Camera Horror stories

[shenstone]

Not my Idea

Maybe someone should start a thread about accidents/abuse members have put their various cameras/lenses through. Some of my stories would give the equipment fetishists nightmares.

Sounds fun ... mine would also scare and not just my own camera was harmed in one story

OK Here goes

A young me just moved to South Wales meets a famous Cave Photographer and gets invited to help on one of his shoots

Now back then the tool of choice was a Rollei 35 LED which was placed on a tripod on a ledge with a shutter release whilst said expert ran up and down firing the flash in the passage (yes I know it sounds primitive I was young!)

I had 2 instructions.

"hold onto the cable release"
"don't move"

All goes well for the 1st 3 flash's and then I hear a scraping noise. I'm in the pitch dark so I can't tell what is going on and all of a sudden the cable release gets very heavy and there is a splash...

"Erm ... I think somethings gone wrong"

"Don't Move!"

"No Seriously"

"Don't Move!"

On returning he found that I had done exactly as told and now I had the cable release plus top half of the camera in hand and the rest was in the water at the bottom of my feet.

Not to ruin the day said photogrpaher nips back to the car and grabs another rollei whilst I ruminate on what had just happened and would I be expected to pay for it (I was just graduated and broke)

Later on (we are still very good friends) he admits that he got some really good shots of me freezing my ** off up to my nose in icy water in total fear of getting out and upsetting him and he had quite a few of those cameras he bought in 2nd hand shops

...

Over to you lot them (for now ... I do have some more)

Regards
Andy

[David M]

Re: Camera Horror stories

I've got lots so will post one at a time.

France, 1982.

I'm at the Le Mans 24 hour bike race photographing a British team in their first endurance race. In the early hours of the morning I'm in the gallery above the pits photographing a pit stop when I drop my OM1 body into the pit below as I swap my 50mm to my OM2. One of the pit crew throws the body back up to me.

The base plate is bent stopping the film back opening and closing. So I go to the camp site I'm on, pull the tool kit from under the seat of my bike and use pliers and a screw drivers to bend the base plate away from the back so I can open and close it. I continued to use it unrepaired for years until getting a new base plate off a scrap body via my camera repairer.

[Naughty Nigel]

Re: Camera Horror stories

I cannot compete with the stories above, but if anyone finds a 50 mm f1.4 Zuiko in the Llangollen canal (near to the junction at Trevor) it's mine!

It was getting a bit fungusy, but I daresay the canal water will have cleaned it up by now.

[Naughty Nigel]

Re: Camera Horror stories

I cannot compete with the stories above, but if anyone finds a 50 mm f1.4 Zuiko in the Llangollen canal (near to the junction at Trevor) it's mine!

It was getting a bit fungusy, but I daresay the canal water will have cleaned it up by now.

[Guest]

Re: Camera Horror stories

I cannot compete with the stories above, but if anyone finds a 50 mm f1.4 Zuiko in the Llangollen canal (near to the junction at Trevor) it's mine!

It was getting a bit fungusy, but I daresay the canal water will have cleaned it up by now.

Dropping one might be an accident, two suggests either method or madness.

Nick

[Alan Clogwyn]

Re: Camera Horror stories

I cannot compete with the stories above, but if anyone finds a 50 mm f1.4 Zuiko in the Llangollen canal (near to the junction at Trevor) it's mine!

It was getting a bit fungusy, but I daresay the canal water will have cleaned it up by now.

It'll be in the reservoir at Hurleston by now, tainting the water for all the residents of Nantwich

Don't worry it's being kept company by a lot of my tools! (I used to work on that canal!)

[David M]

Re: Camera Horror stories

It'll be in the reservoir at Hurleston by now, tainting the water for all the residents of Nantwich

Don't worry it's being kept company by a lot of my tools! (I used to work on that canal!)

Know it well, I've got a long list of bird species photographed at Hurleston. This shot in my gallery was taken at the water inlet from the canal to the reservoir;



I've got a water born horror story I'll add later.

[David M]

Re: Camera Horror stories

Canada, 1985.

I was in Ontario shooting nature and travel stock. I was invited out sailing on Georgian Bay in a small sailboat by a couple who lived near where I was staying. So I took an OM1 with a 50mm lens and with a 24mm in the pocket of my jeans and a couple of extra rolls of Kodachrome in their tubs in another pocket. I put a neck strap on the camera figuring I may need to let it go and it was probably better hanging around my neck than putting it down in the boat. As I can't swim the couple insisted I wear a life-jacket.

