The hot weather or just getting old

[colin wells]

Today i was replacing the light seals in my OM2 SP the job went great with no problems put it all back together and tried to fire it and all i got was a click no full fire. My heart sank and i run it through in my head what have you done . I took the back off to inspect what had happend / gone wrong. I couldn't find anything wrong so put it back together and tried again but this time i took THE LENS CAP OFF

 

[Alan Gales]

I very recently shot a roll of 120 Portra with my new to me Mamiya C220 F indoors using flash. When I got my roll developed everything was under exposed. I checked my lens and I had accidentally moved the switch from the electronic flash setting to the flash bulb setting before I took a single shot. Later I saw on the internet where wedding photographers would epoxy the switch to the electronic flash setting so they wouldn't make my mistake.

Don't feel lonesome. I've shot polaroid, 35mm, medium format, large format and digital. I've also screwed up with each of them!

 

[Sirius Glass]

You are getting old. I am getting old. We all are getting old. So get over it.

Some of the greatest photographs that I took, were taken with the lens cap on. Just one of the reasons, that I use slrs.

 

[Ap507b]

Best/worst thing I have ever done shot a roll of film in an FM2. Gone to rewind it & thought... hmm, not much tension here & realised that I hadn't loaded it first. Oh well.

 

[gone]

I think it's the heat. At the ripe old age of 17 I took the front wheels off my 1966 Mustang GT fastback and replaced them w/ some smaller ones just to see if it handled any better. Took it out on the highway and ran it up through the gears to 135 MPH, where it topped out. Slowed it down and got off the highway, then tore threw some curves sideways at 90 to get a feel of things.

I turned onto the road that led to the house, and suddenly the steering wheel started violently thrashing back and forth in my hands, so I had to creep into the front yard at 5 MPH. When I looked at the front wheels they were at an odd angle. I put a jack under the car, took off one hubcap, and three lug nuts fell out on the ground. Went to the other side, took the hub cap off, and FOUR lug nuts fell out. The remaining three lug nuts that were holding on the two front tires were holding on by just one thread.

Seems that when I changed the wheels I had put the lug nuts on snug by hand, thinking to tighten them down w/ the lug wrench after the car had been lowered to the ground. But I had forgotten to cinch them up w/ the wrench, and popped the hubcaps back on anyway. It was in the South, and about 100 degrees out if I remember correctly.

 

[darkosaric]

Getting old is great, considering the alternative !

 

[macfred]

Some of the greatest photographs that I took, were taken with the lens cap on ...

Same here with my FUJI rangefinders ...

 

[blockend]

The older I get the more I appreciate autofocus, auto-exposure, lightweight cameras. They save putting on my reading glasses to check what the aperture is set to and how many frames I have left. When I use classic cameras, I generally use them at one aperture and shutter speed and it works out just fine.

 

[Vaughn]

Not another "I am a bigger idiot that you are!" thread?! Cool. For 6 days I went backpacking last month with my 4x5 and 10 loaded holders -- so 20 images for the trip. I managed to flub 3 in various ways. I've been using view cameras for 35+ years. The most entertaining one was when I removed the wrong darkslide. I was standing in front of the camera due to the slope, etc, and just grabbed the one in back. Fortunately in was an unexposed film -- not one already used.

 

[Alan Gales]

Best/worst thing I have ever done shot a roll of film in an FM2. Gone to rewind it & thought... hmm, not much tension here & realised that I hadn't loaded it first. Oh well.

I loaded my first 35mm camera once and the film came loose from the spool which was my fault of course. I didn't expose any of my shots on the film. After that I always checked the rewind crank when I advanced the film the first couple times to make sure it turned.

 

[benjiboy]

I very recently shot a roll of 120 Portra with my new to me Mamiya C220 F indoors using flash. When I got my roll developed everything was under exposed. I checked my lens and I had accidentally moved the switch from the electronic flash setting to the flash bulb setting before I took a single shot. Later I saw on the internet where wedding photographers would epoxy the switch to the electronic flash setting so they wouldn't make my mistake.

