fully recovered.
Any other freak accidents out there?

 

[jp498]

Back in the 90's I was photographing college football from the sidelines, and action chasing/tackling went off the field a tiny bit and I got knocked on my back while the players landed around me. I held the camera and 300mm lens up and was fine and equipment was fine. My parents watched it live on television.

Another time I left the shutter cocked in my speed graphic and set it down. The sun shining into the lens caught the shutter on fire and it was burning right in front of me with a thick bad smelling rubber burning smell. I released the shutter to in order to do the "roll" in stop/drop/roll and it wound the burning shutter portion up and smothered the fire. All was well except for that particular shutter speed and I later patched it up with a tent patch, and it works good as new now.

 

[tnp651]

Shooting a wedding with a Hasselblad on a homemade flash bracket (imagine a sheet of aluminum that curves up from below the camera to above the centerline of the prism housing). I had a Metz 60T mounted on the bracket. The quick release failed and the whole thing fell off the tripod about five feet. It landed on the flash, the bracket flexed and sprung the rig back into the air to land on its bottom. No damage at all and I continued shooting.