So we're quite a way off shore when a sudden gust of wind hits the sail boat and one thing led to another and suddenly the boats upside-down and I'm bobbing around in the water thinking how glad I am to be wearing a life-jacket! The camera is still around my neck underwater and the 24mm is still in my pocket, also underwater. A local in a small motorboat saw the accident and comes over to rescue us. So I climb over the side of his boat and rewind the film in the camera, take it out and put it in my jeans, take the lens off the camera and pour as much water out of it as possible.

I get back to the cottage I'm staying at and turn the oven on low, take the battery out of the OM1 and put the camera body, the 50mm and the 24mm lenses in the oven to dry out for about 30 minutes. Once out of the oven I put the same battery back in the camera and tested the meter, which worked so I left the battery in and put a fresh roll of Kodachrome in the body and carried on using it.

The 24mm had some water marks internally but I used it until going digital. The 50mm looked OK but never seemed to have the contrast it had before it went for a swim so I retired it. I never got the OM1 checked out and used it for another 20+ years. The roll of Kodachrome in the camera I threw out as there was only a couple of shots on it when it went swimming and it had turned the pocket of my jeans yellow where I had put it after I removed it from the camera. The rolls in the tubs I used when they came out of the tubs dry.

[David M]

Re: Camera Horror stories

It appears no one else wants to ad their stories so I'll ad one more before giving up on the thread.

One with no real equipment damage.

Cheshire, England, 1987.

I found a natural perch being used by a Common Kingfisher. But I couldn't set up a hide as there was a herd of dairy cows in the field so decided to set up a remote camera. The next problem was that the only spot that was far enough away and that I could see the perch from was six feet up at tree about 40 feet away which meant using a 20 feet wired remote plus a 20 feet extension.

So the cord's lying in the grass between the camera and me along with a few of the dairy cows. I'm not really paying attention to the cows until I notice one of them has the cord in its mouth chewing on it. It bit through the cord before I could jump down from the tree and stop it. Needless to say, that was the end of trying to get the Kingfisher shots that day.

[Ian]

Re: Camera Horror stories

I copied the idea and started a thread like this on DPNow and this is there too:

You're on a trip of a life time - a helicopter ride to the Grand Canyon. Everything is going well:



Great view over the Hoover Dam...

You land on a ledge below the rim of the canyon, get out and take great awe-inspiring photos of an awe-inspiring place, er, like this:



Yes, the camera (ironically, an Olympus E-3 and 12-60) refused to work properly and over-exposed everything while we were on the ground

I suspect it was a sticking aperture iris, but - you guessed it, after we left the canyon the camera was right as rain again

Ian

[Ian]

Re: Camera Horror stories

And another one - one of my daughters had a swimming party to celebrate her 14th birthday last summer and so I suggested she take some photos with my Mju Tough camera, which is waterproof to beyond the depth of the pool. Later on it gets handed back to me, but the USB socket door is open and water is dripping out... the camera has never worked since!

Ian

[snaarman]

Re: Camera Horror stories

I haven't dropped anything valuable (yet) but we all have stupidity stories.

I am taking some indoor family shots, and I'm using Manual exposure and bounce flash. Some of the shots are OK, but two thirds of them are out exposure wise. Some under, some over. I can't seem to get a handle on what I am doing wrong. I rescue most of the shots with extreme Photoshop.

.
.
.
.

Later I discover I had left exposure bracketing switched on, which apparently still works in Manual mode.

Hmm

Pete

[cinders]

Re: Camera Horror stories

I occassionally use mine on Manual focus and a 2 sec delay in work. And have been known to grab it for some quick shots the day later and wonder why everything is blurred

[David M]

[JohnGG]

Re: Camera Horror stories

We were on Charmouth Beach several years ago watching a couple of buzzards hovering over the cliff. Eventually they settled out of my sight but my wife, who was further along, said she could see them from where she was. So I start to scramble along the beach looking up at the cliff and not where I was putting my feet Needless to say, I tripped but it was one of those funny ones where you almost catch the trip but end up going faster and faster before measuring your length. My daughters witnessed the whole thing and said it was one of the funniest things they'd ever seen, apparently I hurtled along the beach for an age before I finally hit the deck

Unfortunately, I had an OM4 with 16mm f/3.5 fish-eye around my neck and the filter ring of the lens got smacked on a rock (the beach is covered in pebbles the size of two fists) when I fell and afterwards would no longer turn to change filters The moral of the story, apart from "watch where you put your feet," is to put cameras safely away when traversing rough terrain

As I was going down I thought to myself, "This is going to hurt!" but, amazingly, I received just one tiny scratch on my hand from the adventure

Cheers,

JohnGG