Don't feel lonesome. I've shot polaroid, 35mm, medium format, large format and digital. I've also screwed up with each of them!

I stuck the flash sync levers on the X setting on all my Mamiya C lenses more than twenty years ago because it would be too easy to snag them on something and not realise it .

 

[Alan Gales]

I stuck the flash sync levers on the X setting on all my Mamiya C lenses more than twenty years ago because it would be too easy to snag them on something and not realise it .

Thanks Ben. It does makes me feel better!

Did you use epoxy or something else. I thought about using tape on my 105mm DS in case I ever want to use the self timer.

 

[benjiboy]

Thanks Ben. It does makes me feel better!

Did you use epoxy or something else. I thought about using tape on my 105mm DS in case I ever want to use the self timer.

I just glued a short bit of match stick in the slot Alan to stop it physically moving.

 

[Old_Dick]

I was in my 20's and was using a polarized filter. I was also wearing polarized sunglasses. Could not figure out the problem, did the old take the sunglasses off, put them back on a few times before I figured it out. At 68, I make different mistakes.

 

[Alan Gales]

I just glued a short bit of match stick in the slot Alan to stop it physically moving.

Thanks Ben. I'll have to look at it. Sounds like a good idea!

 

[shutterfinger]

The hot weather or just getting old
neither, you set your shoulder separator down and forgot where you put it. Once reinstalled between your shoulders you will be less likely to make such an oversight.

 

[Nodda Duma]

When I was young, I spent a full new-moon night out in a prime dark sky location in the Sierra Nevadas, carefully guiding for hours to take film photographs of galaxies, nebulas, and the like. It was hell driving back down the mountain passes to Ridgecrest as the sun came up. Dangerous, of course, as exhausted as I was. But well worth it for such perfect seeing conditions and several very long perfectly-guided exposures.

When the film came back the frames were blank. Checking my OM-1 which I hadn't used since that night, I quickly discovered that I had never set the shutter to bulb. At 1/500 shutter speed, no ancient photons from a distant galaxy will tickle those silver halide grains enough to form an image.

So it's either not an age thing, or I'm *really* screwed as I get older!

-Jason

 

[Truzi]

I think we make the same number of mistakes at any age. It's just that we make all the easy mistake when young, so have to find new mistakes as we grow older.

 

[Theo Sulphate]

About 20 years ago, drove from Portland, Oregon, to Lake Crescent on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. Drove the scenic routes. I took my F2 and two rolls of film. Spent a few hours there. Drove back. Basically a 16 hour day.

Have I mentioned that in those days I was not in the newfangled habit of rewinding the film entirely back into the cassette? From my days of developing my own film, I'd leave the leader out since I had no good way of retrieving it. So, yeah, I like to leave the film out a bit - almost as if it's an unexposed cassette...

So what kind of photos did this long day trip give me? Well, one entirely unexposed roll and one double-exposed roll.

 

[benjiboy]

The older I get the more I appreciate autofocus, auto-exposure, lightweight cameras. They save putting on my reading glasses to check what the aperture is set to and how many frames I have left. When I use classic cameras, I generally use them at one aperture and shutter speed and it works out just fine.

I have varifocal lenses in my glasses and have no problems in this respect, however a couple of years ago after finishing shooting a film in my Mamiya C 330F as I believed at the time found when I opened the camera back it was empty !, I had previously left an empty film spool in the take up spool well in the top of the camera when I was previously cleaning the inside of the camera otherwise the camera wouldn't have worked, this is the only time I have ever done this in more than sixty years of photography, and I really felt a fool, but I was lucky there was nothing of great importance on the film, had there been one,

 

[DaveO]

Same here with my FUJI rangefinders ...

I saw a video one time of a heavy set man walking up to a photo op and taking a number of pictures with a Leica with the Leica lens cap on !