kvanhook Loc: Oriental, NC

That one is so easy. Back in the film days I found myself standing ten feet from Jacques Cousteau. I fired away with excitement flowing and the lens cap still on the lens. My rangefinder camera never gave me a hint of my failure.

pecohen Loc: Central Maine

I recall the same experience years ago using a camera that was self-loading. You just set the roll of film in the camera and closed up the back; it would make a little bit of noise and when that stopped and you could begin shooting. From a plane flying over Hawaii (the big island) I took several shots from above an active volcano and had high hopes for them. I thought I was using a 20-exposure roll of film but when I got to exposure 25 or so I decided it must have been a 36-exposure roll. When I got to exposure 40 or so I opened up the camera to find it had never loaded properly.

I don't think I ever used that camera again.

uhaas2009

I reseted the hole camera (Nikon is painful to reset) I bought David Busch book for that. When I was finish I remember that I turned on noice reduction......

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

Leaving the lens cap on. Now I don’t use one.

47greyfox Loc: on the edge of the Colorado front range

Wearing polarized sun glasses and then rotating my camera repeatedly from landscape to tall and panicking when the LCD display disappeared. More serious foolish mistakes are mentally erased to ease the suffering embarrassment.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Then I'll have the same problem here (+5 hours).
Easier to remember to set the time than work with the conversion on each shot.
(Morning? no , wait, add five hours... afternoon.)

SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

I always carry extra batteries and the one time I didn’t was the time I didn’t check the battery in the camera before starting out. And of course leaving the card in the card reader. Usually only a problem in my Sony RX10MIV because of the single slot, the worst time being before I set it to shoot only when I had a card in camera. I spent the morning kayaking with friends and had several eagles pretty close to us and took a lot of great shots. When we stopped for a snack break and I went to review my shots I realized they didn’t exist. I took the card out of my P&S for the return trip but never got close enough to the eagles. There are the times my exposure was all over the place before I realized I forgot to take the camera out of bracket mode. But I guess the granddaddy of blunders was putting my Panasonic G9 with the the Leica 100-400mm lens in my kayak before doing a dock launch. My feet got tangled up with the camera as I got in and I flipped the kayak. Both camera and lens were ruined. Luckily, since I bought that set up specifically for kayaking I had bought drop/spill warranties on both so both were replaced. (Square Trade was a breeze with the lens. New Leaf was like pulling teeth and it took a couple of months before they finally paid up.

Buzzardluck Loc: Tempe, AZ

Forgetting to install flash card.

RoswellAlien

Film? Oh I was supposed to put film in it?

scubadoc Loc: Sarasota, FL

How about forgetting to rewind the film prior to opening the back. 36 images gone in a flash.

KenProspero

After changing my settings so that I exclusively use back button focusing, forgetting to actually hit the back button. Happened many times until I trained myself.

photoman43

Film days--Not checking the film rewind wheel to make sure the film was loaded properly and advancing after ech picture

Digital--Formatting the image card before downloading the images
Forgetting to check to see it exp comp was reset to 0 at the beginning of a new shooting sequence.
Meter set to spot (from a moon shoot the night before) when it should have been matrix

Do you sense a problem here? Make sure your special settings are reset to the usual ones at the beginning of each shoot.

SteveR Loc: Michigan

Worse than that. I took mine to a Michigan game where a former h.s. teammate of mine had kickoff duties. Shooting from the 45 about 34 rows up, I got a great shot of the teams lined up for kickoff, and my friend kicking off and some other shots of the game.....only to discover that I hadn't loaded film. I guess this one beats the one I posted before.

johngault007 Loc: Florida Panhandle

I did this a couple of weeks ago:

The family and I set out to spend the day at Fort Pickens. I thought that was a great idea. There is one particular spot in the fort that is not very well lit, but I wanted to go back and spend some time with a tripod to play around with angles, perspective, etc...

We get ready to head out, and I make a conscience decision to bring just the bare essentials as I do not want to take my entire backpack with me. So I grab my camera, spare battery, extra lens, and tripod....easy day!

We get to Fort Pickens and I immediately go to the spot mentioned previously. I set up the tripod and go to mount the camera and quickly discover that I have indeed grabbed by backup tripod with a Manfrotto head on it. My camera has an L bracket attached

OK, don't panic, I almost certainly have a backup tripod mount for this! Nope, the one time I didn't bring my camera bag with me (on person or in the car). Needless to say I spent the rest of the visit moping around like a kid that fell into a puddle before school.

sgt hop Loc: baltimore md,now in salisbury md

overloading a 35mm cartridge.. taking a bunch of shots and finding out the film did not advance, just tore out the sprocket holes....